| Jay520 said: I wanted to mainly stick to the PS3 though. You know, so we could discuss the PS3 userbase. But anyway, by appeal, I meant traits that determines a game's potential for success. It's hard to explain. For example, a shooter with fluid console is appealing, but a puzzle RTS game is a lot less appealing. No matter how good the RTS game is, there is a limit on the sales it could obtain due to it's small demographic. Eh, it's something like that. You get what I'm saying? |
Yeah, I do get what you're saying. I don't know if it's true though. Did you notice through the past 20 years, certain genres came and left? JRPGs, where are they today? Back when FFVII came out, it sold nearly 10Million copies! FFXIII is at 6.5Mil. And then you have FPS' which sold well back in the day, but today are monsters!
RTS' can be wildly successful, as Starcraft and Warcraft will show, but of course Pikmin is a puzzle-RTS, so is it really impossible to sell well? I'd argue not tbh. Some puzzle games sold incredibly well despite their at first glance bland appearance. Games like Tetris, Doctor Mario, Bust-a-Move, Pokemon PL, Columns, and then you have games with puzzle elements like Zelda, Myst, and so on, and you get the idea that puzzles might not be as unprone to success as we might think. Put RTS with puzzle, throw in some Online mayhem, and who knows where the title can go. But to get back to Pikmin as is, the reason it probably didn't sell were more social reasons than intrinsic reasons. Maybe your point is valid, but all in all I think the social side (marketing, word of mouth) takes precedence. But, I have no proof. ;)
Reason why I think these examples (GC, DC) are valid is because the AAA/Appealing game to low sales phenomenon goes beyond platform of release, it mostly has to do with exposure in general. But I do get what you're saying.
