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Jay520 said:
Star Wars was a bad example though. Not only is it one of the biggest IPs in all of entertainment (much larger than Uncharted, God of War, etc). But it's also in the action adventure genre, which is much more prosperous than the fighting genre. Here's a better example: Take a game like Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe. Do you think just because it added DC universe characters (who are much bigger than Sony's characters), the game would see a large opening as a result? Of course not. Same goes for nearly every movie adaptation as well. Just because they had recognizable characters doesn't mean consumers would pick them up. @ the bolded. Yes! I've said earlier that Sony's characters are not popular. though not to the extreme of "absolutely nothing." Merely having characters isn't going to offset the fact that it's a new IP, especially on a console where fighters haven't been doing incredibly well, and certainly not characters as small as Sony's characters. I honestly believe only various Nintendo characters are big enough for that. You should have expected as much beforehand. But you seem to agree with me that Sony's characters are not big enough to negate the game's disadvantages. So I take it you agree with me? EDIT: For the record, I do think Star Wars would have done similarly without the Star Wars name. It was a well-made action adventure game, which seem to be doing well this generation. Star Wars had a great opening because it was a fun game. I also should say that I do believe certain characters can bypass the disadvantages of being a new IP, but they need to be much bigger than Sony's characters. |
Star Wars Unleashed was a multiplatform game and on the X-Box it sold 360K while the Wii and PS3 sales were about equal to PSASBR on their own. Anyone who bought the 360 version obviously wasn't buying the PS3 version if they had both consoles, and the PS3 was much weaker at the time with a far smaller install base.
If we're just looking at fighting games, the data is too small to really show anything. We don't see many new fighting IPs. The most apt comparison here is obviously Smash Bros, but we don't even have week 1 data for that.
But no, I don't agree that Sony's roster isn't big enough to negate the new IP disadvantage. I didn't expect Smash Bros like numbers, but I would think that, particularly on a Sony console, the combination of Sony's franchise should have been worth alot more, particularly with the pretty decent amount of advertising this game had.
I think that, largely due to its roster, PSASBR received a lot more buzz and attention than most new IPs get. It had tons of visibility. People just didn't really like what they saw or played. I think the sales of PSASBR are due to it being too derivitave and not looking to be all that good based on videos, demos, etc.
And Star Wars the Force Unleashed definitely benefitted from its license. I've honestly never played it, but look at the sales. The leading version of it sold 2.5 million copies. This is more than Devil May Cry 4, Bayonetta, Dante's Inferno, Darksiders, Castlevania Lords of Shadow, any Ninja Gaiden game, Heavenly Sword, and Infamous. It's within spitting distance of games like Batman Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect, and Bioshock for the 360. Was Star Wars the Force Unleashed really THAT good that it should have sold THAT well?
