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Forums - Sales Discussion - Monster Hunter 4 outsold the Vita!

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People who believe that hardware sells software be...

Banished. 43 21.50%
 
Hanged by the penis until dead. 70 35.00%
 
Drawn. 8 4.00%
 
Quartered. 3 1.50%
 
Drawn AND quartered. 13 6.50%
 
Loved to death. 14 7.00%
 
Worshipped, because they're right! 49 24.50%
 
Total:200
Kasz216 on 21 September 2013
badgenome said:
Kasz216 said:
*snip*

Well, shit. I had a masterpiece of a reply all typed up which remorselessly eviscerated your every utterance with a deftness that was terrifying to behold. It is no exaggeration to say that you would have handed me your sword and administered a swift self-permban. Alas, but luckily for you when I pressed submit the AT&T man ate it, having shown up earlier than expected and cut my phone line already. In the face of this setback my interest in this topic wanes, doubly so with my newly acquired ability to download big titties at the speed of light.

Suffice to say I remain unconvinced that the loss of key software can't have a cascade effect far beyond the sales of that one franchise. It's difficult to imagine the 360 ever recovering in the eyes of consumers and publishers if Bungie had split from Microsoft prior to launch and took the Halo IP with them to make it PS3 exclusive. What happened to the Vita was just that drastic, and was exacerbated by coming at a time when publishers were already becoming increasingly skeptical of the traditional handheld. Even the rather successful 3DS has seen much lower third party investment than the DS received. The damage to the more precariously positioned Vita, while impossible to calculate, has been grave, and I don't believe that its present numbers or ability to host a franchise like Monster Hunter can be analyzed in a vacuum given the sequence of events that led up to it.

But I think I understand to my own satisfaction the opposing point of view now.

You think Monster Hunter is analagous to Halo?  I think that right there shows the main source of disagreement.

Monster Hunter is nowhere near that kind of franchise.

 

If I had to compare Monster Hunter to an Xbox 360 game, i'd go with something like Assassains Creed or something else with similar sales numbers.

 

I'd point you to consider PSP's region splits in sales, vs PS Vita's region split in sales.   It's not really any different despite the fact that it lost the big only matters in Japan, Monster Hunter Franchise.

 

If Monster Hunter was that important to vita sales, you would expect Japanese sales to tank compaired to the US and Europe.   Since it doesn't... and the drop is pretty standard all around there has to be a different reason.  The fact that it doesn't disporves your entire theory.



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badgenome on 21 September 2013
Kasz216 said:

You think Monster Hunter is analagous to Halo?  I think that right there shows the main source of disagreement.

Monster Hunter is nowhere near that kind of franchise.

 

If I had to compare Monster Hunter to an Xbox 360 game, i'd go with something like Assassains Creed or something else with similar sales numbers.

 

I'd point you to consider PSP's region splits in sales, vs PS Vita's region split in sales.   It's not really any different despite the fact that it lost the big only matters in Japan, Monster Hunter Franchise.

 

If Monster Hunter was that important to vita sales, you would expect Japanese sales to tank compaired to the US and Europe.   Since it doesn't... and the drop is pretty standard all around there has to be a different reason.  The fact that it doesn't disporves your entire theory.

I do think it's a lot like a Japanese Halo, yeah. Xbox was basically an American phenomenon, and as a result so was Halo. After the rest of the world decided that it either wasn't a console in your pocket or that the idea just wasn't all it's cracked up to be, the PSP became largely a Japanese one. With the Japanese market being much smaller than the American one sales still seem comparable enough, and both were exclusive games that defined their platforms. Losing Assassin's Creed would be a blow, sure, but it wouldn't really make anyone question why the Xbox even exists. When it was first announced for the 360 it was just a tech demo with a working title. It was also pretty much a tech demo when it was released, but I digress.

That the Vita still performs better in Japan than elsewhere is, I think, a testament to just how poorly it's doing elsewhere as well as a reflection of regional preferences for home consoles vs. handhelds. Japan still likes portables. The 3DS is on fire in Japan while the west is kind of ho hum about even that. The Vita still has some place in the Japanese market as a device that receives a lot of smallish titles that aren't going to sell more than 100k-200k no matter what platform they're released on. In the west it averages maybe one retail release every couple of months.