badgenome said:
1. Neither a retail game? I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean not only a retail game, as in it's also downloadable? 2. Haha, no. Fair enough about the Resistance bundles, but that was just one example off the top of my head. There's often one or two per console that become early life touchstones and even evergreens. Mario 64 and Halo (which was only bundled briefly long after it was a big hit) and RIIIIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRRRRRR and Rayman and Tekken Tag Tournament... being a launch title is as much an opportunity as a liability. Most launch window flops would have flopped any other time, too, while on the flip side there are plenty of games that had surprisingly good sales as launch titles but their sequels wilted when released against stiffer competition (like my beloved Kessen). It's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy to say, "We'll just throw this piece of shit at this new console because it won't sell anyway." Which it doesn't because it's a piece of shit. I suspect there's a little more to it than that, though. A lot of teams are still coming to grips with the new hardware at that point, so it makes more sense to make a quickie game that is as much a learning experience as it is a commercial endeavor rather than to try and bang out a new classic on unfamiliar hardware on a tight deadline. 3. Well, that's a chicken and egg problem. No, they're not wrong to want a user base to be there before releasing games. But if they don't release games. there will never be a user base. That's not their responsibility, of course. It's the responsibility of the first party. Only the first party has a bird's eye view of what the software situation is looking like, so only they can detect gaps in the line-up and fill them so as to create the kind of critical mass of software that makes for a compelling product. For most titles I'd agree that you want to target as large a user base as possible. It doesn't always make a difference, as in the recent case of Rayman Legends where Ubi could hardly have done worse releasing on just the Wii U way back when. But it's a good rule of thumb, sure. However, at any given time there are a very few mega powered franchises which can command the rapt attention of their audiences, and for them I don't really think it matters a great deal. I think Monster Hunter is one of those franchises right now, and it's far from obvious to me that it wouldn't have worked out had it been on the Vita. Capcom made a smart move regardless. Whatever incentives Nintendo did or didn't offer, at the very least they weren't showing them the back of their hand like SCEA did. The ugly mutation that is the Circle Pad Pro is a testament to Nintendo's willingness to be a partner to them, and I'm sure they're not crying over 2 million in sales this week, either. |
1) Meant to say launch.
2) Tekken Tag tournament launched to about 250K. It ended up at about 500K In Japan.
Ride Racer... Not sure which one your talking about here. If you mean Either way, the ones i've looked at all seem to follow the same 2/2.5 trend.
Mario 64 and Halo are good points... but also mega franchises with near universal appeal, something you've admitted MH is not.
So ok, every case except for the biggest franchises (which still lose sales) and then, i don't know, maybe there's a case of games that sell very low numbers early on legging out to like half a million 3/4ths of a million?
Still supports my point.
3) Again, there is no such thing as a franchise that big that has s 100% cult following. Hell, even in the US where you'd expect there to be nothing BUT cult audience there are a lot of casual users, like Khan and Amp.
I mean, lets go over two arguements you've made here and show how they conflict.
A) Monster Hunter is a powerful franchise that focuses the attention of all it's fans on in.
B) Monster Hunter will leg to mega sales on the vita, because not everyone wants to pay full price for the game.
Say what? Clearly the game doesn't have 100% of it's buyers entranced if over half of them buy the game long after release, long after it's cheap.
These people who buy Monster Hunter when it's cheap. They're supposed to have bought the system because of Monster Hunter? Why are these people on Vita then? (They mostly won't be.)
That's actually where a huge console base helps the best.
Of the 5 million or so MH fans out there, at best you could probably say 1.5 million fit the descirption of a hardcore fan that would follow the game onto a TI-85 calculator.
Oh, and as for Rayman, outside the fact that they did it in the douchiest right before release way possible... it's not like the Wii U hardware situation has exactly improved much.
You are right that the Vita doesn't really have the exclusive software to bring people in... and that's why Monster Hunter wouldn't of did well there, and why Hardware sells Software in the same way Software sells hardware.
Monster Hunter wouldn't of sold well (compaired to other monster hunters) because IT would of needed to have been that sacrifice. (Plus it's not really enough to be that kind of game.)
