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jarrod on 10 December 2010
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Hero_time88 said:
jarrod said:

Hero_time88 said:

 Abyss faced Kingdom Hearts II and Graces F had MHP3 against it, not the smallest releases either, and I seriosly think it has more to do with the kind of audience that owns the Wii in Japan than anything else. Abyss was also full of bugs and technical problem, and it didn't seem like it did hurt it all, atleast not in Japan.

I don't know what the situation was of the GameCube during 2005/6 in the US, but here it started to die really fast after the release of RE4 and the end of that year it's situation was similar the current of the PSP here. Didn't the first Baten Kaitos sell decent in the US but the second one bombed? Well, I don't think that a late 2006 GC release, with FFXII against it and the new consoles coming would have done that well to begin.

The bugs in Graces were so bad, Namco actually had to reissue replacement disks.  We're not even talking "full of bugs and technical problems", we talking an incomplete game-breaking build that should've failed QA tests.  Abyss doesn't even begin to compare.

Abyss also released at a time when Tales was doing well as a franchise.  It alone outsold Vesperia on PS3 & 360 combined, the franchise in general has seen a significant decline versus where it was last gen.  Kingdom Hearts isn't nearly as big as FF in Japan either, it's (at best) half as big.

And again, as for the US market, Symphonia GC still outsold Abyss PS2 just counting sales after it's release.  It was budget priced (Player's Choice) by that point, but Abyss hit bargain bins within a few months too... there was still a market for a GC Tales game even at that late point, or Namco could've just as easily transitioned the game to Wii (which probably would've paid off going by RE4's huge early success).  Both versions of Baten Kaitos bombed in the US though iirc, neither passed 100k afaik (possibly not combined even).

I know the story about Graces, but even it's initial sales where pretty avarage, and I just disagree with you by giving part of the blame to FFXIII when Graces F had bigger release against it. Kingdom Hearts II was just mentioned because it was a big release close to the Abyss one, you don't have to tell me how big  the franchise is.

Tales of just had one hit in the west, and there a people who don't even know that they are all part of the same franchise.

Also when you look at the western sales of Jrpg's on the PS2, I a lot of the releases prior to 2004 did relatively well like Xenosaga, Star Ocean 3 and the Dark Cloud series, which might have something to do with that there was point in which there where just to many them and the sales might have been started to devide between the many releases.

Even the retail blogs were saying FFXIII killed Graces upfront, I'm not sure you think it'd not be the case (especially when you bring up Abyss launching against FFXII as a reasons for it's low-ish US sales)? And Graces F isn't releasing against a bigger RPG than FFXIII, that was the problem, it was directly competitive.  FFXIII wasn't even the biggest game in that peroid, NSMBWii was, but NSMBWii wasn't what ate Graces lunch.

Tales had one "hit" in the west, but Symphonia DOTW and Vesperia both still did decently as well.  My problem is that Namco utterly failed to follow up their one breakout hit (Symphonia on GC) by giving that new fanbase, well, anything.  Not that they mishandled GameCube alone, I think Namco made tons of mistakes with Abyss PS2; launching against FFXII chief among them, and having a "shitty" Tales like Legendia proceed it probably didn't help.  Looking back, I think PS2 would've been better off getting the expanded Symphonia port instead and skipping Legendia entirely, then following that with a multiplatform (GC/PS2) Abyss, which could've then been quick ported to Wii in 2007 (RE4 style).  If that had happened, I think both Symphonia and Abyss would've been monumental success stories, and the Tales franchise as a whole would be in a much, much better position today (and we'd have probably gotten Vesperia PS3 and Graces Wii/PS3 too).

For Graces in Japan, I think Namco really should've just delayed the game to January, both to be able to deliver a playable product and to get out of FFXIII's shadow.  The game would've undoubtedly sold better.