| MontanaHatchet said: It was trolling. Saying something like "ouch, bomba" when you have no idea how much the game cost to develop, or any idea of what its lifetime sales will be (it could easily double its LTD), then you're trolling. I guess you'll have a busy next few weeks banning everyone for arguing sales data when cost to develop is unknown, eh? Also, you argue that we have no idea what lifetime sales will be 14 weeks after it's debuted. Wow. So 14 weeks in, we can't gauge a sales trend? Most games, you know within 4-6 weeks, but we can't argue Infamous at week 14? inFamous is a PS3 exclusive, and as such, it wasn't cheap. However, it was made by Sucker Punch, a second party developer. And since they're a second party developer, they're not only inclined to have lower budgets (it seems that most of the big financial flops on the PS3 have been from third parties), but they work more closely with Sony. Sony paid for publishing, and might have lent towards development. It wouldn't be as hard as you think to break a profit. Now, while inFamous is more than 3 months old, that doesn't mean it needs to have sold a million already. Prototype is also about 3 months old, and neither version (last I checked) has cracked a million. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Prototype was already profitable (although it does have the advantage of being multiplatform). If a game is still selling 17k a week 3 months after launch, the company won't be in a big rush to drop the price. If anything, those are great legs. I'm sure Sucker Punch is quite happy. There's nothin to indicate that the title will drop price, since it's selling just fine. And even if it does drop in price, the sales will adjust accordingly, making up for the losses. That's how price cuts work. Just because some HD exclusives bankrupt companies, doesn't mean all do. Prototype has sold over 1.3 million copies between both systems, not including PC. If you are arguing profitability on Prototype (which you just said was trolling a few lines ago - claiming that someone can't say a game has bombed despite knowing budget or LTD sales, then what's the difference from arguing profitability without knowing budget?). Furthermore, we know that games cost more this generation to develop. If you'd like to present a valid argument that Sly Cooper on PS2 cost the same as inFamous on PS3, I'd love to hear that argument, because it flies in the face of everything we know. Maybe the legs will continue, but if it's selling 17k this week, then one could only surmise that by November, it will be selling <10,000 units, since it's yet to increase sales on a given week. It dropped from 37k/wk to 27k/wk between weeks #6 and #10, then another 10,000 between week #10 and week #14. That is good legs, but has yet to produce a solid trend to say it'll continue selling well 2 months from now. The caveat is the PS3Slim launch, but if trends do continue, it's going to continue dropping. Only someone that doesn't look at VGChartz data could argue otherwise. If you're opening up for the possibility that inFamous will have legs on the level of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, why even say something stupid like in your original post? Why say "ouch" as if it somehow causes you pain to see a game bomb on a system that you probably don't even like anyways? I'm more inclined to think that PS3 slim boosts would go towards more casual titles, and you can see evidence of this in the latest American charts. Besides, not every title needs to sell a certain amount of copies in a certain amount of time to be successful. Have the games with the biggest launches this generation been anywhere near the biggest selling or most profitable? Hell no. I was just stating that inFamous may have legs, giving Sony fans credit that something great may happen. However, for a nice exclusive to sell 850,000 in 3 months is not fantastic, given many other PS3 exclusives have done better in shorter timeframes. What are the biggest games this gen? Wii Fit? Grossed ~$160m USD on week-1. That's a fantastic launch, and one of the Wii's best. Mario Kart Wii? 2.3 million first week. That's certainly an amazing feat. Both had tremendous openings followed by trenemdous legs. Or are you trying to dig up other titles? If it hits 1 million at December, it's already doing great. At 60 bucks a pop, that's already 60 million dollars. And if, say, Sucker Punch only gets $20 a copy, that's already 20 million dollars. Easily enough to cover the budget. And if it wasn't, there's a Christmas boost and future sales (2010 and beyond) to get it to 1.5 million or more, easily enough for a big profit. If it wasn't a bomb, you shouldn't have said it was a bomb in the first place. Forgot 'marketing expenses' somewhere in that budget, sir. Between both, inFamous, like most other HD titles, dev costs are ~$20m plus marketing. I saw plenty of inFamous commercials, so I'd assume that it had some sort of marketing budget, no? You also stated that there were plenty of inFamous commercials, so it's only reasonable to say that the recoup costs on marketing may inflate the budget a bit more than $20m. Going back to the bomb quote. I guess on my end, I just was taken aback concerning that, as far as I remember, VGC lowered the sales of infamous a few weeks after it debuted. Maybe it's rusty memory, but I was thinking inFamous sold much closer to Crackdown than the X360 version of Prototype alone. Whose expectations are we talking about anyways? I doubt Sony set ridiculous expectations, and inFamous looks like it will easily be Sucker Punch's best selling title (the original Sly Cooper standing at 1.06 million). Oh, and comparing it to other titles doesn't matter in its success. As an example, Gears of War sells a lot less than some of the other shooter series on the market. On the other hand, it's still widely successful. At the end of the day, the developer couldn't care less how it does compared to other games or game series on the market. I called you out for trolling because you're held to a higher standard. And you wanted a discussion, so have fun with this one. Please give me a better argument than that, or I'll just tear it all up again. I am unsure what expectations Sony may have set for inFamous. I'd tend to think that the comparables of Crackdown, Saints Row and Prototype would be good - new IPs from decent studios for the sandbox genre. So far, inFamous is lower than all 3. But I digress, maybe I called it a bomb premature, given that some seem to think that an exclusive AAA title needs to sell <1m to be a success. It may be profitable a year from now. Hopefully the studio can wait that long to earn a profit from the title. |
Oh, PSRock, you forgot a few Infamous predictions from the infamous game page:
Skeeuk posted 26/05/2009, 07:24
should do 300k 1st week, and 2 million lifetime
ElectronicRocker posted 26/05/2009, 02:15
240k first week
1,4 million ltd
ninjascroll posted 26/05/2009, 07:29
I go for 400k First week maybe 2mill by years end. The Uncharted multiplayer demo should increase the sales guess we wait to see.
FootballFan posted 25/05/2009, 07:17
100K SALES FIRST WEEK,
1.5 MILLION LIFETIME
Dark Odin posted 12/05/2009, 06:39
1 million in 7-8 weeks. 2 million lifetime
CaptainDJ posted 10/05/2009, 01:58
I think this game will sell 2 million lifetime.
Thechalkblock posted 02/05/2009, 08:03
I predict 87% on metacritic, 300,000 first week sales, 1.5 million lifetime.
Slimebeast posted 12/04/2009, 12:37
I predict 82% on Gamerankings, 240,000 copies 1st week and 800,000 lifetime.
CrazzyMan posted 27/05/2009, 02:31
300-500k First week WW.
LTD around 3-4 mln. atleast. =)
Little bit higher than your median, PSrock. May want to include them. 
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
