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nofingershaha on 21 December 2009
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makingmusic476 said:
loves2splooge said:
Blood_Tears said:
With so many rpg's coming to PS3 and FFXIII putting up big numbers, I hope they go PS3/360.

This is precisely why staying 360-exclusive would make the most sense strategically for Mistwalker. On the 360, Lost Odyssey 2 would be huge (1 million+ easy) because there is no real competiton on the 360 in the exclusive jrpg department any more. Ninety-Nine Nights is the only upcoming 360 exclusive jrpg I can think of. The rest are multi-plats and even those are drying up. Every jrpg fan who owns a 360 is going to buy Lost Odyssey 2 unless they didn't like the first one. On the PS3, Mistwalker would be forced to release a new IP (since MS owns Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon) and they'd have to compete with the sharks in PS3's red ocean waters (Versus XIII and others). On the 360, it'll be like a Blue Ocean for Mistwalker. Yeah there are still people buying the old 360 jrpgs but since those games are old, they aren't going to cut into Mistwalker's market share much. Lost Odyssey could be to Final Fantasy what Forza is to GT or Killzone is to Halo. Mistwalker already ventured into jrpg-heavy territory (DS) and their DS games saw really low sales. That's what happens when you compete on a platform where everyone and their grandmother is releasing a jrpg.

It's similar to what people have been saying about Dante's Inferno. It's going to be overshadowed by God of War no doubt. If it was 360 exclusive instead, it would have it's own seperate identity instead of being seen as the opening act for God of War 3.

Yet Killzone 2 failed to sell as much as a game of its caliber deserves, and likely would've sold better had it been multiplat and still recieved a similar marketing campaign.  The opening week may not have been as high, but its legs would've been much better.

Why?  Because the 360 is where all the big shooters are (Halo, Gears, Call of Duty), and thus where all the big shooter fans are, so shooters sell much better on the system.  The same could be said about the ps3 and JRPGs at the moment, especially in Japan now that Final Fantasy is here.  The ps3 has the larger JRPG fanbase, as shown through legs of Valkyria Chronicles (it'll soon take Lost Odyssey's place as the best selling console JRPG this generation after Final Fantasy) and the monster opening week of Final Fantasy XIII.  Or look at the sales of the two versions of Tales of Vesperia, one of which was an incredibly late port released in only one territory.

How many of those 110k people in Japan that bought Lost Odyssey do you think still own 360s and are willing to buy a Lost Odyssey 2, given the system's situation in Japan?  Just look at the number of angry Japanese gamers after Tales went multiplat.  Then Star Ocean went, and now Final Fantasy is out.  Would the franchise be able to sustain that level of sales on 360 under such conditions?

Also, how could Lost Odyssey 2 break a mllion "easy"?  Yeah, it's an exclusive, and yeah it'd be the only decent exclusive JRPG on the horizon, but the same could've been said about the first at the end of 2007 and early 2008.  We did not know the platforms for Tales or Star Ocean at that time, so Lost Odyssey was *the* 360 JRPG, and the game was arguably the first really good JRPG on the system, yet it failed to break a million.  It currently sits at 820k with near non-existent weekly sales.

The sequel could perform better than the first, theoretically, but it would require substantial changes to the franchise for that to happen.  It's pretty well known that sequels usually do not perform as well as their predecessors on the same platform, and this has been shown through franchises like Devil May Cry (DMC1 > DMC3), Gran Turismo (GT1 > GT2, GT3 > GT4), Metal Gear Solid (MGS2 > MGS3, despite MGS3 being the better game), and Final Fantasy ( FFVII > FFVIII > FFIX, FFX > FFXII).  The only exceptions to this I can think of are Halo 2 and Uncharted 2, but both games bore significant improvements over their predecessors.  Both games added online multiplayer to the series for the first time, and the latter title also sported a much improved singleplayer campaign.  These are incredibly rare exceptions to the general rule.

Expecting Lost Odyssey 2 to outsell the first by 20% "easily" is asking quite a lot of the title.

They're some things you pointed out that makes sense, however remember that Lost odyssey was released back in December of 2007 in Japan, and since then the Japanese 360 install base has gotten a bit bigger (though not much). While many Japanese probably don't play their 360s and is dusting in some corner since Star Ocean (or Dream C Club for some), 360 RPG exclusives are generally welcomed enough. It might be too late too sell consoles with the thought of exclusivity, but 360's worldwide install base has gotten much larger also, and Lost Odyssey was generally aimed at the rest of the world instead of just Japan.