By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Sales Discussion - Is Epic Mickey a lesson to third parties?

psrock on 17 January 2011
MaxwellGT2000 said:
jarrod said:

psrock said:

 The problem ( not really a problem), there is a better formula to sell more on the Wii without spending so much. 

 

I'd say other formulas are actually riskier though, given their rate of success are invaraibly lower.  Particularly for traditional "gaming" brands/genres, the low-buget, low-promotion, often outsourced, spinoff or experimental new IP route pretty clearly hasn't reaped much reward for most.  The other option seems to be "lowest common denominator" casualware, which is incredibly hit or miss.

For high budget, high talent, high brand "core" games, there's a 100% success track record on Wii.  Too bad it's such a rarity, lots of missed opportunities this generation...


Hell even non promoted titles of the "core" nature with enough quality and polish can do well just by word of mouth alone... Look at Okami Wii outselling the PS2 version which is pretty rare for a rerelease...

So what, but why as developer am I going to spend so much when I can spend way less and still bring in money and sometimes more. No one doubts the Wii can sell, but it really doesn't need high budget titles though. 

A smart developer will make multiple low budget titles on the Wii which will bring tons of revenue and release one or two big budget on the HD systems. That's the way it is. 



 Next Gen 

11/20/09 04:25 makingmusic476 Warning Other (Your avatar is borderline NSFW. Please keep it for as long as possible.)
Around the Network
jarrod on 17 January 2011
psrock said:
jarrod said:

psrock said:

 The problem ( not really a problem), there is a better formula to sell more on the Wii without spending so much. 

 

I'd say other formulas are actually riskier though, given their rate of success are invaraibly lower.  Particularly for traditional "gaming" brands/genres, the low-buget, low-promotion, often outsourced, spinoff or experimental new IP route pretty clearly hasn't reaped much reward for most.  The other option seems to be "lowest common denominator" casualware, which is incredibly hit or miss.

For high budget, high talent, high brand "core" games, there's a 100% success track record on Wii.  Too bad it's such a rarity, lots of missed opportunities this generation...


Now which high brand games would you compare Epic Mickey to on the HD consoles?

Over their lifecycles?  Depending on the market, stuff like Gundam, Final Fantasy, GTA, COD, Splinter Cell, Virtua Fighter, Resident Evil, Metal Gear, Madden, etc, etc.  There's been literally tons of high budget, high promotion, high talent, mainline IP "core" efforts on the HD systems.  Lots of hits and lots of misses too.

For brands hitting all those bullet points, on the upper end it's really only been Monster Hunter and Mickey so far on Wii.  The only company really consistently delivering AAA efforts on Wii has been Nintendo, and coincidentally they're also the only company really reaping consistently AAA sales on the platform (and arguably on any home console this generation), though in fairness their track record itself isn't entirely spotless (Other M sort of stands out there).



Metallicube on 17 January 2011
Lostplanet22 said:

AAA. game...Quality...And it has an 72 on metacritic... They just made a Disney game for the audience who wants it.   They just could made a Mickey Party game and it would also pass 1-2 million sales;.

The top ten Third Party games (sales wise) on Wii are not known for their quality..  I doubt it is sending the right message to the devs...but who am I..

And what is quality? Clearly games like Just Dance, Carnival Games, and Guitar Hero are quality to many many people; millions in fact. Or are all those people wrong?

What we might view as quality isn't necessarilly viewed as such by much of the mainstream.

I've yet to see an example of a true quality Wii third party game that deserved success and didn't get it (by success I'm refering to at least platinum). You could argue games like LKS, Red Steel 2, and Mad World, but clearly those games weren't designed to sell to the masses, as they are very niche, have limited appeal, complex control schemes, and in many cases, quite short and not worth the $50 price tag.



psrock on 17 January 2011
jarrod said:
psrock said:
jarrod said:

psrock said:

 The problem ( not really a problem), there is a better formula to sell more on the Wii without spending so much. 

 

I'd say other formulas are actually riskier though, given their rate of success are invaraibly lower.  Particularly for traditional "gaming" brands/genres, the low-buget, low-promotion, often outsourced, spinoff or experimental new IP route pretty clearly hasn't reaped much reward for most.  The other option seems to be "lowest common denominator" casualware, which is incredibly hit or miss.

For high budget, high talent, high brand "core" games, there's a 100% success track record on Wii.  Too bad it's such a rarity, lots of missed opportunities this generation...


Now which high brand games would you compare Epic Mickey to on the HD consoles?

Over their lifecycles?  Depending on the market, stuff like Gundam, Final Fantasy, GTA, COD, Splinter Cell, Virtua Fighter, Resident Evil, Metal Gear, Madden, etc, etc.  There's been literally tons of high budget, high promotion, high talent, mainline IP "core" efforts on the HD systems.  Lots of hits and lots of misses too.

For brands hitting all those bullet points, on the upper end it's really only been Monster Hunter and Mickey so far on Wii.  The only company really consistently delivering AAA efforts on Wii has been Nintendo, and coincidentally they're also the only company really reaping consistently AAA sales on the platform (and arguably on any home console this generation), though in fairness their track record itself isn't entirely spotless (Other M sort of stands out there).

Just dance will outsell all these games except for COD which is on the Wii. 



 Next Gen 

11/20/09 04:25 makingmusic476 Warning Other (Your avatar is borderline NSFW. Please keep it for as long as possible.)
jarrod on 17 January 2011
psrock said:

So what, but why as developer am I going to spend so much when I can spend way less and still bring in money and sometimes more. No one doubts the Wii can sell, but it really doesn't need high budget titles though. 

A smart developer will make multiple low budget titles on the Wii which will bring tons of revenue and release one or two big budget on the HD systems. That's the way it is. 

I think the problem there is, we see most large publishers at this stage not even doing that. More, they're producing one or two low budget Wii titles (if they're doing Wii games at all anymore), and multiple blockbuster scale titles on the HD twins.  The amount of money being funneled at 360/PS3 versus the amount of profit gleaned from them (and versus the underutilized potential for profit on Wii) seems entirely out of whack.

But honestly, that's the way it's been the entire generation, so I don't think anyone really expects that to change now, and certainly not from Epic Mickey (who's surprising success is already being recast as an inevitable brand thing anyway). Companies allocated resources and pipelines before the current machines were even on shelves, and when they could have (and probably should have) changed that years ago they instead bet against continued Wii success for the most part.  It didn't exactly work out, so hopefully going forward into next generation 3rd parties can plan ahead to be a bit more nimble and actually follow the markeplace, wherever that leads them...



Around the Network
jarrod on 17 January 2011
psrock said:

Just dance will outsell all these games except for COD which is on the Wii. 

Okay.  So how well will all the other Wii dance games sell?



psrock on 17 January 2011
jarrod said:
psrock said:

So what, but why as developer am I going to spend so much when I can spend way less and still bring in money and sometimes more. No one doubts the Wii can sell, but it really doesn't need high budget titles though. 

A smart developer will make multiple low budget titles on the Wii which will bring tons of revenue and release one or two big budget on the HD systems. That's the way it is. 

I think the problem there is, we see most large publishers at this stage not even doing that. More, they're producing one or two low budget Wii titles (if they're doing Wii games at all anymore), and multiple blockbuster scale titles on the HD twins.  The amount of money being funneled at 360/PS3 versus the amount of profit gleaned from them (and versus the underutilized potential for profit on Wii) seems entirely out of whack.

But honestly, that's the way it's been the entire generation, so I don't think anyone really expects that to change now, and certainly not from Epic Mickey (who's surprising success is already being recast as an inevitable brand thing anyway). Companies allocated resources and pipelines before the current machines were even on shelves, and when they could have (and probably should have) changed that years ago they instead bet against continued Wii success for the most part.  It didn't exactly work out, so hopefully going forward into next generation 3rd parties can plan ahead to be a bit more nimble and actually follow the markeplace, wherever that leads them...

The thing is that's the way it's been. Epic Mickey is only a surprising success because at 72 in meta, usually these games don't sell 1.3 million in Dec and are not called AAA games. 



 Next Gen 

11/20/09 04:25 makingmusic476 Warning Other (Your avatar is borderline NSFW. Please keep it for as long as possible.)
psrock on 17 January 2011
jarrod said:
psrock said:

Just dance will outsell all these games except for COD which is on the Wii. 

Okay.  So how well will all the other Wii dance games sell?


More than Okami, more than COD, more Golden Eye. More than the Conduit 2, More than MH3, more than many games. Look at the Michael Jackson game. 



 Next Gen 

11/20/09 04:25 makingmusic476 Warning Other (Your avatar is borderline NSFW. Please keep it for as long as possible.)
Viper1 on 17 January 2011
jarrod said:
psrock said:

So what, but why as developer am I going to spend so much when I can spend way less and still bring in money and sometimes more. No one doubts the Wii can sell, but it really doesn't need high budget titles though. 

A smart developer will make multiple low budget titles on the Wii which will bring tons of revenue and release one or two big budget on the HD systems. That's the way it is. 

I think the problem there is, we see most large publishers at this stage not even doing that. More, they're producing one or two low budget Wii titles (if they're doing Wii games at all anymore), and multiple blockbuster scale titles on the HD twins.  The amount of money being funneled at 360/PS3 versus the amount of profit gleaned from them (and versus the underutilized potential for profit on Wii) seems entirely out of whack.

But honestly, that's the way it's been the entire generation, so I don't think anyone really expects that to change now, and certainly not from Epic Mickey (who's surprising success is already being recast as an inevitable brand thing anyway). Companies allocated resources and pipelines before the current machines were even on shelves, and when they could have (and probably should have) changed that years ago they instead bet against continued Wii success for the most part.  It didn't exactly work out, so hopefully going forward into next generation 3rd parties can plan ahead to be a bit more nimble and actually follow the markeplace, wherever that leads them...

I think the early line up on the 3DS is proof they've learned their lesson.  If at least just a little bit.



The rEVOLution is not being televised

jarrod on 17 January 2011
psrock said:
jarrod said:
psrock said:

Just dance will outsell all these games except for COD which is on the Wii. 

Okay.  So how well will all the other Wii dance games sell?


More than Okami, more than COD, more Golden Eye. More than the Conduit 2, More than MH3, more than many games. Look at the Michael Jackson game. 

Uh, MH3 is near 2m?  Lots of budgetware also outsold Okami, COD, 007 and anything form High Votalge on PS2... though I think we've already established the argument that non-AAA core productions are a risky Wii venture already (they're honestly pretty risky on any system), so I'm not sure what your point here is? 

The MJ game is another special case, it's really even part of Ubisoft's"Just Dance" family of titles (it also includes Dance on Broadway, Just Dance Kids, etc).  I'm talking about dance games unrelated to "Just Dance".  Stuff like Dancing with the Stars, Kidz Bop, Country Dance, We Cheer, All-Star Cheer Squad, the various DDR titles?  How have they sold on Wii?  Better than MH3?  Better than Epic Mickey?