2009 platform CONSOLE exclusives!

[Shifty Geezer]

Actually arent they making a 2d shoot 'em up for XBLA?

Nope. They have released "Death Tank" on XBLA, a sort of realtime Worms-type tanks game, but that's mostly the work of Ezra Dreisbech. They've advertised for FPS developers for at least a year now. Point being, every man his dog, and the fleas on the dog, is making FPSes these days. The only genre I've known so common before was platformers in the 8 bit days!

 

[Zassk]

Until Take 2 confirm 360/PC versions are actively being developed, then it is exclusive.

This job posting by Team Bondi states that their current project is L.A. Noire, and that the job is for PS3 and XBox 360.

I suppose you could argue that it doesn't actually state that L.A. Noire is the project being hired for, but I think they only have the one team.

 

[MDX]

Needs to be updated... but here is an exclusive Wii list I made awhile back

There are some questionable titles that may not make the final
cut at the end of 2009. For example 'No More Heroes : DS' might still release in 2010 and 'Sadness' might end up being vaporware.

I did include titles released in 2008 if they have been released only in one region.

 

[obonicus]

Is Fatal Frame confirmed for US release?

 

[Zassk]

Battlestations: Pacific announced as exclusive to the 360 and PC, for release in May.

http://www.battlestations.net/en-US/content/battlestations-pacific-soars-stores-may

 

[liolio]

Ninety Nine Night 2 is announced for this fall (Japan only).

 

[fearsomepirate]

Is Fatal Frame confirmed for US release?

Fatal Frame has been confirmed as not coming to the US.

http://gonintendo.com/?p=78344#comments

Sadness "might" be vaporware?

 

[obonicus]

Muramasa also isn't XSeed anymore but people are saying that it's still coming out in the US. And apparently it's being picked up by Ignition, and should be released in September.

 

[Need 2 Know]

Could not see this article in the Console Games Section, dont think it will be there anyway as the Game has not been announced yet but here we go -

NIS America also confirmed with us that the company will be showing off a currently unannounced PlayStation 3 RPG at the event. RPGamer will have an interview available regarding this game shortly after the event.

To be honest I have not heard of this Developer/Company before could somebody maybe shed some light.

Cheers

DA LINK

 

[ban25]

Could not see this article in the Console Games Section, dont think it will be there anyway as the Game has not been announced yet but here we go -

NIS America also confirmed with us that the company will be showing off a currently unannounced PlayStation 3 RPG at the event. RPGamer will have an interview available regarding this game shortly after the event.

To be honest I have not heard of this Developer/Company before could somebody maybe shed some light.

Cheers

DA LINK

NIS or Nippon Ichi, they previously released Disgaea 3 on the PS3. I assume this is another SRPG in the same vein as their previous releases. Not that this is a bad thing, but the PS3 is particularly short on traditional RPGs like the Tales series, Star Ocean, Final Fantasy, etc. Of course, there's the FFXIII demo, but it *still* hasn't shown up in my mailbox, so I don't count it yet.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I see that turning around pretty soon. The rather embarrassing sales of 360 exclusive RPGs seems to have resulted in a halt in such efforts and a rash of 360 to PS3 ports of games like Tales of Vesparia and Star Ocean 4.

 

[ban25]

I see that turning around pretty soon. The rather embarrassing sales of 360 exclusive RPGs seems to have resulted in a halt in such efforts and a rash of 360 to PS3 ports of games like Tales of Vesparia and Star Ocean 4.

It'll take more than year-old 360 ports to bolster the RPG genre on the PS3.

 

[Rotmm]

I see that turning around pretty soon. The rather embarrassing sales of 360 exclusive RPGs seems to have resulted in a halt in such efforts and a rash of 360 to PS3 ports of games like Tales of Vesparia and Star Ocean 4.

Tales and Star Ocean have each sold around 300K copies, which is not exactly mind-blowing. But then White Knight Chronicals and Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3 are in the same sales area too, and this is with the PS3 having at least a 3-1 lead in Japan.

And look at a recent port. Eternal Sonata sold 200K on the 360 and still only 100K so far on the PS3.

So that kinda shows that PS3 ports aren't necessarily set the userbase on fire.

And, of course, those titles have been released (Along with Disagrea 3 - circa 200K) on the PS3 when there has been a relative drought of JRPG titles.

To date, there has not been a JRPG released on the PS3 that has come anywear near the sales of Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant.

Not wanting to belabour the point (but going to anyway), let's look at the Japanese attach rate for the highest selling JRPG, and that's 11% for White Knight Chronicles. How does that far against the two 360 titles you mentioned? 20% for Star Ocean and 16% for Tales.

Really, it's the PS3 that is suffering from "Embarrasing Sales" of JRPG's, both those that are exclusive and those that are not.

The 360 sales? Well, not great either. But then, other than the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts titles, JRPG's never really sold that well anyway. There's never been a Tales title that broke the 1m barrier, and only a single Star Ocean title did.

What is certainly true is that porting some of those times 360-exclusives to the PS3 is neither going to set the PS3 world alight or bring in monster new sales for those titles.

 

[obonicus]

Tales and Star Ocean have each sold around 300K copies, which is not exactly mind-blowing. But then White Knight Chronicals and Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3 are in the same sales area too, and this is with the PS3 having at least a 3-1 lead in Japan.

To be fair, these are new IPs and Star Ocean/Tales are the biggest JRPG franchises after Final Fantasy/DQ. The last Star Ocean sold 700k just in Japan. Tales of Symphonia sold 600k, again, just in Japan. I'm not saying that these titles could have matched earlier performances if they had been 360+PS3, but they'd certainly be closer. And let's not forget that WKC is 300k just in Japan. Once it comes out in the US it'll certainly defeat any JRPG that isn't Lost Odyssey WW and it might even do that.

Japan is the main market for these games, and the PS3 certainly sells a lot more software there.

And look at a recent port. Eternal Sonata sold 200K on the 360 and still only 100K so far on the PS3.

It's a year-old port, though. People who wanted to play it may have already -- late ports rarely do well.

And, of course, those titles have been released (Along with Disagrea 3 - circa 200K) on the PS3 when there has been a relative drought of JRPG titles.

To date, there has not been a JRPG released on the PS3 that has come anywear near the sales of Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant.

That's not really true, is it? White Knight Chronicles sold more than 300k just in Japan. That's more than any JRPG on the 360 by about 100k. And of those titles, Lost Odyssey is the only one that performed significantly in the US. The rest were flops, essentially. Even Star Ocean didn't exactly light the charts on fire.

Not wanting to belabour the point (but going to anyway), let's look at the Japanese attach rate for the highest selling JRPG, and that's 11% for White Knight Chronicles. How does that far against the two 360 titles you mentioned? 20% for Star Ocean and 16% for Tales.

Really, it's the PS3 that is suffering from "Embarrasing Sales" of JRPG's, both those that are exclusive and those that are not.

Well, for starters, attach rate is irrelevant when you're talking about such a small userbase. What matters is sales. Titles on the PS3 certainly perform a lot closer to what they did on the PS2 when compared to the 360 -- which is obvious, again, thanks to the 3-1 disadvantage.

The 360 sales? Well, not great either. But then, other than the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts titles, JRPG's never really sold that well anyway. There's never been a Tales title that broke the 1m barrier, and only a single Star Ocean title did.

What is certainly true is that porting some of those times 360-exclusives to the PS3 is neither going to set the PS3 world alight or bring in monster new sales for those titles.

That's true, but it's also true that going forward it makes absolutely no sense to have 360-exclusive JRPGs, at least for significant franchises (not that there are any left). And there's probably enough of a market for these games to make a port, as Namco is doing for Vesperia.

 

[Rotmm]

To be fair, these are new IPs and Star Ocean/Tales are the biggest JRPG franchises after Final Fantasy/DQ. The last Star Ocean sold 700k just in Japan. Tales of Symphonia sold 600k, again, just in Japan. I'm not saying that these titles could have matched earlier performances if they had been 360+PS3, but they'd certainly be closer. And let's not forget that WKC is 300k just in Japan. Once it comes out in the US it'll certainly defeat any JRPG that isn't Lost Odyssey WW and it might even do that.

I'm not sure where you are getting your figures from, but the last Star Ocean game on the PS2 is listed as selling 533K copies in Japan, and you are being somewhat disingenious with the "600K" Tales total in Japan, as it was released over 2 platforms in that market. Certainly, it didn't sell anywhere near 600K on any one platform.

Also, you seem to be trying to put Tales and Ocean titles in the samel bracket as FF and DQ by saying they're the biggest just after those. While it's not true (Kingdom Hearts would be 3rd in the list), it's also like saying TimeShift and Haze are the pretty big after Halo, Call of Duty and Gears games.

They're just not in the same bracket.

For ease of responding, I'm going to just bunch the rest of this together, rather than seperately quote.

Japan is the main market for these games, and the PS3 certainly sells a lot more software there.

It's a year-old port, though. People who wanted to play it may have already -- late ports rarely do well.

That's not really true, is it? White Knight Chronicles sold more than 300k just in Japan. That's more than any JRPG on the 360 by about 100k. And of those titles, Lost Odyssey is the only one that performed significantly in the US. The rest were flops, essentially. Even Star Ocean didn't exactly light the charts on fire.

Well, for starters, attach rate is irrelevant when you're talking about such a small userbase. What matters is sales. Titles on the PS3 certainly perform a lot closer to what they did on the PS2 when compared to the 360 -- which is obvious, again, thanks to the 3-1 disadvantage.

That's true, but it's also true that going forward it makes absolutely no sense to have 360-exclusive JRPGs, at least for significant franchises (not that there are any left). And there's probably enough of a market for these games to make a port, as Namco is doing for Vesperia.

You seem to want it both ways, but stating that WKC and VC are new IP's, and therefore their sales figures are fairly good. You then go on to compare their sales to those of Star Ocean and Tales and mention how they are poor for established franchises.

That's true (though, of course, neither of those games have been released on Europe yet and, while you highlight WKC's Japan obly figures, Val Chron is available in all 3 territories).

What you fail to mention is that Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery are all new IP's and have all sold more than both of those titles.

And of the established titles? Well, both SO4 and Tales have sold far better than Disagrea3 on the PS3.

Whichever way you try to skew the figures, my orignal post to Brad holds true. It's the PS3 which has the embarrasing sales in the RPG market so far, whereas the 360 has seen respectable, if not mind blowing, levels of sales.

 

[obonicus]

I'm not sure where you are getting your figures from, but the last Star Ocean game on the PS2 is listed as selling 533K copies in Japan, and you are being somewhat disingenious with the "600K" Tales total in Japan, as it was released over 2 platforms in that market. Certainly, it didn't sell anywhere near 600K on any one platform.

Star Ocean 3 number counts re-releases. As for Tales, yes, it was released on 2 platforms. That's my point. ToV was released on a single platform and did half of what ToS did on any one of the single platforms, and a quarter of the total. Multi-platform made sense for ToS, it would've made sense for ToV.

Also, you seem to be trying to put Tales and Ocean titles in the samel bracket as FF and DQ by saying they're the biggest just after those. While it's not true (Kingdom Hearts would be 3rd in the list), it's also like saying TimeShift and Haze are the pretty big after Halo, Call of Duty and Gears games.

Well, I wasn't counting KH since it's a straight-out action RPG. But yes, that's what I'm doing: RPGs are only big in Japan and these are among the largest IPs. Certainly the biggest non-square IPs these days. Or they were, anyway. The last couple of Persona entries have outsold the last SO and main Tales entry.

They're just not in the same bracket.

They're in the same genre, so I'm not sure what 'bracket' means.

You seem to want it both ways, but stating that WKC and VC are new IP's, and therefore their sales figures are fairly good. You then go on to compare their sales to those of Star Ocean and Tales and mention how they are poor for established franchises.

But they are! You can have it both ways. VC didn't do great, but it did comparably, in Japan, its biggest territory, to these other, larger IPs. This despite the fact that it isn't even a JRPG. WKC, despite being supposedly a middling game with a rather poor Famitsu score outsold these other, larger games. None of them did spectacularly -- but as poorly as WKC did, these 360 exclusives did worse in their largest territory! That's what 360 exclusivity got them.

That's true (though, of course, neither of those games have been released on Europe yet and, while you highlight WKC's Japan obly figures, Val Chron is available in all 3 territories).

What you fail to mention is that Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery are all new IP's and have all sold more than both of those titles.

I did mention Lost Odyssey. It was the only JRPG to do well in the US. All others have been moderate-to-large disappointments. Again, just because they've outsold these two games doesn't mean they did well. And it is telling that you're so quick to compare these titles to games that have sold only in a single territory.

And of the established titles? Well, both SO4 and Tales have sold far better than Disagrea3 on the PS3.

Again, you're acting like these games exist in a vacuum. Disgaea games are incredibly niche -- the best selling title in Japan only did 150k on the freaking PS2. NIS makes these games on a shoestring budget because they don't expect to sell that many.

Not to mention that we're talking about different genres altogether.

You complain about putting FF and SO in the same 'bracket' (when I never actually compared these titles sales) but directly compare Disgaea 3's sales to Star Ocean's! It's expected for Star Ocean to blow Disgaea out of the water. The problem is, it didn't do it by enough.

It's not enough for 360 titles to outsell PS3 titles, especially not when the PS3 hasn't had any titles to compare to.

Whichever way you try to skew the figures, my orignal post to Brad holds true. It's the PS3 which has the embarrasing sales in the RPG market so far, whereas the 360 has seen respectable, if not mind blowing, levels of sales.

How can you even come to this conclusion? It absolutely does not hold true. The PS3 hasn't even seen any real RPG efforts. All it has is year-old ports. The only JRPG it's seen (not SRPGs, they are different genres) is WKC and that has sold about on par with the last SCEJ Level-5 JRPG. It has also outsold every other game on the 360.

The point is there's no real reason for 360 exclusivity for JRPGs. It makes no sense -- the only region in which JRPGs see mainstream success is Japan (unless you're Final Fantasy), and there games are hobbled by the console's low install-base.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Whichever way you try to skew the figures, my orignal post to Brad holds true. It's the PS3 which has the embarrasing sales in the RPG market so far, whereas the 360 has seen respectable, if not mind blowing, levels of sales.

There just aren't enough PS3 RPGs to make the conclusions you have. obonicus's point that you are comparing world wide releases to Japan only releases in some cases holds true. Furthermore, Valkeria Chronicles and Disgaea 3 are both pretty hardcore SRPG making them far more niche than SO4 or Lost Odyssey. Your biggest 360 successes are also skewed by being some of the oldest RPGs in this generation. They benefited from being the first, and only such games on any platform. That all said, my point has never been that the PS3 would have provided a better exclusive home for these titles, only that releasing such games only on the 360 is to miss out on a significant number of sales. In Japan you are selling to a tiny installed base, versus a market three times as large peopled by gamers patiently biding their time until FFXIII comes out. And in the US lately you are lucky to get much past 100K in sales.

We've already seen numerous examples of certain game types on the PS3 outperforming 360 version relative to installed base. I think there's a decent chance that RPGs are one of those genres, given the Final Fantasy factor. It just hasn't really been tested in the US yet. There are some good strategy RPGs, but their appeal is somewhat limited. And there have been late ports of RPGs that were never that good to begin with. Frankly, MS must be throwing a ton of money around to get these exclusives because Square and Namco have certainly been going out of their way to limit their sales opportunities.

Bottom line: Even if I grant that the 360 is the more lucrative platform for RPGs in this generation, it does not change the fact that thus far the sales of 360 exclusive RPGs has been very low. I dare say they've been far below expectations. Maybe my estimate that a simultaneous PS3 SKU would double those sales is a bit too generous, but It's hard to imagine the sales of games like Infinite Undiscovery, SO4, Last Remnant and others not enjoying at least a 50, 60, 70 or even 80% sales increase worldwide.

 

[ban25]

I'm sorry to have started all this sales gobbledygook nonsense, I didn't mean to! I was simply pointing out that the PS3 has almost no traditional RPGs (I have the Japanese release of WKC). I didn't mean to start a platform sales pissing match!