Overall performance of Platinum Games

[MaxwellGT2000]

Reasonable said:

MaxwellGT2000 said:

Reasonable said:

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We clearly disagree here but here's my final say.

On Bayonetta...

I would expect a game this well reviewed to hit at least 1.3 to 1.5 Million to be considerd a success on PS3/360.  It did, but no thanks to Platinum.  SEGA saved them from a poor exclusive platform choice and as a result instead of sitting on approx 700K sales they're sitting on approx 1.4 million and counting.  Small team or not they made a poor choice of lead platform that remains perplexing for the genre of the game

SEGA took a lot of heat for a bad port and with Sony patched it enough to make it a bit better - mainly load times - but the PS3 version still remains graphically inferior.

I have the game, it's very good.

On MadWorld...

I have the game, it's an above average game but at 3 hours not one I would judge as a full price title.  The closest game I can think of in terms of being unique and short is Portal, which was TBH much better than Madworld overall.

To me it felt like a high end PSN title.  Wipeout HD and Flower for example, are easily as good.  Wipeout HD definately better overall.  It's story was okay'ish but that was it.  Some driving sections felt unfiinished to me next to the rest of the game.  I certainly wasn't impressed with it as a full title.

Again, though, I think given the Wii's install base barely getting past 500K isn't anything that made me feel they made the right platform choice.  I don't consider it a great sales success although critically it did fine.  I see no reason it wasn't multi-platform nor looked to other avenues for release.

On Vanquish...

I have it, it's pretty good but it's weaker than Bayonetta.  Stripped on a more novel lead, saddled with a poor narrative to underpin it and with gunplay that feels a little lose and a lack of clarity around the arguably real way to play the game - i.e. not as a shooter but in line with something like Bayonetta - it seems to have failed to connect and with a new CoD, GT5 and lots of other big titles rattling down the tracks I think it's going to perform worse than Bayonetta unless it really gets some stronger word of mouth to give it legs.

Better developed, but I don't believe it was marketed well enough.

On Infinite Space...

Well, I haven't actually commented on this as I haven't played it.  All I can say is those look like low sales for a DS title that's been on the market for 34 weeks.

 

Again, I don't know what you expect.  The OP invited comments on their performance and you're ranting about 'you couldn't do better' etc.  How said we could?  We're being critical, as is our right.  And as we've been invited to evaluate we're using hindsight.

Hinsight says Platinum, whatever their size and whatever their reasons, should never have delivered Bayonetta only on 360.

Hindsight says the Wii may well not have been the right platform for Madworld.  I have one, and I can tell you I really didn't feel Madworld belonged on the platform.  The controls were fine, but the game really felt like it should have been on PS3/360 for me.  Either way I firmly believe Platinum left sales on the table going Wii exclusive with it.

Hindsight (at this early stage) says Vanquish probably needed a more unique setting/narrative and a clearer communication of it's main 'hook'.  Personally, I feel that by making something that looked so much like a Western space marine shooter Platinum took the game into an arena that wasn't best suited for it.

I like them as a quirky developer.  But they made mistakes - some pretty big and obvious ones IMHO - and that's my view.  I have no interest in trying to do better than they did, nor am I saying I could, but I do reserve the right as a critical customer to point their mistakes out.

Maybe you feel I should have been making excuses for them, but I don't see any need to or that they seserve any to be made.

In the end of the titles shown only Bayonetta seems to have achieved a decent level of sales IMHO.

Wow... uh I don't disagree I'm just saying you're factually wrong in a lot of cases so yeah disagreeing in the sense I'm not on your page, but I'm trying to point out some stuff to you.

Like "SEGA took a lot of heat for a bad port and with Sony patched it enough to make it a bit better - mainly load times - but the PS3 version still remains graphically inferior." Sony patched it?  You mean the developers that made the game patched it right? Cause Sony patches their games and hosts patches for people, they don't go out of their way to patch a game for a third party developer that put an inferior multiplat on their system

Madworld I just don't really believe you've actually played it, your comments are sparce, you're comparing it to a racing game of all things, and calling it 3 hours long... you had to be in a REAL rush to try and beat it if you finished in 3 hours, you're the first I've actually heard of beating it in 3 hours, in fact most reviews and people I talk to average 5 to 6 hours, I'm more likely to believe them over random user on the webz #469, if you could even somewhat make a post that sounds like you played the game then, I could carry on and give some weight to your platform discussion but you calling it a XBLA or PSN title is just a gross over statement, in fact what PSN or XBLA title (not full retail up for download) is over 3 gigs in size like Madworld?  Its not and you're just wrong.

And overall you're giving so much credit to SEGA and trying to bash Platinum for using 360 as a lead platform, when it's like no shit 360 had the biggest install base in two regions at the time Bayonetta was coming out, a game with a lot of western appeal, and SEGA is supposed to be doing the port to PS3... for being called reasonable you're not being very reasonable here

I mean come on man, you're trying to pull the "you're just wanting me to make excuses for them" defense and thats just a lame fallacy, trying to make up some reason to devalue my statements instead of trying to tackle them.

Fact - average Wii development costs 1/4 that of the HD consoles according to the guys at EA

Fact - many publishers state development costs of the Wii are more in line with last gen consoles which typically broke even at the 200k-250k mark and by the time it hit 500k developers/publishers would look into sequels, from the guys at IGN and was the reasoning behind making De Blob 2, at the time it was just at 500k when they started discussing making a second.

Fact - The reason 1m seems the norm for third party sales this gen is their strong support of the HD consoles, EA has come out to say that 1.1m is the typical break even point because of the high development costs, last gen PS2 rarely had these sorts of limitations and so many MANY more publishers and developers were successful even when they were selling 500k copies of a game, look back and I brought up how Wii is more in line with PS2 development.

Fact - God Hand didn't do well so making another game in this vein was a bad risk if they wanted full on HD development with all the bells and whistles and sell a million copies

Looking at these facts my reasoning is very sound, Madworld was developed on the safer bet and made money and did better than the game that came before it God Hand.

Bayonetta sold over that average HD development break even line, even then the project was probably still a bit cheaper than your average product simply because of the smaller staff at Platinum Games and the fact that SEGA handled the port, this was a success on their part.

Infinite Space was outsourced to another developer with Platinum Games' oversight, turned out well, and at least broke even.

Looking at the facts thats 3 out of 4 projects that you could easily say were a success, and the 4th being released a few  weeks ago the towel isn't thrown in yet, Platinum Games made the choices that were most logical to them in their position, and it turned out alright for them.  So I say that's good performance and learning from previous projects they can build on that, you really can't get more sensible than that.