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Yakuzaice on 01 September 2010
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jarrod said:
Yakuzaice said:

Tri is being sold for less than 2G these days yet it sold 73,141 the first half of this year in Japan compared to 294,446 sold by MHP2G.  A budget reprint for Tri won't result in any substantial sales, especially compared to 2G.

Really, by your definition the only mainstream games are MH, DQ, and FF outside of Nintendo games.  What about something like Samurai Warriors 3?  That sold over a million on the PS2 (granted the second one only did it through re-releases), yet only sold 270k on the Wii.  So how does it work?  "Niche" releases massively underperform and mainstream releases only do well if they are Nintendo or are compared to games when the series was significantly less popular? 

Actually Animal Crossing is surprisingly similar to Monster Hunter in that way.  Started small on the N64, got bigger on the Gamecube, got huge on the DS, and took a nosedive on the Wii.  The Wii version still outperformed the earlier games, but was nowhere even close to the peak (which happened to be the previous game, unlike something like FF where the peak was 13 years ago).

So I guess we'll have to wait for DQX to see if the Wii can sell mainstream third party games.  Let's be honest, do you expect it to outsell games like Wii Sports and Fit on the Wii?  It'll put up huge numbers, but people will still be "disappointed" in the same way people are with FFXIII.

A budget reprint isn't just sold on price reduction (which for MH3 varies wildly by retailer btw), it's sold on wider availability for a reprint.  That's why MHP2G has had two budget rereleases already, and increased it's overall sales by a third as a result.  MH3 would definitely sell better if it was reprinted, widely available and universally budget priced.  As is, it's already the best selling subscription based game in history in Japan, with subscription revenues that according to Capcom greatly exceeded their expectations.  Mh3 doesn't just make money at the counter, unlike MHP2G.

And uh, Samurai Warriors 2 only did around 500k on PS2.  If you want to really get into it, Dynasty Warriors on PS3 saw a greater drop in sales from PS2 than Samurai Warriors on Wii did.  And that was after multiple Musou games hit PS3 to build that base, including a (timed) exclusive Gundam crossover which was expected to sell a million (and ended up selling about what Samurai Warriors 3 did, interesting that the first legitimate Musou games on PS3 and Wii sold basically identically).

Wii has a problem with "core" titles, and it's only gotten worse the past two years, but then it also has excellent sales for other stuff like Taiko no Tatsujin, Momotaru Denetsu, One Piece, Biohazard spinoffs or DQ spinoffs.  All comparable to PS1/PS2 sales for those series actually, hell same can be said for Monster Hunter. You'll also find that most franchises that underperformed on Wii (as mentioned, Tales or Musou) also underperformed on DS, which tells me it may also be an issue of those dedicated fanbases already being consolidated elsewhere.  Like PSP versus DS, the otaku crowd seems to have chosen PS3 (and in some cases like ADV/STG genre stuff 360) over Wii.  And yet, outside MoHun (which never saw a DS iteration for comparison), the more mainstream 3rd party brands did amazingly well on DS.

Animal Crossing Wii 'tanked' because it was a warmed over port sold for twice the price.  And we should put things into perspective, 'tanked' still means outselling every PS3 game ever released in Japan bar FFXIII, by almost 2:1 over the next best selling title (MGS4).  That's the difference between a mainstream game/console and a niche one.  If you want a counter example, look how Mario Kart or New Super Mario Bros. did between Wii and DS.  You can expect Dragon Quest X to realistically follow a similar trajectory... around 3.5 million is a pretty safe bet on what it'll do.

Of course it would sell better, my point is that it wouldn't have nearly the effect that the 2G budget release had.  If there was such a demand for MH3, they would have ordered more, or there would have been a budget release by now.  The 2G "the best" release came out a mere 7 months later, and sold a ton because the original game hadn't collapsed in price to the degree Tri has.

I know SW2 didn't do a million with its original release, like I said "(granted the second one only did it through re-releases)"  What "multiple" musou games were there?  Gundam Musou was the only one, it outsold Samurai Warriors 3, and it launched on the massive PS3 userbase of 750k.

I pretty much agree with your third paragraph outside of the fact that we'll probably never agree about the performance of MH3.

I'm not really sure of your point with Animal Crossing though.  Dragon Quest X could come out on the PS3, bomb horribly, and it would still probably double MGS4's sales.  Would that make the PS3 a mainstream console?  Nintendo has proven themselves to be able to sell their software even with really small userbases.  The N64 had comparable Smash numbers, better Zelda and 3D mario numbers, and somewhat worse Mario Kart numbers.  Does that mean it could have sold DQVII in line with the rest of the series?

I still stand by my original statement that nothing has proven that a Wii FFXIII would have done over 2 million.  So far the Wii has only proven itself to sell third party games that are niche (by your definition) and casual.