| Kresnik said: I'm going to divide your post up into sections if that's okay since we're both saying so much :P |
Okey dokey. ^_^
| Kresnik said: The point about saying "so far" is that anything beyond that is specuation. |
I understand, but as I mentioned before, I believe founded speculation has validity here. For example, in Dragon Quest XI's case, we know it's coming sooner or later, and we know it usually comes to the best selling platform in Japan. In addition, we have the fact that IX was the best selling game in the franchise on DS, the fact that the Monsters 2 remake will be the 4th Dragon Quest game released on 3DS, and it's pretty much confirmed by now that XI won't come to smartphones nor be an MMORPG. While far from being a fact, all signs point to XI being on 3DS. This is quite different from your Vita examples, as there have been little to no signs of those franchises appearing in an specific and meaningful way on Vita. And in the case of Pokémon, the speculation revolves around a 1st party IP, which makes a ton of difference here. Not to mention the fact that we have been getting a main Pokémon game practically on a yearly basis since 2006 (Diamond/Pearl release in Japan), whether it was a new one, remake, or sequel (Black and White 2's case).
| Kresnik said: Yeah, you seem to have missed my point here. I wasn't suggesting that Tales & Persona are relevant to increasing PS3 sales. I said that PS3 will "last another year" thanks to them. As in, won't be taken off shelves. Won't be discontinued. Not that they're going to be magical hardware pushers in the system's 8th year on the market. |
Oh, I got that. The thing is, whether we talk about increasing hardware sales or keeping it relevant, we're talking about the impact said software has on hardware. Either way, it has to be "meaningful", so to speak.
In the case of those 3DS games I mentioned, not only they're more popular franchises, but they're also either appearing in the platform for the first time (Kirby and Yoshi's case), or as a new game or sub-series (Mario Party and Zelda's case). On the other hand, unless the new Tales is a "game-changer" of some sort, it will only appeal to the Tales fanbase, which is already on the platform anyway. Persona's case is different of course, but it's also less popular than Tales, at least looking at all previous games so far.
In any case, I only mentioned that to reinforce my argument that those 3DS games are more relevant to the market/platform than what I see you or others giving credit for. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. And then, there's of course the fact that there's nothing stopping 3DS from getting sequels in its twilight years, just like PS3 is now. For example, like how Square-Enix is now talking about the possibility of several "Bravely" games, with Bravely Second already confirmed.
| Kresnik said: Yeah, see, this is the part I don't get. I do understand that if you get out software with legs early on they prop up other software that comes later. But that doesn't seem to have happened this year. 2013 has been riding off the incredible success of Animal Crossing and has Mario Kart; 3D Land; NSMB doing the whole "legs" thing and then added Tomodachi; Monster Hunter & Pokemon to its collection, yet hardware is down for the year. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the purpose of what a pillar is supposed to do, but I thought hardware sales would be sustained for the year and then Pokemon & Monster Hunter would push it to a traditional third-year-high, especially since both of those IP's are 5m+ sellers in Japan. Certainly, my whole confusion this time is that I thought 2013 would be a "peak" year for the 3DS given previous Nintendo hardware trajectory, but I dunno. Perhaps that was an unreasonable expectation. |
There's many variables involved when it comes to hardware sales beyond those popular games (or software in general), so it's hard to identify the impact these had and the reasons 3DS is not up YoY (which is not by that much anyway...). I think the important thing to keep in mind here is that 3DS had an irregular trajectory from the very beginning, with a slower than expected start which ended up on a drastic price cut, without a DSLite equivalent, with a distinctive feature that didn't have the expected impact (3D), etc. And then, there's the impact of the mobile/smartphone market, which even though I personally believe it gets exaggerated sometimes, it clearly exists. Not that it didn't have things in its favor of course (Monster Hunter being a prominent example here), just that it's an irregular trajectory in a shifting market.
Furthermore, what I stated before regarding "pillars" is of course, how things should, ideally, work. It's a general strategy, which can then be proven successful or not by the market in more than one way. For the record, It's far from me to pretend I have all the answers here... What I state is a combination of what I know and how I see things, so basically, an opinion. If not even Nintendo or Sony are capable of predicting the market, what chance do we have ? >.< So, I'm open to other interpretations and arguments outside my own, even if I can't agree with them right now.
| Kresnik said: No idea to be honest. Must admit I've never heard of Rhythm Heaven and I didn't know another one was coming to 3DS, so perhaps that will be a strong hardware mover indeed. Mario Party I was basing off the neutered reception in the USA (down about 70% FW despite releasing at exactly the same time of year as Mario Party DS) to suggest that maybe this is a case of Nintendogs sales dropoff rather than Animal Crossing sales momentum, but who knows. I'm sure it'll sell well. |
There's no Rhythm Heaven confirmed for 3DS yet, that's speculation on my part. Maybe I should've made that clearer before... Still, it's a 1st party IP, which appeared on both DS and Wii (originally on GBA), and has been always a success in Japan. I believe a new one on 3DS is only a matter of time, and I don't see it not being successful. But sure, still speculation.
Regarding Mario Party, it's not surprising to see it selling less than the DS version for a variety of reasons, but the situation is very different from Nintendogs. It's more of a "traditional" series compared to it, which makes it more stable sales-wise. While it is highly unlikely that it will ever get close to the sales of the DS version in Japan, it's also highly unlikely to sell less than 9 on Wii, which sold over 700k. I'm expecting it to get to 1m or close at least, which is why I mentioned it before.
