The PS4 might be killing its first dev soon.

[artur-fernand]

Kresnik said:

artur-fernand said:

Also, seeing Disgaea 5 needing just 150k copies to be profitable kinda raises the question if rpg's are really that screwed up in today's markets. They don't need big budgets, I think it's more a thing of managing your resources correctly (something that japanese developers have been TERRIBLE at in the last few years, but oh well, there's always hope).

Do you reckon?

I mean, the bigger the Japanese dev, the more problems there seems to be (see: Capcom & Square Enix).  But the smaller ones seem to be doing absolutely fine on their own.

Given that this was a joke, it seems that the 150k for Disgaea isn't that much of a problem as we'd thought.  The Hyperdimension Neptunia games sell 40k or so in Japan and a bit more overseas and are clearly Compile Heart's biggest money maker.  Gust are porting Atelier games to sell ~ 30k copies plus some digital and profiting from it.

I actually think Japanese devs are managing their budgets better than anyone.  I can't think of any comparable western dev who can turn profits on such small sales and put out a physical release.

When I mean "Japanese developers", I mean the big ones really. Because those are the ones I care about the most.

Konami in particular seems completely fucked up. Do they even do anything other than MGS, PES and Lords of Shadow these days? All of them are COMPLETELY out of touch with audiences (see Square's master trolling at PSX, and Tomb Raider and RE6 "not meeting expectations"). Like I said, rpg's don't need big budgets, and you don't need a huge polygon count to make pretty games, but it seems nobody realizes that. Sega probably released Valkyria Chronicles expecting a blockbuster, but the thing sold what, 2 million copies? Which is pretty damn good. But nope, dead franchise.

There's some hope here and there of better days, like Square considering Bravely Default a success. But we'll see.