| Doobie_wop said: Just Dance 2 probably cost more to make than Bayonetta, it was advertised more than Assassins Creed: Brotherhood and it's sold more than both of them, but I bet no one in here would consider it a AAA game. Just because a game doesn't fit your personal perception of what a AAA game is (which seems to be games the poster themselves like), it doesn't make it one or doesn't not make it one. Red Steel 2 was a true AAA Third Party bomb. It was advertised very well, especially in Australia which is a country that rarely sees game ads outside of COD and Nintendo products, it was developed by the massive team that is Ubisoft Paris, who are also well known for developing the Tom Clancy games, the Rayman games and Just Dance and it was very well reviewed. I've seen it playing and I can honestly say that it's an extremely polished game, it's visuals are among the best on the system and it had around 2.5 years on development. Just because it is short, it doesn't make it any less of a quality product. Alan Wake is like seven hours long and it's sold much better with much less advertising. |
Just Dance 2 certainly got very well advertised, no doubt because the original became something of a breakout success (the scale of which I highly doubt Ubisoft were expecting - they certainly didn't advertise Just Dance 1 in the beginning in the way they did the sequel). But I don't think you are right to suggest that its development was as costly or as craftsmanly as the other games you mentioned - the fact that they were able to churn it out within a year of the original (with the sequel probably only commissioned once it became clear the original was going to be a big success, which would have taken a while given the slow early sales) is evidence of that.
Australia is a small market. Here in the UK - a much bigger market - I saw no TV ads for Red Steel 2 (and I watch enough TV to catch ads for genuine AAA titles - over the years I've seen plenty of ads for CoD, GTA, AC etc.). Ubisoft cut there expected sales of the game before release to 0.5m. If that was all they were expecting, they wouldn't have spent a AAA budget on marketing. Red Steel 2, while being a relatively well made game and pretty well received, was not marketed as a AAA title.
