So it would appear Bayonetta 2 has flopped. We need to talk about it.

[Torillian]

badgenome said:

Torillian said:
Whenever a game doesn't do what some hoped it seems to always come back to install base and the relative percentages of userbase that bought the game. I'd be really curious to see anyone able to analyze exactly what effect increased userbase has on the sales of any given title. What I've seen certainly indicates that it isn't a linear thing and that you stop getting any benefit from a higher install base after a certain point. That said it's difficult to find fair comparisons for such a study so I used yearly releases of Madden on 360 compared to userbase and found that after the userbase reached 5 million in the US Madden got no further benefits and flattened out in sales. Someday maybe I'll try it for a few more annual series and see if that's consistent.

It's interesting question, for sure, but seems an incredibly difficult thing to quantify. Maybe even impossible. All things being equal, of course it's only to the good to have a larger possible audience, but all things are pretty much never equal.

One thing that seems pretty clear is that the more niche the game, the less the install base seems to matter. Shmups all seem to sell about the same (dismal) numbers whether they've been on the SNES or Genesis, Saturn or PS1, Dreamcast or PS2, 360 or PS3. So I'd say it's a misconception to think of the install base as an audience instead of a multitude of smaller, sometimes overlapping audiences. The most important thing is not to aim for the largest install base period but to meet your target audience where they live.

You're right it's a tough one, I just compared FIFA sales in EUrope to the install base on PS3 at the time (in europe as well) and it's basically a linear relationship from 2007 until 2012 which is not what i was expecting based on the same thing I did with madden in NA where things were quite obviously asymptotic.  I figured all the yearly released games would follow similar to Madden.  I'll have to think about this a bit someday and see if I could come up with some way to do this for a large number of games at once, perhaps based on genre.  Would be a pain in the ass but it might be interesting.  

Agree with the second paragraph, you really need to just find your audience and maintain it wherever that happens to be.  A terrifying prospect for a new dev with a new IP I'm sure.