Yes, I agree. For a publisher like EA, the SotD marketing was pretty lame.

Rhode who killed Lily bergamo for This shit ? Ont à big loss

SotD was part of that now-defunct "EA Partners" program, IIRC. EA's "partnership" apparently gave Grasshopper the right to slap an EA logo on the box and hope for the best. Grasshopper would have probably gotten just as much sales having their game published by Wisdom Tree (the still-in-business publisher of all those NES Bible games).

Don't get me wrong, SotD was never going to post Battlefield-like sales, but WB's handling of Lollipop Chainsaw, a game with an even more outlandish concept and poorer Metacritic ratings was successful. They gave it a marketing push appropriate for such a game, not too little and not too much. EA just sent SotD out to die.

That was, apparently, EA's "Partners" program in a nutshell. Everyone loved it when it started out because they saved Brutal Legend, but later the program just churned out junk that the company sent out to die, like Shadows of the Damned or FUSE.

When it comes to publishing games from independent partners, EA has the worst track record in the industry. If Grasshopper wants exposure they shoild stick to WB or try another publisher like Capcom. 

The Brutal Legend deal was EA trying to score some easy points off of Activision after they unceremoniously canned the game made by a popular, cuddly developer like Schafer, during a time when it was cool to hate on Bobby Kotick. The EA Partners thing was otherwise a big c*cktease. Don't know why people expected that EA would give more support to their "Partners" than they did Origin, Westwood, or Pandemic, among others.

Well, what you said about EA is true, but Capcom has also sent a couple of games that it seemed to have no confidence in but inexplicably picked up for publication out to die.  SotD is right up Capcom's alley, but I don't know if I'd trust them unconditionally to give it some public support.

The EA Partners thing looked like a good deal because EA has probably the best distribution network and resources of any third-party company. But that's only if they choose to favor you by actually using it.

It would make more sense for him to develop for the Wii U than the PS4 over there tbh given the hardware sales, although to be fair the decision to develop for the PS4 was probably made a while back when higher sales were expected.

I don't think a blanket "hardware sales are better for x so y should develop for them" statement ever, ever works.  There's more to selling games than just install bases (which, in turn, is a different thing to just flat-out hardware sales).

What's good sales for a Suda51 game?  Judging by Grasshopper Manufacture's normal output, 100k sales for something like Lollipop Chainsaw is going to be a resounding success (40k seems to be more like the norm).

So can PS4/WiiU support 100k sales in Japan?  Yes, they both have at least that many consoles sold (and I imagine will have retained at least that much install base, too).  So the next think to look at is which demographic is more likely to buy Suda's brand of weird, hyper-violent hack 'n' slash?  Of the two, I'd say PS4 (although neither has a partiuclar advantange).

Therefore, I think he can probably develop wherever he wants.  And where he wants to develop seems to be PS4 at the moment.

i really liked Lily Bergamo when they showed this, i am really sad when i seen their new ip, but let's see if its any good when comming out.