PS3 flops in US (March) - what now?

[johnsobas]

FishyJoe said:

jman8 said:

FishyJoe said:

jman8 said:

FishyJoe said:
If I'm a third party PS3 developer right now I'm scared. If a game like MotorStorm can't sell decently with no competition, how is any game outside of a select few going to sell in the face of heavy competition?

How is selling 200,000 not decent? That's over 10% of PS3 owners. That also doesn't include European sales where the game has been at the top of the charts. The game also sold pretty "decently" in Japan too. This is just as bad as the myth that PSP owners don't buy games when in fact the attach ratio is exactly the same as the DS (at least in the States).

You said it, it's 10% of PS3 owners which means that it didn't sell many systems if any. A good title will get people excited enough to buy at least some systems. This game was hyped by some to push PS3 sales to 300k. Instead PS3 sales went down 20% calculated on a weekly basis.

You never said anything about Motorstorm selling/or not selling systems in your post. All you said is that 3rd parties are probably scared b/c a good game didn't sell well. Well, the game did sell well, and good third party games will sell equally as well considering the number of PS3 owners are on the rise. The PS3 is basically selling at 360 pace from last year, which means that by Christmas they'll have sold probably about 8 million units. So why should 3rd parties be shitting their pants again? Oh yeah, this doesn't even bring up the fact that a third party could always port their PS3 game to the 360.

I don't think Motorstorm made that much money. Lets say it sells 750k WW. If 20% of retail price is reserved for development, a perfectly reasonable number, that means devlopment got $9 million from sales. The development probably cost that much which means they are close to breaking even. Nobody wants to just break even, they want significant returns on their investment. 

While i agree that Motorstorm isn't going to lose sony money, there are much more costs to a game besides just development.  Marketing, and paying retailers comes to mind among other things.  Motorstorm didn't sell well in Japan, but it should sell a little better in Europe.  Sony is supposed to make up the money they lose on systems by selling games, which they aren't doing a good job of doing either.