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

ItsaMii on 20 March 2009

Maybe it is a little unfair to place all the blame on 360 owners. Sure they would take generic FPS over JRPG any day, but most of those RPGs are so crappy that it is hard to feel sorry for their developers. Blue Dragon, Infinite Undiscovery, Operation Darkness (and others) are worse than some low budget PS2 crap like Ar Tonelico.

Also, Lost Odyssey is no successful IP. How many of those copies were sold for 40 bucks or less? It had price cuts very early in its life and MS marketing machine is nothing to ignore. My point is: it did not make money and if it was not backed up by MS it would have sold less than some niche titles.



Satan said:

"You are for ever angry, all you care about is intelligence, but I repeat again that I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God's shrine."

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Slimebeast on 21 March 2009

You will see that WKS will flop too, despite being on the PS3.

You guys just has to realize that JRPG is a niche genre. And it's slowly dying too as it's not evolving much, while the competition is getting better and better.



MikeB on 21 March 2009

Hopefully that was Square Enix' last hope for overly supporting the 360, like they did. IMO they should rather go PS3 exclusive entirely. Big multiplatform hits always perform considerably better on the PS3 vs 360 in Japan. There may be very little to gain for them, if at all, maybe it's better for them to have one strong Square Enix supported HD console, than to weaken its main platform and have an additional weak performer in return instead.



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

starterman1989 on 21 March 2009
MikeB said:

Hopefully that was Square Enix' last hope for overly supporting the 360, like they did. IMO they should rather go PS3 exclusive entirely. Big multiplatform hits always perform considerably better on the PS3 vs 360 in Japan. There may be very little to gain for them, if at all, maybe it's better for them to have one strong Square Enix supported HD console, than to weaken its main platform and have an additional weak performer in return instead.

 

That won't work. Wada is aiming for global domination, so obviously supporting PS3 exclusively will not work for SE.



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alekth on 21 March 2009
Cactus said:

All I want to say about Star Ocean is that it suffers from "The Last Remnant Syndrome" where certain aspects of the game are amazing, but others make you want to rip your eyeballs out. I don't want to say that I'm happy that the game didn't sell well, but I will say that it deserves to sell less than Star Ocean 2 and Star Ocean 3.

 

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.

 

This is purely subjective, but I want to make it clear that Star Ocean had all of these problems, and they did likely contribute to less then stellar sales.

The terrible voice acting did it for me. If they would have left original voices option, it would have been one more US copy sold. Without that, if it were region free it would have been one more Japanese copy. As it is now I'll wait for a PS3 release where worse case scenario I'll import a Japanese copy.

 



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CaptDS9E on 21 March 2009

People keep talking about JRPG's doing bad on 360 in the West. Well look the other way. Western RPG's haven't done so hot in Japan, but have done well in US/Europe. Fable 2 has only done 80,000, and Fallout 3 130,00 combined between 2 platforms. it works both ways folks



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Barozi on 21 March 2009

Too early to say anything.
"Ooooh noez Star Ocean 4 didn't make it in the individual chartz. Who would have thought the VGchartz numbers could be correct" >.>

The hate is strong in here...



memory2zack on 21 March 2009

Slimebeast said:

And it's slowly dying too as it's not evolving much, while the competition is getting better and better.

 

It doesn´t need to evolve, but have good titles instead. If it evolves it won´t be JRPG anymore, it will change its audience. Wether that would be a good move financially is to be seen, but I wouldn´t be happy as a fan of the genre. Look at the p&c adventure genre, it hasn´t evolved, is niche, stays true to its fanbase and still has good titles.  I would prefer JRPGs to become niche than evolve into something different honestly.



Slimebeast on 21 March 2009
memory2zack said:

Slimebeast said:

And it's slowly dying too as it's not evolving much, while the competition is getting better and better.

 

It doesn´t need to evolve, but have good titles instead. If it evolves it won´t be JRPG anymore, it will change its audience. Wether that would be a good move financially is to be seen, but I wouldn´t be happy as a fan of the genre. Look at the p&c adventure genre, it hasn´t evolved, is niche, stays true to its fanbase and still has good titles.  I would prefer JRPGs to become niche than evolve into something different honestly.

 

 I respect that opinion. I often feel the same about my favorite genres.



Gabriel84 on 21 March 2009

JRPG is losing popularity! no matter it comes to what platform.