Muramasa sold over 50k in NA for the first week

[68soul]

LordTheNightKnight said:

The thing is that they would have sold about as much on the HD systems. Just that the cost would have been higher, so they would have lost money.

These are niche titles, and 50K is actually a good opening for them. Just the Wii, DS, and PSP mean their budgets are in a reasonable range.

Valkyria Chronicles sold well, but for a PS3 game, it's not spectacular. If the sequel sells even half that well on the PSP, it's a success.

 

This is in fact one of the biggest problem this gen: "niche" games will (nearly) never be blockbusters, and devs can't afford to spend millions and millions of dollars on such games... with the costs of HD, it means such games don't have the right to exist anymore...

I mean, what's the point in a industry where only the 20 or 30 biggest blockbusters each year have a chance to make huge profits?

I'll do a simple analogy, as i've always worked in the music business: imagine the costs for making an album are suddenly so high that any artist/group now needs to sell 1 million CD's to make profits... it would be a real disaster for 90% of the groups/singers/musicians out there... and we would only have the music featured on radio/tv and in the charts...

Some famous artists may have talent, but "niche" artists may have even more: what about creativity and originality when a business becomes so risk-averse that no one wants to fund "niche projects"? It applies to any art form and any media out there, but imho, videogames are in the worst position...

If i do another analogy, with animated movies this time: the "userbase" for any Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks is universal, it may be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the globe, in any theater or on any dvd player... and you want 50 hours long games with the same graphic qualities, for a userbase of what: 20, 30 million people?

If games become more expensive than most movies, this industry will simply kill itself...