Niche games don't advertise... because they're niche.

You get little bang for you buck that way... so you try to motivate word of mouth advertising methods since your targeting a very small target of the population.

Unless your ready and willing to throw a gigantic advertising campaign out there for example like the FF7 advertising campaign... chances are a little advertising isn't going to have a positive ROI.

I thought that's because Sega had already started the sequel's development when the sales suddenly increased? Sega made an official statement that they're happy about VC numbers a while ago.

If that's true i've never seen it.

It's also irrelvent honsetly.

VC Chronicles boost came because it was a spectacular SRPG that had a lot to appeal to non SRPG fans... that and it had it's own Anime.

This is something that would of worked anywhere, and is a very big exception/outlier.

Unless most niche japanese games are going to be using a system that breaks the mold(or rather copies the mold of a really unpopular game) and will have it's own anime.

VC in general is a very bizare sales example.

First off, didn't I say that companies actually had to produce good software? Obviously Nintendo owners will buy software if it is good. If your options are good 1st party software or trashy 3rd party software which will you buy? Not only that, but the original argument was that PS3 owners buy more software, which is just wrong.

Secondly, this year was incredibly slow, both in 1st and 3rd party software, if we go back to lifetime totals, Nintendo has about same amount of 3rd party software sold as Sony. Nintendo sold 26m units out of 36m, so ~10m 3rd party sales in Japan, while Sony has 3m sales out of 14m, so around ~11m 3rd party sales. Yes, the PS3 is ahead, but has received far better 3rd party support gaining main line games, while the Wii gets spinoffs.

Now, to top it off, Japanese Wii support has been a joke. So far we have a few legitimate 3rd parties titles like

Monster Hunter 3 - 0.95m
Taiko no Tatsujin Wii - 0.64m (ok, this one is just weird, but hey weird hits take off in Japan)
Dragon Quest Swords - 0.50m
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles - 0.29m

Those 4 games make up ~24% of 3rd party sales on Wii which as I said is already about the same size PS3 sales. So why don't people blame Capcom, SquareEnix, and Namco Bandia for choking out 3rd party sales?

After that we have Deca Sports, a karaoke game, and a port from a PS2 game. Tales of Symphonia was a spinoff, and had the worst lead character in the history of videogames managed about 1/2 of the PS360 sales of Vesperia, which isn't too shabby considering how bad it was compared to the previous itteration.

So, remind me again how PS3 owners buy more software than Wii owners, 1st party or 3rd.

Yeah Sega said they were very happy with VC sales. They even thanked the fans who are advertising the game and made the game pop up in the charts again.

As Outlawroun he must have a link to that;

Which, as stated is meaningless in this discussion.  Since it came later due to it having a lot of word of mouth.  Initially it was a failure as would most games of its ilk on PS3.

i doubt lks was profitable before releasin in europe. maybe it will be the same for arc rise frantasia and mruamassa

there are so many possible reasons behind VC2 being developed for PSP

i don't think it has that much to do with the sale # of VC1

the success of VC animation made SEGA going after broader audience in Japan, and PSP is the better way to go at this moment

i also think SEGA wants to test the co-op mode for VC and they currently have more experience on PSP in that aspect

With Rising Star publishing... lol.

Ignition's the best thing to happen to Marvelous in America.  They need to drop Xseed asap.

OMG an unreleased game doesn't sell! What's happened to this world?