Heavy Rain sells 4.5 million. (PS3, PS4)

[VideoGameAccountant]

Madword said:

VideoGameAccountant said:

If you like Sony's titles, that's fine. I'm not saying people don't like them. 4.5 million is good numbers, but for a first party developer, it's not great. If Sony is going to fund titles, it should be able to sell units (as an aside, I talk up Nintendo but they have made their fair share of mistakes in this regard too. Lets not forget Bayonetta 2).

I think the bolded part is the issue with Sony. You say they are doing something different not because the game is different but because the story is different. Story in games is generally fluff. Sure, its nice to have a world and what not, but if the game isn't fun to play then none of that matters. This is why Zelda will go on to be a bigger title despite having a lackluster story. But in terms of game play, Zelda kills it, so it will go on to sell a lot more than Horizon will despite Horizon supposedly having a different story.  

If you like these games, more power to you. I know I like a lot of crappy low sale titles. But I think most people care very little for story. Outside of Naughty Dog's games, I don't think this works well for Sony. 

4.5m IS good numbers, thats what you are missing. The aim is to make games that sell more consoles and show your console to have games that the other console look weak. Sony's release schedule looks amazing compared to MS. Now its not the only reason, but look at the sales.

I think its easy to say, well 4.5m isnt a lot, but it depends on how much that game cost to make. If HR made approx 100m, trust me thats a major success for that type of game. Anything over about 30m would have been successful.

First, remember that the actual sales on the PS3 are closer to 3 million. The number in the title includes the PS4 rerelease. 3 million puts it lower than a lot of Nintendo's Wii U games and, again, your talking about a system with an install base of 13 million (as opposed to the PS3 which had far more at the time of this game's release)

The problem was Nintendo and Microsoft weren't shaking in their boots when this game came out. If anything, they were busy laughing at Sony saying "JASON." Heavy Rain didn't make the PS3 look better. It just another example of Sony's poor first party lineups. Sony doesnt create must have games. They just make games. Another example (because I came up with it just recently). When Microsoft released Halo, it established the XBox family as a home for shooters. When Nintendo tackeled the genre, they took Japan (a market that never cared for third/first person shooters) by storm. But when Sony tries it? We get Killzone and Resistance, both series that are mediocre and didn't make Playstation a home for shooters. Heavy Rain, like those games, doesn't help the Playstation brand. It was also released at a time when the joke was "PS3 has no game." And here you have a game that was barely a game. It didn't help Sony.

Sony's first party stuff just doesn't work. The company has to rely on third party support. This is why the PS3 struggled because XBox 360 got ports of a lot of those games. Its also why PS4 could only suceed in an enviornment with no competition (no one steals their third party support). Sony couldn't make it on their own. Heavy Rain is proof of that.