nofingershaha on 05 October 2009
| binary solo said: Am I missing something here? 50K of sales in Japan with little prospect of making it to 60K doesn't exactly seem like a great launching pad for a western release. Clearly they need western sales to make the game a decent earner, but how often does a J(K)RPG with mediocre sales in Japan perform better than mediocre in the west? On the strength (or rather weakness) of Magna Carta II sales I'd say the cost of a PS3 port may not be worth it. Seems the other JRPG timed exclusives all performed well enough to assure the publishers/developers of a profitable PS3 port. I'm not so sure they can be as confident about a MG II port. |
I think its important to note that that even though 50,000 is even worse then mediocre by Western and Japanese definition, development in Korea is considerably cheaper than in Japan. When the developers of Ridge Racer said they needed sales of 500,000 to break even, that may have applied only to Japan since even one of their new games was nearly 90 USD. It is because of that Japanese publishers even turn to Western developers as a cheaper alternative then there studios back home (silent hill, dead rising 2).
So with a Western release Softmax might be able to break even at least for Magna Carta. (they didn't even make their own game engine but licensed Epic's Unreal 3, further cutting down costs)
