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Forums - Sales Discussion - Nintendo Wii owners, it's time to acknowledge third party failures

Majin-Tenshinhan on 31 March 2009
BMaker11 said:
Majin-Tenshinhan said:
BMaker11 said:
Kenology said:
BMaker11 said:
It's also time to invalidate the "So what if it didn't sell well, they only need to sell (insert extremely low sales figure) to make profit because Wii development costs are cheap" argument:

http://kotaku.com/5191706/so-how-many-copies-does-a-wii-game-need-to-sell-to-make-money

 

lol! Dude, you just mindlessly post crap you perceive to be a knock to Nintendo/the Wii without even rationally processing or analyzing it first. You really are making yourself look desperate!

I don't "mindlessly post crap". If you look across these forums, anytime 3rd party titles sales come into discussion about the Wii, it always results in "Game X may have sold poorly, but since it's on the Wii, it doesn't need to sell much to make a profit". I am sick of seeing it, and then came along this article, WHICH FOCUSES ON THE WORDS OF REGGIE FILS-AIME (you know, Nintendo of America) where he says "3rd party companies need to sell about a million copies in order to turn a profit".

This is what you call a source to an argument. Ninty fans believe low sales can turn a profit, I don't, and I have a source to back it up. How is citing your information "desperate"?

Edit: Slap yourself

 

 

Am I to understand that you think that, under no circumstances, can a Wii game be successful if it sold less than 1 million?

Certainly not. Stuff like Carnival Games and Game party could probably make a profit on 1 copy sold lol. But when you get to the likes of Samba de Amigo, House of the Dead, MadWorld, Zack and Wiki, NMH, De Blob, Trauma Center etc. selling 250-500k isn't going to cut it. Unless every time discussion about 3rd party games on the Wii revolves around crap like Hannah Montana or essentially anything from Ubisoft

 

 

 

Gotcha. Right where I hoped you'd go. So if NMH can't be successful at 390k, please explain to me these two things:

1. Why did the developers throw a party because of the sales? (Which at the time were about half what they are now)
2. Why is it getting a sequel almost immediately? 6 months after the release of the first one, a teaser trailer for a sequel was shown, by a guy who has never made a sequel before. I'd sure like to see you wiggle your way out of this one.



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wfz on 31 March 2009
BMaker11 said:
Majin-Tenshinhan said:
BMaker11 said:
Kenology said:
BMaker11 said:
It's also time to invalidate the "So what if it didn't sell well, they only need to sell (insert extremely low sales figure) to make profit because Wii development costs are cheap" argument:

http://kotaku.com/5191706/so-how-many-copies-does-a-wii-game-need-to-sell-to-make-money

 

lol! Dude, you just mindlessly post crap you perceive to be a knock to Nintendo/the Wii without even rationally processing or analyzing it first. You really are making yourself look desperate!

I don't "mindlessly post crap". If you look across these forums, anytime 3rd party titles sales come into discussion about the Wii, it always results in "Game X may have sold poorly, but since it's on the Wii, it doesn't need to sell much to make a profit". I am sick of seeing it, and then came along this article, WHICH FOCUSES ON THE WORDS OF REGGIE FILS-AIME (you know, Nintendo of America) where he says "3rd party companies need to sell about a million copies in order to turn a profit".

This is what you call a source to an argument. Ninty fans believe low sales can turn a profit, I don't, and I have a source to back it up. How is citing your information "desperate"?

Edit: Slap yourself

 

 

Am I to understand that you think that, under no circumstances, can a Wii game be successful if it sold less than 1 million?

Certainly not. Stuff like Carnival Games and Game party could probably make a profit on 1 copy sold lol. But when you get to the likes of Samba de Amigo, House of the Dead, MadWorld, Zack and Wiki, NMH, De Blob, Trauma Center etc. selling 250-500k isn't going to cut it. Unless every time discussion about 3rd party games on the Wii revolves around crap like Hannah Montana or essentially anything from Ubisoft

 

 

Well, BMaker, you definitely had a good run going.

http://vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=1965557

Bye bye, now.



BMaker11 on 31 March 2009
Khuutra said:
BMaker11 said:
Ok, Mario Galaxy and Gears at $16 million. But those are first party games, meaning the money made at retail go straight to the publisher. These 3rd party games, however cheap crappy they may be, only get a fraction of the money from retail, because some of that money has to go to the system creator (Sony, M$, Ninty), so logically, they'd have to sell more copies in order to turn a profit for the developer

That's very sensible and I am glad that you said it, but let's go a bit slower here. You're getting ahead of me. Gears of War is a third-party game with an exclusivity contract, not first-party. Mario Galaxy is first-party, I know.

Let's look at Mario Galaxy - 16 million is pretty expensive for a Wii game, right? That probably took more than a million to reach profit, right?

The reason I make this comparison is that in most cases, publishers pay for the entirety of the development of a game, and then take all the money that proceeds from retail sales until such a time as profit has been made, after which the developer gets royalties. So it comes to the same thing in terms of how many games are needed to turn a profit. Right?

I didn't mean to turn this into two questions, and will keep it narrower from here on out.

If that were true, not a single development studio would fail if they all got paid anyway. Only publishers would go under, if they front the bill to games that don't sell well

 



Khuutra on 31 March 2009
BMaker11 said:
Khuutra said:

That's very sensible and I am glad that you said it, but let's go a bit slower here. You're getting ahead of me. Gears of War is a third-party game with an exclusivity contract, not first-party. Mario Galaxy is first-party, I know.

Let's look at Mario Galaxy - 16 million is pretty expensive for a Wii game, right? That probably took more than a million to reach profit, right?

The reason I make this comparison is that in most cases, publishers pay for the entirety of the development of a game, and then take all the money that proceeds from retail sales until such a time as profit has been made, after which the developer gets royalties. So it comes to the same thing in terms of how many games are needed to turn a profit. Right?

I didn't mean to turn this into two questions, and will keep it narrower from here on out.

If that were true, not a single development studio would fail if they all got paid anyway. Only publishers would go under, if they front the bill to games that don't sell well

That's not true: if developers don't make games that sell well, nobody will publish their games, so they go bankrupt because they don't have a source of income.

Now.

Mario Galaxy probably took more than a million to reach profit, right? At least a smidgen!



BMaker11 on 31 March 2009
Khuutra said:
BMaker11 said:
Khuutra said:

That's very sensible and I am glad that you said it, but let's go a bit slower here. You're getting ahead of me. Gears of War is a third-party game with an exclusivity contract, not first-party. Mario Galaxy is first-party, I know.

Let's look at Mario Galaxy - 16 million is pretty expensive for a Wii game, right? That probably took more than a million to reach profit, right?

The reason I make this comparison is that in most cases, publishers pay for the entirety of the development of a game, and then take all the money that proceeds from retail sales until such a time as profit has been made, after which the developer gets royalties. So it comes to the same thing in terms of how many games are needed to turn a profit. Right?

I didn't mean to turn this into two questions, and will keep it narrower from here on out.

If that were true, not a single development studio would fail if they all got paid anyway. Only publishers would go under, if they front the bill to games that don't sell well

That's not true: if developers don't make games that sell well, nobody will publish their games, so they go bankrupt because they don't have a source of income.

Now.

Mario Galaxy probably took more than a million to reach profit, right? At least a smidgen!

In an ideal world, that would be true, but you still don't see it happen. Factor 5 put out shitty Lair, yet they've got publishers giving them money to make games still, and that's just one example. And yes, SMG probably took more than a million to profit. Even though seeing how it's a Nintendo game developed in-house, meaning Nintendo saw pretty much all the money from each game sale, it probably didn't need much over a million. The fact that it's sold, what 8 million, is just overkill and surplus money

 



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Khuutra on 31 March 2009
BMaker11 said:
Khuutra said:
BMaker11 said:

If that were true, not a single development studio would fail if they all got paid anyway. Only publishers would go under, if they front the bill to games that don't sell well

That's not true: if developers don't make games that sell well, nobody will publish their games, so they go bankrupt because they don't have a source of income.

Now.

Mario Galaxy probably took more than a million to reach profit, right? At least a smidgen!

In an ideal world, that would be true, but you still don't see it happen. Factor 5 put out shitty Lair, yet they've got publishers giving them money to make games still, and that's just one example. And yes, SMG probably took more than a million to profit. Even though seeing how it's a Nintendo game developed in-house, meaning Nintendo saw pretty much all the money from each game sale, it probably didn't need much over a million. The fact that it's sold, what 8 million, is just overkill and surplus money

It does happen, though. Factor 5 is dead.

Right, yes, we've agreed that Mario Galaxy probably took over a million to make profit in this scenario. Let's be generous, though, and pretend it only took a million - one million - copies sold to make profit. If it cost 16 million to make, and turned profit after a million, that would mean that Nintendo $16 per copy sold, right?

NOBODY CORRECT THIS. THIS IS A HYPOTHETICAL I'M USING TO PROVE A POINT.



BMaker11 on 31 March 2009
wfz said:
BMaker11 said:
Majin-Tenshinhan said:
BMaker11 said:
Kenology said:
BMaker11 said:
It's also time to invalidate the "So what if it didn't sell well, they only need to sell (insert extremely low sales figure) to make profit because Wii development costs are cheap" argument:

http://kotaku.com/5191706/so-how-many-copies-does-a-wii-game-need-to-sell-to-make-money

 

lol! Dude, you just mindlessly post crap you perceive to be a knock to Nintendo/the Wii without even rationally processing or analyzing it first. You really are making yourself look desperate!

I don't "mindlessly post crap". If you look across these forums, anytime 3rd party titles sales come into discussion about the Wii, it always results in "Game X may have sold poorly, but since it's on the Wii, it doesn't need to sell much to make a profit". I am sick of seeing it, and then came along this article, WHICH FOCUSES ON THE WORDS OF REGGIE FILS-AIME (you know, Nintendo of America) where he says "3rd party companies need to sell about a million copies in order to turn a profit".

This is what you call a source to an argument. Ninty fans believe low sales can turn a profit, I don't, and I have a source to back it up. How is citing your information "desperate"?

Edit: Slap yourself

 

 

Am I to understand that you think that, under no circumstances, can a Wii game be successful if it sold less than 1 million?

Certainly not. Stuff like Carnival Games and Game party could probably make a profit on 1 copy sold lol. But when you get to the likes of Samba de Amigo, House of the Dead, MadWorld, Zack and Wiki, NMH, De Blob, Trauma Center etc. selling 250-500k isn't going to cut it. Unless every time discussion about 3rd party games on the Wii revolves around crap like Hannah Montana or essentially anything from Ubisoft

 

 

Well, BMaker, you definitely had a good run going.

http://vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=1965557

Bye bye, now.

Notice how he says "on a PARTICULAR game"? I've already conceded that stuff like Hannah Montana and the likes most definitely do NOT need to make a million. But if you think something like MadWorld is profitable....at 70k, you're a fool

 



BMaker11 on 31 March 2009
Khuutra said:
BMaker11 said:
Khuutra said:
BMaker11 said:

If that were true, not a single development studio would fail if they all got paid anyway. Only publishers would go under, if they front the bill to games that don't sell well

That's not true: if developers don't make games that sell well, nobody will publish their games, so they go bankrupt because they don't have a source of income.

Now.

Mario Galaxy probably took more than a million to reach profit, right? At least a smidgen!

In an ideal world, that would be true, but you still don't see it happen. Factor 5 put out shitty Lair, yet they've got publishers giving them money to make games still, and that's just one example. And yes, SMG probably took more than a million to profit. Even though seeing how it's a Nintendo game developed in-house, meaning Nintendo saw pretty much all the money from each game sale, it probably didn't need much over a million. The fact that it's sold, what 8 million, is just overkill and surplus money

It does happen, though. Factor 5 is dead.

Right, yes, we've agreed that Mario Galaxy probably took over a million to make profit in this scenario. Let's be generous, though, and pretend it only took a million - one million - copies sold to make profit. If it cost 16 million to make, and turned profit after a million, that would mean that Nintendo $16 per copy sold, right?

NOBODY CORRECT THIS. THIS IS A HYPOTHETICAL I'M USING TO PROVE A POINT.

Nope, it would just break even

 



Khuutra on 31 March 2009
BMaker11 said:
Khuutra said:
BMaker11 said:

In an ideal world, that would be true, but you still don't see it happen. Factor 5 put out shitty Lair, yet they've got publishers giving them money to make games still, and that's just one example. And yes, SMG probably took more than a million to profit. Even though seeing how it's a Nintendo game developed in-house, meaning Nintendo saw pretty much all the money from each game sale, it probably didn't need much over a million. The fact that it's sold, what 8 million, is just overkill and surplus money

It does happen, though. Factor 5 is dead.

Right, yes, we've agreed that Mario Galaxy probably took over a million to make profit in this scenario. Let's be generous, though, and pretend it only took a million - one million - copies sold to make profit. If it cost 16 million to make, and turned profit after a million, that would mean that Nintendo $16 per copy sold, right?

NOBODY CORRECT THIS. THIS IS A HYPOTHETICAL I'M USING TO PROVE A POINT.

Nope, it would just break even

Right, yes, I misspoke. But at that rate, if it takes one million sold in order to break even, then they get $16 per copy sold, right?



Majin-Tenshinhan on 31 March 2009
BMaker11 said:
wfz said:
BMaker11 said:
Majin-Tenshinhan said:
BMaker11 said:
Kenology said:
BMaker11 said:
It's also time to invalidate the "So what if it didn't sell well, they only need to sell (insert extremely low sales figure) to make profit because Wii development costs are cheap" argument:

http://kotaku.com/5191706/so-how-many-copies-does-a-wii-game-need-to-sell-to-make-money

 

lol! Dude, you just mindlessly post crap you perceive to be a knock to Nintendo/the Wii without even rationally processing or analyzing it first. You really are making yourself look desperate!

I don't "mindlessly post crap". If you look across these forums, anytime 3rd party titles sales come into discussion about the Wii, it always results in "Game X may have sold poorly, but since it's on the Wii, it doesn't need to sell much to make a profit". I am sick of seeing it, and then came along this article, WHICH FOCUSES ON THE WORDS OF REGGIE FILS-AIME (you know, Nintendo of America) where he says "3rd party companies need to sell about a million copies in order to turn a profit".

This is what you call a source to an argument. Ninty fans believe low sales can turn a profit, I don't, and I have a source to back it up. How is citing your information "desperate"?

Edit: Slap yourself

 

 

Am I to understand that you think that, under no circumstances, can a Wii game be successful if it sold less than 1 million?

Certainly not. Stuff like Carnival Games and Game party could probably make a profit on 1 copy sold lol. But when you get to the likes of Samba de Amigo, House of the Dead, MadWorld, Zack and Wiki, NMH, De Blob, Trauma Center etc. selling 250-500k isn't going to cut it. Unless every time discussion about 3rd party games on the Wii revolves around crap like Hannah Montana or essentially anything from Ubisoft

 

 

Well, BMaker, you definitely had a good run going.

http://vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=1965557

Bye bye, now.

Notice how he says "on a PARTICULAR game"? I've already conceded that stuff like Hannah Montana and the likes most definitely do NOT need to make a million. But if you think something like MadWorld is profitable....at 70k, you're a fool

 

 

 

Most people who have played MadWorld have probably realised how extremely low production values must have been, but yeah, 70k is probably on the low end. 70k isn't where the game will stop though. As you can see by my sig, I believe it'll pass 500k.