Resistance 3: Disappointing Sales Cast Series into Doubt

[mjk45]

rf40928 said:

mjk45 said:

rf40928 said:

osamanobama said:
I dont know where they got 270k from (i guess first week), but it has sold 370k, and that just in 2 weeks, so I dont know what they mean its been out a while. After 3 weeks it should have around 450k, and will likely have around 1.5 million by years end.
So this article is rather stupid

370k is not good at all for 2 weeks of sales .. and its even bad for a few days of a major title..   Gears of War 3 just sold 3 million copies in 6 days..and it cost alot less to develop Gears 3 ..then .. Resistance 3 mainly because of the data size of the game..and it cost less to ship on DVD then BD .. ( For a major title, Gears of War has had one of the lowest production cost of a major game series. Gears 1 cost 10 million.. Gear 2 cost 12 million, Gear 3 maybe cost 15 & so far Gears 3 has grossed 177 million with the 3 million copies sold so far )..  The majority of any games sales are in the first weeks, and after that is pretty much casual sales.  Alot of fans seem to do this and say "Yeah that will sell a few million more over the next couple years " , but what I've noticed on the PS3 is that mostly is not true.  It was true on the PS2, because the PS2 had double the console userbase of the PS3... Comparing over 120 million PS2's sold to 50 million PS3's is a huge difference - when you consider the casual and holiday sales of either compared.  Alot of stuidos are going multiplatform and others that aren't dont take the financial risk of making 'big' games. ( 'Big' games: meaning games that use alot of space & cost more because they have more content, more data, which required more man hours to develop) Even if you see MS go bluray next gen you wont see alot of studios making 'big' games still.. it'll be a slow process because of the huge cost of producing big titles that take alot more man hours& money to develop.  Looking at 'big'  games-  like Killzone 2 which cost 45 million.. you're talking they need to sell  3 Million just to make a profit worth it.  Dont forget you have to absorb the cost of the BD disc the games are shipped on, the packaging and logistical cost, and advertising cost on all media .. there's more cost still - you're  of course paying the studio back what it cost to make the game, plus what is left is profit.. and they still have to pay rent, employee insurance and other fees most never know exist.. or think of .. like paying share holders and executives.. if the "Important" people arent being paid they could care less if the game did 'break even'..

Data size isn't everything all it means is less compression yet you use it to imply that resistance 3 must cost more to make than Gears 3 because of disk storage BTW give us a link for your gears costings.

Ok heres some links .. I said Gears 1 was 10 million to develop, and Gears 2 was 12 million ..

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/96188/cheap-epic-says-gears-of-war-cost-less-than-10-million/ ( Gears 1 )

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/27008924 ( Gear 2  )  and http://neogaf.net/forum/showthread.php?t=371971

And Gears 3 was on a Gears 3 video, I'll try to find a link, but the evidence thus far is pretty clear- which is : Gears has been very CHEAP to produce.. AND factually speaking most successes like this had much higher cost... I know more effort was put into Resistance 3 as hopes this would break the game open and this always equates to more money - not just more data.. afterall people do get paid to make games - they arent made by illegal aliens that are smart enough make games - and somehow dumb enough to accept paid low wages huh?  Didnt think so..

And yes.. you're right...  more data doesnt always mean more cost..but usually it does.. The most recent GTA had a huge budget - but part of that reason is it was multiple platform game .. In multi-plat titles the risk is relatively low compared to exclusives which might not make the money back.. The sales history of Resistance 1 and 2  has been less then Gears 1 & 2..... If Resistance 3 sells less then R2 did ( and its looking that way - As R2 also sold less then R1 ).. you'll probably see no R4 

and the costing in both those links have very narrow definition's you just have to look at the credits of gears 1-3 to see the hidden expense

the coders and artist's are but a small segment and epic have made no secret of MS's help off setting the cost of the games and I also noted that the

article mentioned that 20 mill was pretty much tops for the majority of games and where is your evidence that  more effort was put into R3 "to break the game open", by saying that I assume more effort = more money spent and by your reasoning so far, enough to make it a AAA budget .

My answer to that would be to look at resistances history it basically came to life because Sony wanted a fps for the PS3 launch so they contracted Insomniac to make them one, at first it had a fantasy type setting that moved to a space marine style which was seen as to similar to halo and canned,  it finally became the Alt history game we see today , despite the disadvantage of opening on a small hardware base  fall of man had the advantage of having the genre to it self and that was followed up with heavy bundling, so allowing for the now much larger base offset by a more crowded genre and less bundling the 3.7 mill is probably similar to or a bit under  resistance 2's  sales, so in effect we are most probably seeing a series with real sales of about 2 mill per game turned out on a 2 year cycle ,so all in all we have a series that was made to fill a niche that has sold  enough and is cheap enough to be made in 2 year cycles, so no resistance 3 would not have a lot of extra resources put into it by Sony to help turn it into a block buster game, Talking about sales people have to realise that the 5 plus million seller games are not the norm and in fact resistance is a better than average selling fps but was never going to be anything else .