When will Bayonetta 2 hit a million? Weighing the risk vs the reward.

[mjk45]

RolStoppable said:

S.T.A.G.E. said:

(...)

If two million in sales isn't enough for Sega...then how is 450k good enough for Nintendo when Bayonetta 2 obviously had a much larger budget?

First off, you need to consider how those two million came to be:

1. The game quickly landed in the bargain bin, attaining most of its sales at a low to very low price.
2. Unless Sega has provided shipment numbers at some point, we can't really be sure if VGC's numbers are even remotely correct. Games that do not chart on trackers like NPD and GfK led historically to a high margin of error for VGC's tracking.

Leaving that aside though, it's pretty clear that Bayonetta 2 is a flop. For the sake of argument and using simple numbers, let's say Nintendo loses $10m on Bayonetta 2. That's a small one-time loss for a company as big as Nintendo and as such it doesn't carry any weight for Nintendo as a whole; the only consequence is that Nintendo won't fund another Platinum Games title in the future.

In Sega's case the reason they shied away from making a sequel is not because they didn't make a profit , but more to do with with  answers to questions like  is it capable of becoming a franchise , would we be better placed spending the money elsewhere , of the total sales what percentage was sold at full retail and how does this compare with other games that had good  onward growth , what kind of sales does this genre generate and is it in decline or on the upswing , these types of questions and the Ip not being owned come into play.

In todays climate it's all about building mega franchises and even if you have a nice profitable game that sells a million or two , questions will be asked about why it didn't sell more and why isn't it capable of being like AC , COD ,  GTA etc , it happened with tombraider where they projected 5million plus sales on a franchise that historically sold half that , and it was seen has some kind of failure not on the profit's it made but on the projected profits it didn't.