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Forums - Sales - The Playstation 2: Over 2,500 FLOPS

greenmedic88 on 11 April 2009
Zuzic said:
greenmedic88 said:
You seem to be forgetting that gaming scores essentially range from 60-100, not 0-100.

Any game that scores in the 50s (or less) was panned, no amount of spin lessens that.

End results, scores aside for Free Radical, Haze being their last big project:

"On December 18, 2008, it was reported that the studio had shut down,[5] though it was later confirmed that the company had gone into administration,[6] leaving 40 of the original 185 staff still employed.[7]
On February 3, 2009, Haze scriptwriter Rob Yescombe confirmed that Free Radical Design had been purchased by German games developer Crytek.[8], which was then confirmed by Crytek themselves the following day.[9]"

End results for Factor 5, Lair being their last big project:

"In late December 2008, several online media outlets reported that Brash Entertainment (Factor 5's publisher of their current project) would close at the end of the month after encountering financial problems. This sudden interruption in funding left Factor 5 with their own funding difficulties. The company's current state has not been officially announced but unconfirmed "insider" reports claim that they have ceased operations.[1]"

We are in a recession. It was not due to those games. Critically aclaimed games like valkyria chronicles sold the same as Lair, and Saga is thinking of making a second one. Did it make profit? No. It was a much bigger and longer game then lair, and required much more detail. Is this a flop? Games this generation need "at least" 500k sales is wrong, it needs "x" sales for "y budget" would be more acceptable. These types of games never really sell well. You can tell, no matter the reviews, if it's hyped it'll sell. Haze as an example, though that example is flawed because it comes to a few factors. From genre to style, to setting, to audience. You could have one of the most hyped games ever, it could get 100 by everyone, it's still only going to sell per genre and audience, with a little more people jumping due to review scores. In fact they say each point on metacritic after 80 only makes 5 more people a day pick it up.

 

Also this "60-100" thing is dead for along time. It was invented to put games down, because a lot of reviewers are afraid of giving anything less then a 60. For in dividual reviewers that is fine, but for a meta review you have to through that out. If it was right, we would only see a few games below 60, and never any farthur then 50. There is around 20 games sitting at the 30 point, and these games are still playable! What games are absolutely impossible to play? Little Britain: The Video Game. Even that got a 19. I can't remember but lowest rated game got a 6 meta review was about trucking, problem was buttons wouldn't register, roads poped and disappeared, game would crash every litterally 5 seconds then start again 5 minutes later again. Impossible to play.

 

There is absolutely no reason to be an apologist. Simple facts are, the budgets and projected sales for games like both Lair and Haze were far too high relative to the actual sales. Big budget, high profile, underperformed. That's about as simple as it gets.

To say that the end results we're "because of the bad economy" blatantly ignores all the other developers for the PS3 who have managed to do just fine under the same conditions. It also overlooks the fact that both games were actually released as video game sales revenue hit an all time high, exceeding that of the film industry for the first year ever.

There are plenty of excellent titles on the PS3 that have found their success, but Lair and Haze weren't among them.

And nobody defends a game that rates in the 50 percentile as being "average" and definitely not for high profile, big budget titles.

 



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Rhonin the wizard on 11 April 2009
Torillian said:
Wow, can you beat in your point any harder? Anyway I'd like to do a little experiment. I would like a single Nintendo fan to admit to a flop on the Wii. Any game, don't really care what, just admit that one game probably lost money. It seems we have this idea that HD games need a minimum of 500k sales to make a profit, but Wii games can be made off of 5 dollars and a Unicorn fart (a value of probably $3.68)

I'll even start you out. Lair and Haze flopped immensely hard and probably lost their respective companies large sums of money.

Now your turn, and it doesn't have to be a huge flop like the two I listed, just anything that flopped at all.

I don't agree with the action of calling a game a flop without knowing if it was profitable or not, or at the least it's development budget.

But I'll name a few:

Battalion Wars 2

Trauma Center: New Blood

Sonic and the Black Knight

Skate it

Soulcalibur Legends

The Godfather: Blackhand Edition

Mortal Kombat Armageddon

Dewy's Adventure

Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren 3 - Karakuri Yashiki no Nemuri Hime

Scarface: The World Is Yours

Geometry Wars: Galaxies

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse

Rune Factory: Frontier

Sam & Max: Season One

Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon

Obscure: The Aftermath

Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy

Disaster: Day of Crisis

We Love Golf!

Eyeshield 21: Field Saikyou no Senshi Tachi

Worms: A Space Oddity

SPRay

Rygar: The Battle of Argus

Captain Rainbow

Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templars - The Director's Cut



Zuzic on 11 April 2009
greenmedic88 said:
Zuzic said:
greenmedic88 said:
You seem to be forgetting that gaming scores essentially range from 60-100, not 0-100.

Any game that scores in the 50s (or less) was panned, no amount of spin lessens that.

End results, scores aside for Free Radical, Haze being their last big project:

"On December 18, 2008, it was reported that the studio had shut down,[5] though it was later confirmed that the company had gone into administration,[6] leaving 40 of the original 185 staff still employed.[7]
On February 3, 2009, Haze scriptwriter Rob Yescombe confirmed that Free Radical Design had been purchased by German games developer Crytek.[8], which was then confirmed by Crytek themselves the following day.[9]"

End results for Factor 5, Lair being their last big project:

"In late December 2008, several online media outlets reported that Brash Entertainment (Factor 5's publisher of their current project) would close at the end of the month after encountering financial problems. This sudden interruption in funding left Factor 5 with their own funding difficulties. The company's current state has not been officially announced but unconfirmed "insider" reports claim that they have ceased operations.[1]"

We are in a recession. It was not due to those games. Critically aclaimed games like valkyria chronicles sold the same as Lair, and Saga is thinking of making a second one. Did it make profit? No. It was a much bigger and longer game then lair, and required much more detail. Is this a flop? Games this generation need "at least" 500k sales is wrong, it needs "x" sales for "y budget" would be more acceptable. These types of games never really sell well. You can tell, no matter the reviews, if it's hyped it'll sell. Haze as an example, though that example is flawed because it comes to a few factors. From genre to style, to setting, to audience. You could have one of the most hyped games ever, it could get 100 by everyone, it's still only going to sell per genre and audience, with a little more people jumping due to review scores. In fact they say each point on metacritic after 80 only makes 5 more people a day pick it up.

 

Also this "60-100" thing is dead for along time. It was invented to put games down, because a lot of reviewers are afraid of giving anything less then a 60. For in dividual reviewers that is fine, but for a meta review you have to through that out. If it was right, we would only see a few games below 60, and never any farthur then 50. There is around 20 games sitting at the 30 point, and these games are still playable! What games are absolutely impossible to play? Little Britain: The Video Game. Even that got a 19. I can't remember but lowest rated game got a 6 meta review was about trucking, problem was buttons wouldn't register, roads poped and disappeared, game would crash every litterally 5 seconds then start again 5 minutes later again. Impossible to play.

 

There is absolutely no reason to be an apologist. Simple facts are, the budgets and projected sales for games like both Lair and Haze were far too high relative to the actual sales. Big budget, high profile, underperformed. That's about as simple as it gets.

To say that the end results we're "because of the bad economy" blatantly ignores all the other developers for the PS3 who have managed to do just fine under the same conditions. It also overlooks the fact that both games were actually released as video game sales revenue hit an all time high, exceeding that of the film industry for the first year ever.

There are plenty of excellent titles on the PS3 that have found their success, but Lair and Haze weren't among them.

And nobody defends a game that rates in the 50 percentile as being "average" and definitely not for high profile, big budget titles.

 

 

Everything you said is irrelevant. Haze was expected to sell much more, free radicial was already in finacial problems. They thought the game was atleast going to break 1 million mark and have a 2 million LTD, having a 800k LTD means they made profit, about 1-3 million. Game would of grossed about 45 million in sales, we know about 25% goes to developers, game had a 10 million budget so actual money going to developer was 11-13 million, with finacial problems they had, this was not enough to recover. Haze was third party, and third parties get the end of the stick. They pay more royalities then second party etc. Lair was projected to sell 1 million copies, it sold 350k, which was enough for that game to break even, but again finacial problems it's not good enough to just break even.

 

The games are not the fault of the company going under, it's the recession. You are 50 dollars in debt. You spent 10$ on living expenses, and spend 40$ to make something. Person gives you 45$ for it. You are still 5$ in debt and no where to get it.



Procrastinato on 11 April 2009

Guys.... game development houses do NOT rely upon royalties to cover their costs.

They rely on getting publishers to hire them for new projects. The publishers are the ones who suffer, financially, if a game does poorly.  If a game does VERY well (usually they have to recover dev costs before a dime of royalties is paid), they make extra money.


If Factor 5 and Free Radical went under, its because they couldn't get a decent enough project rolling by the time Lair/Haze were finished -- i.e. before anyone even knew what their sales would be like.  Its just that rushed game projects tend to go hand-in-hand with bad business practices.  Maybe no one wanted to fund the Wii projects they were pitching.



 

MontanaHatchet on 11 April 2009

This thread is lame. A game doesn't need to sell a million to be successful. I can understand if you were trying to be sarcastic, but then why bother making this thread? You haven't made any good points. Any developer will tell you that the majority of games are not successful, and it has been this way for a long time. The PS2 has 200 million sellers, plus a bunch more when you consider how horribly tracked most of its software is. With accurate sales numbers, the PS2 could easily have 250 million sellers or more. I don't see the Wii having that number any time in its life.



 

 

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BMaker11 on 11 April 2009

I'm saving this thread, because there are finally people who said games can flop on the Wii



SaviorX on 11 April 2009
MontanaHatchet said:
This thread is lame. A game doesn't need to sell a million to be successful. I can understand if you were trying to be sarcastic, but then why bother making this thread? You haven't made any good points. Any developer will tell you that the majority of games are not successful, and it has been this way for a long time. The PS2 has 200 million sellers, plus a bunch more when you consider how horribly tracked most of its software is. With accurate sales numbers, the PS2 could easily have 250 million sellers or more. I don't see the Wii having that number any time in its life.

 

 

When did I bring up the Wii in this topic? If anything, I just replied to Torillian about Wii flops. From the OP, many people (you included I guess) think it has Wii-specific undertones. But then again, why should you? That is the better question. That makes a problem apparent.

 

I got what I wanted from this topic:

I got people who preached profitability

People who enforce damage control

Figure quoting

etc.

 

You say that "any developer will tell you that a majority of games are not successful", yet on forums, when anybody sees a game that does flop, there is a whole attack on the systems capabilities. Since you brought up the Wii, look at that system. Any Wii game that flops is just another "Wii can't sell core games" example.

The DS doesn't sell 45 million copies of GTA: Chinatown Wars first week,and the DS is crowned as a system of women and kindergarteners.

Killzone 2 doesn't outsell Halo 3, and it is a flop....all the foolishness was made apparent in this "lame" thread because you have people who have portrayed each point themselves.

 

No game has to reach 1 million, but why is it such an enforced benchmark? Valkyria Chronicles, Madworld, Chinatown Wars, Ninja Gaiden II, The Conduit; why would they all be failures if they don't hit a million? Nowadays any game that doesn't hit 500k or 1 million is called a flop, with no regard to whether it is actually a success or not. It isn't stopping people from doing so.

 

I had to beat the point of the PS2's "horribleness" deep, or else no one would really take it in. Don't be confused, I love my PS2 Slim, but I made the thread just as "lame" as peoples biases are.



Leatherhat on July 6th, 2012 3pm. Vita sales:"3 mil for COD 2 mil for AC. Maybe more. "  thehusbo on July 6th, 2012 5pm. Vita sales:"5 mil for COD 2.2 mil for AC."

MontanaHatchet on 11 April 2009
SaviorX said:
MontanaHatchet said:
This thread is lame. A game doesn't need to sell a million to be successful. I can understand if you were trying to be sarcastic, but then why bother making this thread? You haven't made any good points. Any developer will tell you that the majority of games are not successful, and it has been this way for a long time. The PS2 has 200 million sellers, plus a bunch more when you consider how horribly tracked most of its software is. With accurate sales numbers, the PS2 could easily have 250 million sellers or more. I don't see the Wii having that number any time in its life.

 

 

When did I bring up the Wii in this topic? If anything, I just replied to Torillian about Wii flops. From the OP, many people (you included I guess) think it has Wii-specific undertones. But then again, why should you? That is the better question. That makes a problem apparent.

 

I got what I wanted from this topic:

I got people who preached profitability

People who enforce damage control

Figure quoting

etc.

 

You say that "any developer will tell you that a majority of games are not successful", yet on forums, when anybody sees a game that does flop, there is a whole attack on the systems capabilities. Since you brought up the Wii, look at that system. Any Wii game that flops is just another "Wii can't sell core games" example.

The DS doesn't sell 45 million copies of GTA: Chinatown Wars first week,and the DS is crowned as a system of women and kindergarteners.

Killzone 2 doesn't outsell Halo 3, and it is a flop....all the foolishness was made apparent in this "lame" thread because you have people who have portrayed each point themselves.

 

No game has to reach 1 million, but why is it such an enforced benchmark? Valkyria Chronicles, Madworld, Chinatown Wars, Ninja Gaiden II, The Conduit; why would they all be failures if they don't hit a million? Nowadays any game that doesn't hit 500k or 1 million is called a flop, with no regard to whether it is actually a success or not. It isn't stopping people from doing so.

 

I had to beat the point of the PS2's "horribleness" deep, or else no one would really take it in. Don't be confused, I love my PS2 Slim, but I made the thread just as "lame" as peoples biases are.

I suppose that if I was an idiot, I'd think it didn't have Wii-specific undertones. However, I'm not an idiot and it's pretty clear that it does. I also brought up the Wii since it is the leader of this generation and the only home console comparable to the PS2. There I go with my logic again.

As for people attacking the Wii, here's an idea. Shutup. Nintendo fans need to stop playing the victim and pretending that the Wii is the only console that is ever bashed. Remember how many times Nintendo fanboys have said that games on the HD consoles that didn't do well should have been on the Wii?

Your point about Chinatown Wars was hard to take seriously since you gave such an overexaggerated number. Chinatown Wars didn't have to sell 45 million, but it sure as hell should have sold more in its first week. A debut of 150k worldwide is respectable, but for the series, it's pitiful. Numbers like those have to raise some eyebrows. Liberty City Stories had similar hype and was a spinoff just like Chinatown Wars, but it had a debut of 450k worldwide when the PSP userbase was about 6 million.

Killzone 2 was expected to outsell Halo 3 by a few exteme Sony fanboys and some of the more annoying fanboys quoted their expectations as a way to prove the game flopped. That's not necessarily the same as reasonable expectations like one of the most popular series on one of the most popular consoles of all time having a big debut. I guess that's unreasonable.

You're right, some games doesn't have to hit 1 million to be considered a success. But when a site like Vgchartz gives a niche game incredibly popularity it might skew the expectations of other forum visitors. Madworld had more hype on this site than Halo 3 easily, but the numbers don't reflect that. By the way, your blanket statement was wrong. A surprising number of games have to hit a million to be successful. If that weren't the case, developers and publishers would be doing just fine this generation. And stop putting so many words in quotes (especially lame) like some pretentious fanboy.

 



 

 

Samus Aran on 11 April 2009
Torillian said:
Wow, can you beat in your point any harder? Anyway I'd like to do a little experiment. I would like a single Nintendo fan to admit to a flop on the Wii. Any game, don't really care what, just admit that one game probably lost money. It seems we have this idea that HD games need a minimum of 500k sales to make a profit, but Wii games can be made off of 5 dollars and a Unicorn fart (a value of probably $3.68)

I'll even start you out. Lair and Haze flopped immensely hard and probably lost their respective companies large sums of money.

Now your turn, and it doesn't have to be a huge flop like the two I listed, just anything that flopped at all.

Legend of the dragon and spy games: elevator mission(this game looks worse then a n64 game, no joke).



noname2200 on 11 April 2009
Rhonin the wizard said:

Rune Factory: Frontier

Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templars - The Director's Cut

WE CAN STILL SAVE THESE DAMMIT!