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JRPGfan on 19 May 2016
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Aquamarine said:

Piggybacking on a conversation that you were having on GAF, RexNovis:

Star Fox Zero had a core development team (excluding localization costs and voice acting) of 139 people. Assuming they worked for an average of two years on the project per person and made an average salary of $70,000 each, that's $20 million in development costs. Add in $10 million for localization, voice acting, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, overhead, etc. That's $30 million in total to make Star Fox Zero.

Conservatively, Nintendo would break-even at Star Fox: Zero around 1 million units if the project has an average return of $30 per copy when you take into account retailer margins and other COG expenses. This echoes what Reggie Fils-Aime said back in 2009.


Star Fox Zero sold 100K in the USA at launch. Let's assume a generous digital share----150K in the USA when you include digital.

Now double that for Europe + Other and add 30K from Japan----and you get 330K sell-through worldwide for Star Fox Zero's first month.

I guarantee you that 330K is not enough to turn a profit...I imagine Nintendo shipped 500K of inventory...the unsold portion will just stagnate over time because historically the Star Fox series hasn't had the best legs.

So yeah...this is probably the end of Star Fox. 100K is a harbinger for the demise of the series. Nintendo isn't going to make another iteration of Star Fox if they lose money on this project.

Its not really because of demand though.... if this game flops, its mainly because of design choices made early in the production of the game cycle.

The cockpit view, needing double rendering, so you can use the game pad for aiming, and the choice to aim for 60fps on both.

That choice ment that the Wii U wouldnt be able to have up to expectation level of graphics.

Then theres the fact that most people hate looking up and down, between the TV and the Gamepad.

Its okay for minor stuff you do every once in a while, but a game that needs you to do it constantly? most people dont enjoy that.

 

Basically them shoehorning the gameplay, to fit with the gamepad display, is what killed the franchise.

If they had locked FPS to 30 (old starfox games ran at like 24 fps), and not done double rendering of everything, they would have had like 4 times as many resources to play around with and been able to make a much better looking game.

They wouldnt have people ignoring the game, because they dont like montion controlls.

It would have reviewed better, and sold better imo.