| RobMate said: ok i gotta ask i have ever known anyone to buy one of these games.. who the hell does? |
Worldwide (across all platforms) a game like this will potentially sell over 1 Million copies; most of these will be bought by parents for their children who really like the movie. Whether we (as gamers) like to admit it or not most gamers do not buy games based on quality, they buy games based on brand; this is generally true across all markets, not just videogames.
When you have a gamer, who has never even considered buying a magazine or searching the internet for game information, walk into a store and look at the row upon row of games they (typically) look for something familiar. There are some IPs that everyone knows about (for example, you can go to the deepest darkest region of Africa and people know who Super Mario and Micky Mouse are) but most game IPs are very unfamiliar.
Spiderman, Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings are huge IPs that span several markets and the second someone sees these games they get the feeling (although often misplaced) that this is a good game; new movies that have a ton of marketing going on at the same time also gain this benefit but it has a much shorter lifespan (as an example 'Cars' the game doesn't have the impact it did 12 months ago).
