Believe it or not that's the only PS3 exclusive I envy. Everything else I either don't care about or have a reasonable analogue on 360/PC.
With those sales I doubt we'll see a port, either.
NPD February 2009
- Thread starter RobertR1
- Start date
Believe it or not that's the only PS3 exclusive I envy. Everything else I either don't care about or have a reasonable analogue on 360/PC.
With those sales I doubt we'll see a port, either.
So you think sales = quality? I was born and raised in America, I know just how mindless we can be, George W Bush anyone?
That is a human thing, not an American thing, thankyouverymuch. That said if you look at game sales there are a number of factors that impact sales. Themed or licenced games sell well due to cross-media appeal (e.g. Transformers). Sequals to popular games do well. Games with a good vibe, critical acclaim, and resonane with consumers do well. Not all quality titles have a market. I spent most of today at a software company who makes some average product but they have a huge amount of marketshare because what they package appeals to a larger amount of consumers than competiting products (which are superior but don't appeal). There is no magic bullet, but summerizing that a group of people are idiot lemmings because they disagree with your judgement of product pretty much ignores consumer conscious and why they participate in the gaming hobby. I can make the best gardening sim in the world and be an absolutely amazing strategy game of spectacular depth and amazing, photorealistic graphics, and bomb.
It is easy to blame consumers (I get annoyed when my favorite games don't sell well because as a consumer I want more!) but it is also the responsibility of developers to make software, and publishers to find, support, and distribute software, the consumers want. If what sells are licensed games and carnival games then that is that. If unpopular but "good" games want marketshare they need to find a compelling avenue to show consumers what they are missing. If videos, a demo, viral marketing, solid reviews, a marketing budget, etc cannot sway public interest it pretty much means the developer missed the mark on too many levels. It doesn't mean it is a horrible game or have a market appeal, only that they failed to entice the market at large. And developers have to take some responsibility for that--make games that people like how people want them. I hate NFS style racers but their success over the last decade is related to the fact there has been most of thattime a large market that bought that... stuff. Poor taste? Or did EA just know what their fanbase wanted? There was a lot of competition, options for people to seek greener pastures, but they mostly stuck around. Giving people what they want allows them to overlook what they aren't getting... probably because they don't want it to begin with.
There was some share of luck involved - demonstrated by the fact that the series subsequently failed to hold on to the dizzying heights Underworld propelled it to. Or maybe the genre simply isn't conductive to annual updates.Joshua Luna said:
Style aside, it's hard to deny the fact that certain popular racing series have traditionally struggled in terms of delivering a polished experience (Midnight Club and NFS most notably for me), while others that are almost impeccable like Burnout, struggled to get commercial success.
With those sales I doubt we'll see a port, either.
Probably no sequel either on console either. If it does go to handheld, hopefully it goes to PSP -- graphics are a big part of VC's appeal, the PSP would be able to at least give it a better shot.
I disagree, this is a problem not just for games but for music, films, TV etc.
There is only so much a dev or publisher can do, ultimately it will boil down to how informed (or ignorant) your market is, and whatever fickle reasons they may have for purchasing whatever they did.
Do not discount the luck of the draw (or for that matter how enticing your boxart is).
Don't forget about the music !
The gameplay mechanics in VC can be "borrowed" by another successful console franchise. The difficult part is the level design, together with all its surprises, twists and balance. The "No need to grind" gameplay is uncanny too.
I'll definitely buy a VC for PSP if available. Need another turn-based game after Metal Gear Ac!d.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
So again, YOU are obviously the enlightened, intelligent all knowing one when it comes to good taste, and everyone else that disagree's are ignorant sheep?
My god, I thought we left things like that back in the dark ages when slavery existed.
Some people like Burnout, I think it's a rather stupid game, but then I'm not a huge fan of racing/driving games period (with the exception of the rather excellant Interstate 76).
I loved the original System Shock (not System Shock 2, although that was quite good also) but quite a few people didn't take to it.
In neither case do I believe that the people that didn't share my tastes to be ignorant, imbecilic, uneducated dolts that didn't have a clue what constitutues good taste.
As to film. Heck I thought the rather well filmed "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and her Lover" was a rather excellant film. Many of my friends thought I was a insane and that it was elitist trash. I found many of the Die Hard movies to be rather shallow and unenjoyable (with one exception) yet it was a smashing success. At the end of the day I just chalk it down to different people want different things.
Here's a clue. People in general find different things enjoyable. Not everyone likes golf. Not everyone likes to drive. Not everyone likes RPGs. Not everyone likes blah blah blah blah...
It wouldn't hurt for more people to realize that the world doesn't revolve around them...
Regards,
SB
Though I disagree that 'all people thinking such-and-such game must ergo be sheep' is a valid line of reasoning, there is definitely a correlation between marketing and sales, and getting people onto a bandwagon. A look at how the conversion of a book to film dramatically boosts the book's sales reveals how bringing a product to people's attention increases sales considerably. There's no better marketing than word of mouth, and the encouragment of peers to experience something. So when something is popular, it does generate a following that promotes further popularity, snowballing sales.
And that's a sensible behaviour. When you have the choice of 20,000 books or 200 films or 50 games, which ones do you buy? The popular ones are the ones everyone is talking about, encouraging you that that choice is a good investment. Some part of the buying public will be buying solely on recommendation without investigating all the alternatives.
I agree the PS3 hardware sales are going well all things considered.
Killzone 2 is totally off message. They should have made the game 1080p 60hz with no AA just like Road to the Show. From what I understand God of War 3 is going to be 1080p 60hz which is a smart move.
It wouldn't look half as good if it were 1080p native and 60fps, so sales would be much lower and people would cite it at another Sony exclusive failed to live up to the original trailer etc.
And God of War 3 is 720p and I doubt it's 60hz either.
All-knowing, certainly not, but perhaps you can do the enlightening eh Buddha?
I was simply stating, that the previous post who said the onus lies on the devs and the publisher to see their game succeed is a fallacy.
Because the market (and consumers) are far from perfect and will not necessarily go out and buy the 'best' game.
And if you ever do marketing, you may realise just how many 'idiot lemmings' there can be in the market.
Just look at those woeful Brain Training 'games', whose claimed benefits to mental acuity have been debunked and yet they still sell like hot cakes.
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I guess that's the irony, standing in the store and forgetting what it was actually about.
The debunking was a bit of a none argument though. You'd be better off doing a crossword than brain training? There is absolutely no difference between working memory problem and a crossword.
At least in Finland ps2 was much more expensive at launch. I payed for my ps2 ~3500 finnish marks which is about 590e. If I remember right that price included 1 game, extra controller and memory card.
default PS2 (no extra's) was 1199 guilders in the netherlands which translates to €544.
add to that a €39 memory card and €35 controller Fantavision(I traded up that other inferior Racer) and Ridge Racer V. wow.. and why did I buy it? promises of Gran Turismo 2000 and things like network play and the "Synthesis Engine" bullcrap.
i.e. Marketing.
I payed a similar amount for the PS2 ... But contrary to you, I still remember why I bought it, and why I never regretted the purchase to this day. And that is that it lasted me a full five years, playing back DVDs and playing some of the best games ever! And it kept on giving right up until the end (and even a bit after - for the first year of PS3 I still played some PS2 games, though always on the PS3 as I have a BC one). First games I bought were Tekken Tag and SSX I think, and I loved them.
But in the U.S., yes, the PS2 started a LOT cheaper (though all European prices are always tax included of course). There was a saying at some point that Europe paid extra to keep the U.S. prices low.
And that is that it lasted me a full five years, playing back DVDs and playing some of the best games ever! And it kept on giving right up until the end (and even a bit after - for the first year of PS3 I still played some PS2 games, though always on the PS3 as I have a BC one). First games I bought were Tekken Tag and SSX I think, and I loved them.But in the U.S., yes, the PS2 started a LOT cheaper (though all European prices are always tax included of course). There was a saying at some point that Europe paid extra to keep the U.S. prices low.
I bought Tekken, I bought SSX.. But there was always some feel of, non-enjoyment.. don't know what it is. I still bought a PSTwo a couple of years ago as a non-noisy replacement and I still need to finish FFXII on it, guess that's why I bought it.. to play the games I wanted to play.
I payed a similar amount for the PS2 ... But contrary to you, I still remember why I bought it, and why I never regretted the purchase to this day.
I had similar happy experience with ps2. It's still fully operational and I occasionally play mgs2/mgs3/gran turismo/other classics with it(even though I have bc on my ps3). I haven't bothered at transferring ps2 saves to ps3 which would enable me to retire ps2. Gran turismo 3 and 4 alone made ps2 worthwhile purchase to me.
I hear ya on the GT series ...
I was a very active member in the community for those games - I wrote a replay browser, wrote a series of articles and columns for IGN, have thousands of posts on several boards in three different languages and took part in GT LAN (iLink) parties in a few countries as well as hosted a bunch in my own home (also attended by several nationalities)http://cars.ign.com/articles/507/507513p1.html
http://cars.ign.com/articles/512/512309p1.html
Wildly off topic now, though ...
But I put in a thousand of hours in that thing, easily 80-90% of all my PS2 playtime overall. I retired my launch PS2 only to my half-brother back then because the iLink port gave out, but he's still using it to this day (though he's having some trouble starting some games now - so far we've always been able to fix that with some cleaning and tweaking though). He in turn has played and finished all of the MGS games at least 20 times each, he's totally nuts about them.I'm also a Tekken nut, since PS1. Keep playing that game too, always looking for a better game to replace it, but never succeeding. I think my love for the real-life moves combined with the intuitive controls keeps me coming back and bitching primarily at Tekken for not improving and innovating more even when other games don't either.
Anyway, I'm still hoping that the PS3 will reach 299 and less soon, because the more people can afford one the better!
Price alone is not only factor as time plays a big part. In the US the PS2 was above $199 for ~ 12 months while being at or below $199.00 for like 8 years.
$199 is not some magically price point that you can spend your sweet time trying to get to and see mainstream like sales regardless of when you get there.
