Insomniac to go cross platform?

[joker454]

And I for one do not believe it having been Multiplatform on release would have really done much better as far as sales.

Definitely disagree there for two main reasons. First, people were hungry for 360 games back when Resistance came out, going exclusive on an expensive console killed both their sales and momentum. Second, being PS3 only means a huge mass of game players, namely PC and 360 shooter fans, are all but ignoring the franchise, and will continue to ignore it once part two comes out. This ultimately limits both sales as well as word of mouth and hence wide scale appeal. When people talk about top tier shooters, Resistance almost never comes up, not because it's a bad game, but because very few people can actually play it. This will continue to hurt them as long as they stay PS3 exclusive, even more so now since the PS3 is doing better in markets that (if you believe the forums) care little about shooters.

I don't think it would have sold like COD4 if it were multi platform, but it's not unreasonable to think that they could have shifted an additional 1 to 2 million units just by being on 360.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

First, people were hungry for 360 games back when Resistance came out, going exclusive on an expensive console killed both their sales and momentum.

I wouldn't use the word 'killed'. Limitied, sure. But 2 million sold would be pretty good zombie-sales

Second, being PS3 only means a huge mass of game players, namely PC and 360 shooter fans, are all but ignoring the franchise, and will continue to ignore it once part two comes out. This ultimately limits both sales as well as word of mouth and hence wide scale appeal. When people talk about top tier shooters, Resistance almost never comes up...

Hang on! How come Halo doesn't have that trouble? Nor Gears? It wasn't the PC cross-platform that empowered those sales, because the PC versions haven't done phenomenally well, and they were big before the PC games. It's because they were marketed to Betsy, the right product at the right time with the right positioning.

There's no denying if RFoM (or any game) was cross platform, and the same game, that it'd sell more. If you've twice the market, you're going to get more sales. I don't think your reasoning explain RFoM's underachieving though, especially when that underachieving is against a few exceptional selling titles.

 

[archangelmorph]

There's no denying if RFoM (or any game) was cross platform, and the same game, that it'd sell more. If you've twice the market, you're going to get more sales. I don't think your reasoning explain RFoM's underachieving though, especially when that underachieving is against a few exceptional selling titles.

I don't think you can call over 2 million units "underachieving" either, especially when your pushing out a new IP in an already over-crowded genre..



Also.. Why all this talk about "if they'd have just made R:FOM multi-plat.."

Isn't the IP owned by Sony..?

 

[scificube]

Insomniac is a top rated fortune 500 company. It's a little off to think they haven't weighed the benefits of going multi-plat over being exclusive.

They have.

To say there are smart people running Insomniac and throughout the company is an understatement.

There are benefits to staying exclusive with Sony. Sony has offset the cost of advertising their titles. Insomniac has benefited from close ties with 1st party studios at Sony. The PS3 fanbase is absolutely enamored with the company and will now clamour for every release the company will put out. As well they should. Insomniac games more than merit it. Insomniac is likely to enjoy significantly lower development costs and a higher turn around time for their projects by staying exclusive especially now given the evolution of the engine and toolchain.

There is little doubt that Resistance 2 will perform very well on the PS3. So well that even pressure to release Killzone this year is alleviated and Resistance 2 can take the "BIG" holiday release spot for Sony. 1>not many titles get that spot 2>This Resistance title will be marketed VERY well this time around 3>The Resistance IP is anything but an unknown quantity to the fanbase this time around.

The next Rachet could very well be positioned as Sony's big "Summer" release of 2009...or better. It's not a bad thing to be getting this sort of treatment.

Insomniac has enjoyed success remaining exclusive. There is an argument for going multi-platform but I am not at all convinced it is a better path forward than what they have going for them now.

Everything Insomniac touches lately turns to gold however so if they should decide to go multi-platform they would still be successful.

 

[patsu]

Definitely disagree there for two main reasons. First, people were hungry for 360 games back when Resistance came out, going exclusive on an expensive console killed both their sales and momentum.

Going exclusive did not kill R1 at all. Far from it.

Gears of War was launched at about the same time. It is unclear how Resistance would have performed on 360 without heavy marketing and by all gaming press' account, it was a "boring" game. Most or all attention was on GoW.

The PS3 owners saw R1's gameplay and embraced it. R1 succeeded and entertained its players for 2 years. Not sure if GoW online is as well played, so I can't comment there.

Second, being PS3 only means a huge mass of game players, namely PC and 360 shooter fans, are all but ignoring the franchise, and will continue to ignore it once part two comes out. This ultimately limits both sales as well as word of mouth and hence wide scale appeal. When people talk about top tier shooters, Resistance almost never comes up, not because it's a bad game, but because very few people can actually play it. This will continue to hurt them as long as they stay PS3 exclusive, even more so now since the PS3 is doing better in markets that (if you believe the forums) care little about shooters.

Now this is true. The limited exposure may have stunted their growth. If they have sufficient resources to handle a new platform, I'd say they should explore new opportunties using the same philosophy (exclusive only). IMHO, the best place for them is Nintendo land or portable gaming since their focus of gameplay would find a much larger audience there.

I don't think it would have sold like COD4 if it were multi platform, but it's not unreasonable to think that they could have shifted an additional 1 to 2 million units just by being on 360.

*If* they are able to capture much of the Wii or DS crowd, they have the potential to rival CoD4 in sales. But these are all speculations in the mean time.

 

[joker454]

I wouldn't use the word 'killed'. Limitied, sure. But 2 million sold would be pretty good zombie-sales

Yeah 'kill' was a bad word, I meant it in reference to sales comparisons to other shooters that made a fortune. Compared to those sales, it got 'killed'. It sold well taken on it's own, but remember it was also helped by being the only game worth buying for a long time on PS3.

Hang on! How come Halo doesn't have that trouble? Nor Gears? ....... It's because they were marketed to Betsy, the right product at the right time with the right positioning.

I finished Gears and Halo 3, and almost finished Resistance. So my quick and honest answer to your above question is that Gears and Halo 3 sold better because they are much better games. Just my opinion though, I don't intend to debate it. It's not always about marketing and glitz, as I suspect Haze will demonstrate. Great games will sell really well, and Gears and Halo 3 I thought were awesome and a total riot to play.

Plus, both of those games are available on the "all shooters" console as people here love to remind everyone. If you love shooters and want a console, then you will have a 360, there are enough shooter fans on that box to sell millions of that genre of product.

There's no denying if RFoM (or any game) was cross platform, and the same game, that it'd sell more. If you've twice the market, you're going to get more sales.

It's more involved than that. There are certain genres of games that a company would be goofy to not port to certain consoles. Avoiding the 360 with a shooter is just plain silly, but thats my humble opinion. Or take Ninja Gaiden 2 being only on 360, I think that's equally silly. That genre of game really should be ported to PS3, they would sell piles more.

The PS3 owners saw R1's gameplay and embraced it.

To be fair, they had nothing else to embrace. It you were a shooter fan and only had a PS3, then Resistance was the only option for a long time.

 

[DrJay24]

Let´s be honest.. Ratchet has been the same game for the last seven years. Resistance was not really a top tier FPS. It got much more exposure than it really deserved because it was an exclusive launch game..

Ratchet and Resistance are two of my favorite next gen games, if anything they got far less attention than they deserved. Next time try not to pass your bias off as "honesty".

 

[inefficient]

To be fair, they had nothing else to embrace. It you were a shooter fan and only had a PS3, then Resistance was the only option for a long time.

I don't know about that. At least with regardes to the multiplayer, I see people still playing the game every day. The game has proven good enough to have staying power even when there are plenty of other great shooting games to play (COD4, Warhhawk, R6, TF2, etc). And I think that says a lot about the game.

Saying people got attached to it because it was a launch game seems to be a poor conclusion to make here. I mean how many people were still playing PDZ online even a few months after launch?

This is like knocking the achivements ID Software made when their released their Doom and Quake games by saying there just wasn't much other competition at the time.

 

[Cornsnake]

Resistance wasn't the only FPS available early on. There was also CoD 3. So it did well next to an established franchise. And later there was also Motorstorm. But even then Resistance is more than good enough to sell well if it had more competition. There just aren't a lot of FPS's that offer what Resistance does.

 

[dobwal]

Again your one of those people who have just "played it"... If you haven't played the entire game then you really don't understand it. The game is amazing towards the end. And its done great as far as sales go. Its sold over 2 million copies. Resistance 2 will most likely do even better.

You must have not really read my post. While "I" didn't find it that appealing, I don't generalize my feelings as being the most common amongst gamers, hence my reference to Halo.

OT, but I am not a reviewer, I have no obligation to play through a whole game to make an informed opinion of the game. I don't have readers because Im not a journalist. If I don't feel compelled enough to finish a game and still form a negative opinion of it, that opinion is as valid as anyother forum goer who may have played it through a hundred times.

And how could it have pulled a COD4? Its a completely different game in every aspect. Besides the fact that Call of Duty was an established game series with what 5 games already out under the CoD name before CoD4 was even released?

Read again. Im talking about level of acceptance in comparsion to COD4. I wouldn't say the level of sales since the # of consoles sold was alot smaller but Im implying level of general acceptance by the market. Gears, COD4, AC, Halo and GTA4 are all 4 million+ sellers, more differences exist between these titles than common traits.

And I for one do not believe it having been Multiplatform on release would have really done much better as far as sales. They would have most likely lost the ability to bundle it with a console, probably received less marketing since it was an unestablished IP, and the release more than likely wouldn't have met the PS3 launch date. Not having been a game that came out with a system launch would have put it behind a catalog of FPS's instead of the only FPS at the time.

Then you must not have faith in or think much of Resistance then because any quality game on the 360 was snapped up in droves in the console's first 18 months.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I finished Gears and Halo 3, and almost finished Resistance. So my quick and honest answer to your above question is that Gears and Halo 3 sold better because they are much better games. Just my opinion though, I don't intend to debate it. It's not always about marketing and glitz, as I suspect Haze will demonstrate. Great games will sell really well, and Gears and Halo 3 I thought were awesome and a total riot to play.

This is all highly debatable! Gears and Halo are very good, for sure (the best of these shooters is highly subjective, all with strengths and weaknesses), and you don't get good sales without a good game - I was never saying that. But marketing can push a product from good to great performance. That's why companies invest heavily in marketing! No-one produces a game and just rolls it out there expecting word-of-mouth to push it into the multi-million sellers list. Would Gears or the original Halo have done so well without a huge marketing effort? And would they have received the same marketing effort if they weren't exclusive?

Plus, both of those games are available on the "all shooters" console as people here love to remind everyone. If you love shooters and want a console, then you will have a 360, there are enough shooter fans on that box to sell millions of that genre of product.

That definitely makes sense, but on the flip side you also have a load more competition. Had Resistance released alongside Gears, would it have sold fabulously? Would the investment of the port been really worthwhile?

It's more involved than that. There are certain genres of games that a company would be goofy to not port to certain consoles. Avoiding the 360 with a shooter is just plain silly, but thats my humble opinion. Or take Ninja Gaiden 2 being only on 360, I think that's equally silly. That genre of game really should be ported to PS3, they would sell piles more.

DOA has done well being exclusive though, facing less competition than the fighter-riddled PS2. Deciding to make a shooter for PS3, and so corner the shooter market when there was so little competition, wasn't a bad move. Not many games can claim upwards of two and half million units. That's something else to really outline here. Sure, RFoM hasn't sold as well as H3 or Gears, but precious few games do! It did outsell all the Tom Clancy's, Rainbow Six, COD 2 and 3, and PDZ, on XB360. Even in cross-platform sales! So it's actually one of the best performing shooters so far this gen

To be fair, they had nothing else to embrace. It you were a shooter fan and only had a PS3, then Resistance was the only option for a long time.

You know, I'm getting confused over your argument now! So RFoM wasn't as good as H3 or Gears, only sold as much as it did on PS3 because there wasn't anything else to buy, yet had Insomniac gone cross-platform, they'd have got loads more sales from XB360 owners buying this inferior game when they had lots of choice?

 

[dobwal]

That definitely makes sense, but on the flip side you also have a load more competition. Had Resistance released alongside Gears, would it have sold fabulously? Would the investment of the port been really worthwhile?

You have to remember that Gears did not have a lot of competition on the 360. Outside of Gears at #1, only the 360 port of COD4 placed in the NPD top ten for Dec 06 in terms of platform specific sales. In terms of video games sales overall, Gear fell to #6 as multiplats such as Madden, COD3, Legend of Zelda, Cars and Need for Speed Carbon placed in the top 5. Furthermore, Gears was the only non multiplat title to place in the top ten.

There was plenty of room for Resistance on the 360 platform for holiday 06. A multiplat Resistance would have had more hype than COD3, a franchise diluted by Activision as a COD game based on the WWII theme has been released on a console every Nov since 2004.

 

[patsu]

Yeah 'kill' was a bad word, I meant it in reference to sales comparisons to other shooters that made a fortune. Compared to those sales, it got 'killed'. It sold well taken on it's own, but remember it was also helped by being the only game worth buying for a long time on PS3.

What you said would be true if Resistance has not gone to gain a larger and larger user base... and more and more praises. Like I said, it is still well played.

Today besides Resistance, I also have CoD4, UT3, Warhawk, and other top rated games. However, like many regulars, I chose to play RFOM. The argument of no game is long outdated. RFOM has also seen a few updates and DLCs.

If I remember correctly, you use PS3 primarily as a Blu-ray player. It would be hard to argument for/against PS3 games if you do not play the games and meet fellow PS3 gamers yourself.


EDIT: A wee-bit more details on the new studio:
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/06/09/insomniacs-dezern-and-mccabe-talk-new-north-carolina-digs/

 

[Akumajou]

Definitely disagree there for two main reasons. First, people were hungry for 360 games back when Resistance came out, going exclusive on an expensive console killed both their sales and momentum. Second, being PS3 only means a huge mass of game players, namely PC and 360 shooter fans, are all but ignoring the franchise, and will continue to ignore it once part two comes out. This ultimately limits both sales as well as word of mouth and hence wide scale appeal. When people talk about top tier shooters, Resistance almost never comes up, not because it's a bad game, but because very few people can actually play it. This will continue to hurt them as long as they stay PS3 exclusive, even more so now since the PS3 is doing better in markets that (if you believe the forums) care little about shooters.

I don't think it would have sold like COD4 if it were multi platform, but it's not unreasonable to think that they could have shifted an additional 1 to 2 million units just by being on 360.

There is a very easy, yet simple solution to the problem those "PC and 360 shooter fans" are suffering from:

They need to buy a Sony Playstation 3.

Once they do that they will be able to pick up Resistance FoM and later Resistance 2 and even later KillZone 2.

Also the real reason why Resistance "almost never comes up" in so called gamers talk about "top tier shooters" is really due to the gaming media's coverage of the game and the nature of FPS games on Playstation consoles.

Back when Halo CE and XBox 1 came out, alot of the buzz was centered around Halo being the only game worth playing yet this word did not really come from word of mouth but rather the gaming media.

EGM is one of those examples, they kept on mentioning how much fun they had with "system linking" and how they just kept on playing system linking as part of how they gave the game its huge 10 upon release.

Now think about that, the XBox 1 is barely out, then Halo gets released and EGM had 8+ XBox consoles for system linking and its no surprise that the average gamer who can barely afford to buy one XBox 1 (back then) would evangelize to his friends the word of buying more consoles and game copies to enjoy a feature not found on the competing console due to technological limitations back then.

Its also not surprising how the gaming media kept on mentioning Halo and by mentioning, I mean free coverage, as in word of mouth and it was not limited to a single print magazine performing these practices.

Insomniac can go cross plat if they wish to do so, I would prefer them to be Playstation devs though but this talk that Resistance "is getting ignored because it is not multiplatform" is BS at best.

Its like everyone forgets all the things that happened with Halo 1 and how after boasting 2 million copies sold with no XBox Live as a factor, it basically set up the media and gamer frenzy that ensued with Halo 2's release and the existance of the XBox 360 as being the vessel to hook expectant halo and console FPS fans into a new more expensive console for the purpose of getting that game and then PC games making the profit due to the nature of both PC and X360 games being based on the Direct X API.

While CoD, MoH, Halo, UT, etc are established FPSs, Resistance is barely 2 years old and it will really be up to Resistance 2 and how the gaming media covers that game that is going to make or break that franchise.

That said another thing that held back Resistance is pure ignorance and the first two levels of the game don't help either, I am talking about how there is this perception that Resistance FoM is somehow a WWII shooter and not a "Alternate History Sci-Fi" shooter it really is.

The other thing is gamer apathy in comparing the game to Halo or a game that copied or ripped off halo somehow, including history twisting with some X360 owners actually believing that Resistance ripped off the halo bubble shield.

At least to me so far, Resistance as a franchise on the PS3 is going through the same growing pains Halo went through, so far given their time in months after release and prior to the sequel they have both reached a similar 2 million milestone and so far at least for those players there is a guarranteed 2 million sales for Resistance 2.

The rest is up to the Gamer media and new PS3 owners of witch there will be many more than last year by the end of this year.

 

[zed]

But marketing can push a product from good to great performance. That's why companies invest heavily in marketing! No-one produces a game and just rolls it out there expecting word-of-mouth to push it into the multi-million sellers list. Would Gears or the original Halo have done so well without a huge marketing effort?

well halo3 certainly wouldnt of sold Xmillion on day one. (same with GTA4)
i dont know why publishers hype this up (retorical) as in reality its something to be ashamed of, ie first day sales are more attributed to marketing than any actual game quality.

a sign of a quality game is one that keeps sells steadily after the initial marketing hype(from word of mouth).

perhaps a better metric of a games quality/desirability is the percentage of copies sold after the initial month release.

 

[Akumajou]

I finished Gears and Halo 3, and almost finished Resistance. So my quick and honest answer to your above question is that Gears and Halo 3 sold better because they are much better games. Just my opinion though, I don't intend to debate it. It's not always about marketing and glitz, as I suspect Haze will demonstrate. Great games will sell really well, and Gears and Halo 3 I thought were awesome and a total riot to play.

Haze was never really a highly anticipated or even high profile PS3 game, if I remember correctly Free Radical declared the game a PS3 exclusive while their publisher declared it a multiplatform game so for a while there was confusion with the title and so far the confusion has traveled along to the game development itself.

Plus, both of those games are available on the "all shooters" console as people here love to remind everyone. If you love shooters and want a console, then you will have a 360, there are enough shooter fans on that box to sell millions of that genre of product.

The reason the Xbox 360 is always being refered to as "teh shooterz console" (I prefer the term military shooter) is because Halo single handedly built those foundations with Xbox 1 and the rest of the PC shooter devs followed after halo 2 sales gold in respect to rampant PC pyracy that even as of late Crytek has complained about with their one million seller Crysis.

Now to say that "If you love shooters and want a console, then you will have a 360" is just as wrong as forgetting that PS2 has more shooters than both XBox 1 and X360 combined. Now it is true that X360 is benefiting from Microsoft being far more aggressive with third parties this time around but the fact that the shooters and specially Halo laid those pilars is as hard to dismiss as Playstation having variety, and Nintendo having its legacy franchises.

It's more involved than that. There are certain genres of games that a company would be goofy to not port to certain consoles. Avoiding the 360 with a shooter is just plain silly, but thats my humble opinion. Or take Ninja Gaiden 2 being only on 360, I think that's equally silly. That genre of game really should be ported to PS3, they would sell piles more.

Ninja Gaiden's greatest claim to fame (aside from being exclusive to MS) was that it did not have any real competition once it took up residence in XBox so it claimed best tech due to the raw bleeding edge of the Xbox 1. Once that game was ported to PS3 where as far as PS3 titles it did not have competition (last year) it had to face the Playstation crowd and their well experienced gaming sessions with PS2 ninja based games.

Although NGII will no doubt do much better than the prequels, it is worth remembering how those prequels were initally welcomed and how poor their sales were since IMHO NGSigma was a desperate attempt at trying to cash in on that revenue that was not reached.

This is all highly debatable! Gears and Halo are very good, for sure (the best of these shooters is highly subjective, all with strengths and weaknesses), and you don't get good sales without a good game - I was never saying that. But marketing can push a product from good to great performance. That's why companies invest heavily in marketing! No-one produces a game and just rolls it out there expecting word-of-mouth to push it into the multi-million sellers list. Would Gears or the original Halo have done so well without a huge marketing effort? And would they have received the same marketing effort if they weren't exclusive?

Halo 2 and 3 barely needed the marketing as there were many gamers waiting and highly anticipating it, however the Gears marketing machine was highly impressive, the fact that even PC gaming sites started to talk about a console title that was whole year away just added to the help.

DOA has done well being exclusive though, facing less competition than the fighter-riddled PS2. Deciding to make a shooter for PS3, and so corner the shooter market when there was so little competition, wasn't a bad move.

As good as DOA could be it just cannot escape its fate as being a second and third bananas fighter in Sega Saturn and Playstation 1.

With Dreamcast, despite its technical achievements, it still to this day plays second fiddle to Soul Calibur and I would love to see sales numbers because otherwise it would not have been ported to...

PS2 where it was revealed thanks to a third party Sega just how third place DOA could go as it could not fight off the more established Tekken and Virtua Fighter afficionados so...

You have to wonder why DOA needed to have a spartan to help its sales in the new console.

 

[Akumajou]

a sign of a quality game is one that keeps sells steadily after the initial marketing hype(from word of mouth).

perhaps a better metric of a games quality/desirability is the percentage of copies sold after the initial month release.

Maybe this is why Halo CE is so fondly remembered or why RARE's unbrakeable GoldenEye 007 reaches the top in many console FPS lists as both titles held steady sales many months after initial release.

 

[assen]

Would the investment of the port been really worthwhile?

Ah, here you come to the most interesting point of the thread.

I would like to see Insomniac go cross platform, because they seem to be one of the most competent PS3-centric developers around, and they are the best candidate to prove the often chanted, but rarely proven mantra that it's better to lead on the PS3 and then port to the 360 with a PS3-centric engine. (To be fair, I'm not sure I've heard it from Insomniac themselves. But it certainly gets thrown around a lot.)

 

[Cornsnake]

How would they prove that? The big advantage i've heard of is that its easier to make the port so one version wont look worse than the other. Gamers wont see a big difference if they do it right. And we already have good looking multi platform games.

 

[joker454]

You know, I'm getting confused over your argument now! So RFoM wasn't as good as H3 or Gears, only sold as much as it did on PS3 because there wasn't anything else to buy, yet had Insomniac gone cross-platform, they'd have got loads more sales from XB360 owners buying this inferior game when they had lots of choice?

Too much to reply to so I'll keep it short so I can get back to playing Secret Files: Tunguska Resistance is not an inferior game, I did almost play through the whole thing after all whereas I gave up on PDZ very early. I just think they would have done much better if they were multi-platform, thats all. I don't think they would have ever sold as much as Gears even with the same amount of advertising because I don't think it's as good of a game as Gears, or Halo 3 for that matter. But it's a good enough product that it merited a 360 version. The port of the first Resistance to 360 would have been incredibly easy and very cheap, 4 to 5 people could have handled it. If they had done that, then they would be getting way more hype and interest in Resistance 2. Instead it's a missed opportunity.