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Forums - Sales - Star Ocean 4 - What went wrong with its sales?

Pristine20 on 20 March 2009
AE86 said:

Agreed, there was no reason to make this exclusive...well..unless that sack of money was big.

 

I'm pretty sure it was



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Pristine20 on 20 March 2009
BengaBenga said:
I think it's clear now that 360 owbers don't play JRPGs. Sad but true.

 

so much for the console for JRPGs LMAO



"Dr. Tenma, according to you, lives are equal. That's why I live today. But you must have realised it by now...the only thing people are equal in is death"---Johann Liebert (MONSTER)

"WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives"---Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler

Rei on 20 March 2009

Would it be worth it to make SO4 a simultenous worldwide multiplatform release? I doubt that. The way I see it the problem is not the platform, but the genre and the decreasing interest in it amongst the western public.

   Let's assume that 360 jRPGs arent selling. But where are the big jRPG sellers on the Wii and PS3? Oh, let me guess - "Tales of Symphonia 2 is a lame spinoff which wasnt advertised!" and "VC is a niche SRPG and Sega didnt ship enough copies!!". Wake me up once PS3 and Wii big selling jRPGs will come out. Untill then, I assume that jRPG genre as a whole is in a decline in western territories and (outside of FF-KH-DQ trio) only sells on handhelds.

P.S I hope somebody has already prepared excuses as to why Tales of Gracia and WKC didnt sell well in the West.



JaggedSac on 20 March 2009
Pristine20 said:
BengaBenga said:
I think it's clear now that 360 owbers don't play JRPGs. Sad but true.

 

so much for the console for JRPGs LMAO

It is the console for JRPGs.  Just not the console for people who play JRPGs.

 



Riachu on 20 March 2009
memory2zack said:
Riachu said:
I think it might have something to do with the art style. The characters just look too much like dolls. It doesn't help the game seems(still haven't played it yet) to have a poorly written script and terrible voice acting. Another problem is that JRPGs in general are being shunned due to their overused stories, character stereotypes, poor dialogue, art style that doesn't appeal to Western audiences, etc.

SO4 follows more or less the same road as SO3 though, yet the latter sold good in N.A.

 

Maybe the X360 is the wrong system to release JRPGs after all. Yet it´s unknown how they would fare in the West on PS3 since it only has SRPGs so far. WW JRPGs sell well on handhelds, Wii is the joker, it hasn´t any good released RPGs so far. Though, I wouldn´t put too much hope for it in the West. Probably multiplatform is the best way to go for high-budget JRPGs, low-budget JRPGs should get released in priority PSP/DS, then Wii.

I think JRPG as a genre has lost its appeal in the West, gamers want "mature" ones (insert blood, dismemberement, swearing, hairy guys, body builders, +18 old characters only, super-realistic graphics, not sexually dressed girls that turn you constantly on with what they say, nudity and sexual intercourse is welcomed though, less story, more sandbox, etc...). Probably that could be one of the many reasons why LO sold well and TLR does too (though hard, strategic turn-based combat is obviously a turn-off for the masses, which doesn´t enable them to reach higher sales).

LO was a very cutscene heavy game.  Not MGS level but you get what I mean.  I don't remember seeing any blood either in the game.

 



 

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--OkeyDokey-- on 20 March 2009

They put it on 360, that's what went wrong. Out of all the platforms including handhelds, 360 is the worst possible choice for JRPG's.



Bullet100000 on 20 March 2009

The reviews killed this game.



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BengaBenga on 20 March 2009
Pristine20 said:
BengaBenga said:
I think it's clear now that 360 owbers don't play JRPGs. Sad but true.

 

so much for the console for JRPGs LMAO

 

It still is. It was one of my main reasons to pick a 360 over a PS3. It's also nothing to laugh your ass off if you like the genre, it's most definitely the worst performing genre this gen. which is never good news. I hope the stream of Wii JRPGs will do well. At least the audience seems to be a little more open to traditional Japanese games.



Rei on 20 March 2009
Soriku said:
Rei said:

Would it be worth it to make SO4 a simultenous worldwide multiplatform release? I dont think so. The problem is not the platform, but the genre and the decreasing interest in it amongst the western public.

   Let's assume that 360 jRPGs arent selling. But where are the big jRPG sellers on the Wii and PS3? Oh, let me guess - "Tales of Symphonia 2 is a lame spinoff which wasnt advertised" and "VC is a niche SRPG and Sega didnt ship enough copies". Wake me up once PS3 and Wii big selling jRPGs will come out. Untill then, I assume that jRPG genre as a whole in a decline and (outside of FF-KH-DQ trio) only sells well on handhelds.

P.S I hope somebody has already prepared excuses as to why Tales of Gracia and WKC didnt sell well in the West.

 

ToS2 is a "lame spinoff" yet outsold ToV, the next main game in the Tales series. And SO4 may not even outsell it in Japan (if it does it'll only be by a few k)

And DQS still is the second best selling JRPG this gen. It sold 500k in Japan alone, and 210k more in US/EU. Big names CAN sell on the Wii. As for VC (and DotNW, but it was released in EU while DotNW isn't yet), it outsold ToV and is a SRPG. Plus, if Tales of Graces is being made by Team Destiny (as it should be) expected BIG sales in Japan, the lowest selling game by Team Destiny in Japan is 600 some k IIRC.

So...yeah.

   Why are you bringing in Japan when I was clearly talking about the West?

   And what lame excuses you have got there. Selling more than ToV is now considered a success? It's not about selling more than 360 jRPGs (I said - let's assume 360 cant sell jRPGs) it's about just selling well in the west. And neither PS3 or Wii jRPG has done that so far and outside of the trio I mentioned neither will.

 



Torillian on 20 March 2009

why exactly are we all talking as though it is a definite failure when we're comparing lifetime sales of SO3 to one week of sales for SO4? We don't even know what kind of opening week SO3, it could be comparable to the opening of SO4 in the US, you just don't know.

Until we either see more of how SO4 will sell in the long run, or get an idea of how SO3 sold over time, we can't really say anything definitive about it one way or another.



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