NPD January 2005

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Like what Li Mu Bai said, and I mentioned this before and it was ignored. I guess for the sake of meaningless arguement. Stores like EBgames saw a increase in Refurbished GC console sales due to the release of RE4, so naturally these console sales aren't going show in the NPD numbers. Would it have been better for Nintendo if new consoles were sold probably so, with a possible price reduction coming, RE4 chances of reaching 1 million in the U.S alone is greater.

To be honest, I can understand the pessimism. When you look at the numbers, also considering the month the title was released in, it surpassed many expectations.

Third party don't do well on the GC, exclusive titles seem to though. I think a large of the gaming community don't know of the announced PS2 version.

The guys at my local GameCrazy don't know.
 
Possibly but I doubt it was the annoucment of a PS2 version that casued that. I think there's two factors...

IMO it's a game that only appeals to a limited audience on the Gamecube, and like RE0 its not enough (one game) to warrent purchasing the console for those that don't have one. If there was another 5 or 6 games of it's quality level released at the same time, then I would expect more people to pick up the console.

After all, survival horror (or whatever similar genre you want to add it to), isn't the most popular genre these days (but still profitable).
 
Qroach said:
Possibly but I doubt it was the annoucment of a PS2 version that casued that. I think there's two factors...

IMO it's a game that only appeals to a limited audience on the Gamecube, and like RE0 its not enough (one game) to warrent purchasing the console for those that don't have one. If there was another 5 or 6 games of it's quality level released at the same time, then I would expect more people to pick up the console.

After all, survival horror (or whatever similar genre you want to add it to), isn't the most popular genre these days (but still profitable).
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Maybe it appeals to the section that purchased MP.
 
Johnny Awesome said:
It's understandable why Capcom had to port it to PS2.
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I'd say it's understandable why they did port it, they didn't have to... But more sold games=more revenue=more profit... so it was an obvious choice.
 
Something tells me Capcom will be a lot more careful about which company(s) it gets in bed with in the future. :)

In any case, I hope the game does well. It's certainly one of the best this generation.
 
Kolgar said:
Something tells me Capcom will be a lot more careful about which company(s) it gets in bed with in the future. :)

In any case, I hope the game does well. It's certainly one of the best this generation.
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Well, I guess they did a comparison between dev costs and estimated sales of their games plus those franchises handed out by Nintendo and thought it'd be a good idea. However, nobody expected that the sales would be somewhat disappointing...
 
What makes the sales of Resident Evil on GC disappointing?

Worldwide sales of GC games this generation:-

Resident Evil - GC - 1,240,000 (the same as RE:CVX on PS2)

Resident Evil 0 - GC - 1,190,000

Resident Evil: Outbreak - PS2 - under 1 million

Resident Evil: Dead Aim - PS2 - under 1 million

Resident Evil 4 is obviously going to sell a lot more then any of them (1.8m easy).

If Capcom are disappointing in Resident Evil sales on GC then they're idiots IMO. What did they expect?

BTW:-

Viewtiful Joe U.S sales:-

Viewtiful Joe (GC): 296,151
Viewtiful Joe (PS2): 73,256
 
It's obvious:

Viewtiful Joe is a Nintendo-style game so it sold well on the Cube compared to PS2, but RE4 is absolutely a PS2-style game and would probably have been better as a PS2 exclusive.

RE4 is the first truly new game in the franchise. For it to sell less than 1.5 million would be an utter fiasco. It might not have made it to 1.5 million on just the Cube.
 
Johnny Awesome said:
It's obvious:

Viewtiful Joe is a Nintendo-style game so it sold well on the Cube compared to PS2, but RE4 is absolutely a PS2-style game and would probably have been better as a PS2 exclusive.

RE4 is the first truly new game in the franchise. For it to sell less than 1.5 million would be an utter fiasco. It might not have made it to 1.5 million on just the Cube.
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i admire your spin, it's highly enterntaining.
 
Johnny Awesome said:
It's obvious:

Viewtiful Joe is a Nintendo-style game so it sold well on the Cube compared to PS2, but RE4 is absolutely a PS2-style game and would probably have been better as a PS2 exclusive.

RE4 is the first truly new game in the franchise. For it to sell less than 1.5 million would be an utter fiasco. It might not have made it to 1.5 million on just the Cube.
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Viewtiful Joe was more than a year old when ported to PlayStation 2... Its sales potential wasn't there anymore.

People also seem to forget why Capcom is porting Resident Evil 4 to PlayStation 2.
Capcom has had some serious financial difficulties over the last years, remember they shut down two studios (including Capcom Production Studio 6)? Remember they cancelled more than twenty titles at a given time? Remember they cancelled Dead Phoenix and Red Dead Revolver? Remember they restructured their structure into a 'Capcom R&D' and 'Clover Studio'? Some of their titles failed miserably like Dino Crisis 3 and PN03, they lost a lot of cash. How to get it back? Play safe and try to get as much out of your investments as possible.

It was already well known in 2004 that Resident Evil 4 was heading to PlayStation 2.
 
StarFox said:
What makes the sales of Resident Evil on GC disappointing?

Worldwide sales of GC games this generation:-

Resident Evil - GC - 1,240,000 (the same as RE:CVX on PS2)

Resident Evil 0 - GC - 1,190,000

Resident Evil: Outbreak - PS2 - under 1 million

Resident Evil: Dead Aim - PS2 - under 1 million

Resident Evil 4 is obviously going to sell a lot more then any of them (1.8m easy).

If Capcom are disappointing in Resident Evil sales on GC then they're idiots IMO. What did they expect?

BTW:-

Viewtiful Joe U.S sales:-

Viewtiful Joe (GC): 296,151
Viewtiful Joe (PS2): 73,256
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Nice job. Comparing main titles of the RE line to spinoffs. :rolleyes:

Anyway, RE used to be a multimillion selling franchise. Once it set its foot on GCN, it began to struggle to reach one million units sold, which is pretty bad for a franchise like RE. Capcom stabbed its audience in the back, and N fanboys weren´t enough to make up for them. They hoped for a move similar to Square´s, but their audience didn´t move with them (why would it? Almost all of their titles stayed on PS2).

The N fanboy audience is also quite flakey, they buy games because they´re exclusive, not due to the game itself. Look at VJ, the original sold past 300k, but now that part 2 wasn´t exclusive, it didn´t even managed to break 30k units in the US. I think it´s pretty easy to see why the first game sold in the first place.
 
Almasy

Res Evil and Res Evil 0 on GC sold around the same as the PS2 Res Evil game before them (RE:CVX). Which is just over what the DC version sold. The Res Evil franchise hasn't been a multi million seller since PS1 and even then its sales were dropping with each new game. So to say that RE started to not be a multi million seller the moment it set foot on the GC is just blatantly untrue.

Also while GC's audience do like an exclusive quality is undoubtedly also very important to them. Frankly IMO its harder to please the GC user base, you need a game to be of very good quality and often quite original or it won't sell. A 'problem' that PS2 and XBox doesn't seem to have. So while I agree that GC's user base in general put too much stock in exclusivity I think its patently untrue that they do so to the degree where exclusivity is all that matters.

BTW Viewtiful Joe 2 not being exclusive wasn't its only difference compared to the original game. One of the reasons Viewtiful Joe was so good was because it was extremely fresh and different. The sequel was just, well a sequel. It was a very good sequel but it didn't have the unique freshness of the original, which was a big part of what sold the original game. I own Viewtiful Joe, but I didn't but the sequel. Not because it wasn't exclusive but because it didn't look like it had enough new stuff to make me want to buy it.
 
Viewtiful Joe was more than a year old when ported to PlayStation 2... Its sales potential wasn't there anymore.
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So then what does this say about Res Evil 4's sales potential on PS2? Considering it will be released a year after the GC version.
 
Frankly IMO its harder to please the GC user base, you need a game to be of very good quality and often quite original or it won't sell. A 'problem' that PS2 and XBox doesn't seem to have.
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Harder to please? I don't think so, just give them anything with mario in it and the majority of the GC user base is estatic.

Meanwhile IMO it's harder to please people on PS2 and xbox, but generally the games on PS2/Xbox tend to appeal to a wider portion of each install base. To sum it up, GC fans only like nintendo style games, while PS2 and Xbox fans tend to like a variety of game styles & types. Your acting like original games don't sell on thos eplatforms, which clearly isn't true.
 
So then what does this say about Res Evil 4's sales potential on PS2? Considering it will be released a year after the GC version.
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different game, wider/different demographic.

btw, teasy whats with starting a jan2005 NPD thread and not adding in all the NPD sales info for jan 2005? ;)
 
Original games do sell on PS2 and XBox yes (clearly I didn't say otherwise) but so does utter dross. Put dark themes and violence in a half decent game and it will sell well on those two consoles. I don't see XBox's userbase as having a very varied taste in games either. Its mainly FPS's, racers and sports (plus dark gorey games of course). You don't see games like Sonic, Monkey Ball or Viewtiful Joe selling too well on XBox. PS2's user base certainly has very varied tastes, there are so many owners that pretty much any game can find an audience.

BTW, putting Mario in a shitty game won't make it sell well on GC.
 
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