I think it'll be lucky to reach a million.  The type of people that own PS3s aren't gonna be into this kind of game.  You'll get a vocal minority praising it but the masses will be like, "it's not a shooter and it's not violent as hell, no thanks."  Meanwhile a soccer mom or an older Wii owner would probably look at it like, "oh, it's an interactive murder mystery, that sounds interesting"... but it's not on the Wii.

On top of all of that, I doubt the people in charge will market this to the huge audience who would be interested.  All the ads will probably be on gaming sites where the bulk of people could care less.  They need to hit places where adults will look, but they won't.  They won't even think about advertising it there and it's a shame.

Funny, why do so many people see this as a casual title? From what I've seen and read this is going to be a very adult, mature attempt at a narrative with depth - what casual gamer is that going to appeal to?

I know it's not going to come across as some hardcore shooter, but it seems way off base for casual either.

In fact, that's in a sense the big risk (or one of the main ones anyway) for the title: it's not going to fit easily into the genre categoraztion that most titles do.

maybe 500K ww

Really? Is Innovation what you call letting exclusives like Conduit fail, and minigame packs to sell along with 5 franchises that they just basically re-release every gern- Pokemon, Zelda, Mario, Metriod, Smash Bro's

Real innovating I wonder what Ninty's only successes will be next year. O yeah I know - Pokemon, Zelda, Mario, Metriod, Smash Bro's and minigame packs.                                                            

If it hit 2 million, CGI would start praising God and kissing the ground.

I know I'd be very happy if that happens. It would give me faith in the gaming industry. It would tell me that not everyone is about blood and gore shoot 'em ups these days.

My bad, I thought it was obvious that I was saying my opinion and not that i'm some time traveler from the future with factual data about the ad campaign for Heavy Rain.

Oh shut it you swedish bastard! ;D




OT: I think this game will get "poor" sales since it quite niche. They need to show more of this game because atm people think this is a buttonmashing interactive movie, and a new IP at that. And usually that's not a recipe for sales success...

The only way I could see Heavy Rain selling well:

February 14th release week

Heavy female advertising

Reworked more accessible controls with wands and/or PSE

They need to sell it as a novella. I think there is enough interesting plot to advertise it as such. I wouldn't be surprised if those moneyed 26 year olds buy their girlfriends movies they would purchase a virtual novella to help her appreciate the habit of gaming.

Just keepin' it real: marketing in general doesn't always fire on all cylinders, so it's relatively *easy* to doubt.

I think the point that there is a market for this type of game, but that the message might not get to those people, is a valid concern - particularly if you want a game like this, which doesn't fall into a generally profitable category of gaming, to succeed.

You only get a very small window of time to make an impression; the "newest new" is only that for somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 or 3 weeks.  Then it's all about the next newest new.

I'm rooting for HR to succeed, but I'm not blind to the performance of previous, similar titles.