[PS3] Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time

Arwin said:
Because up to this point, the biggest market for the R&C game hasn't yet moved on to the PS3. We'll have to wait and see if and how this changes over the Holidays.
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Well said. As great as the game is, the problem is the design is oriented toward a slightly younger demographic--one that hasn't traditionally purchased such expensive consoles. MP3 is almost the inverse, where lesser FPS sell better on the PS3/360 but the Wii demographic aren't jumping up and down for it quite yet.

Some of these issues are alleviated by time/install base growth (and price cuts). Of course current sales can re-inforce publisher and consumer trends as well, in a negative way. If consumers don't buy certain games on a platform, publishers will stop making them.
 
Yep, but that is exactly why a publisher like Sony will be supporting publishers like Insomniac to get those games out ... you need both games and price cuts to make your device appeal to a larger demographic, or you'll get the chicken/egg situation. That's why it is so important that a hardware platform is backed by good software. Once your platform has gained critical mass, other software will flock to the platform automatically. It's harder than it looks too, because you also have to think about what kind of target audience / demographic you are aiming for. You've critiqued Microsoft for not sufficiently trying to become the next PS2, but they are on a timeline - their hardware won't age gracefully - and they may be better off to try and get a richer demographic that has a very high yield, buys a lot of peripherals, and take it from there. I honestly have no idea at this point what will pay out more significantly, but Nintendo is showing that focussing your target audience can make you a lot of money if you match your hardware properly. In theory, you could end up with two of the platforms taking up two significantly different parts of the markets in such a way that it leaves very little room for the third platform. In practice, I think there's plenty of room for all three platforms (or four if you count PC, and in a sense previous gen hardware will continue to play a part as well as handhelds, of which there are now two players, etc.)

In the meantime, being the first significant game in a certain genre on a platform and being generally very good, you can end up having sold a lot of titles over the life-span of the console. If you look at the list of best selling titles on the PS2 for instance, it's surprising how many early PS2 titles that got significantly better iterations later on in the lifecycle, still have their best sales with the first version and they rank very high to boot. It's partly to do with building your name, and partly to do with reaching that Platinum status that allows you to sell to the next market segment in terms of cost of entry to the game.
 
Arwin said:
Yep, but that is exactly why a publisher like Sony will be supporting publishers like Insomniac to get those games out ... you need both games and price cuts to make your device appeal to a larger demographic, or you'll get the chicken/egg situation.
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Rather than chicken and egg, ideally the whole thing should be better managed. Software developers should have a good idea of who's buying the console at what period in its life cycle and be targeting that with genre releases. The console company should be providing a reasonable price timeline to help developers target key price-drops - eg. 'We'll have $200 at ... date' to which the developer says 'we'll produce this kiddy title to launch alongside that cut'. First/second parties should certainly be better directed. What makes this impractical is probably knowledge of the market and its interests+changes. Technological problems might delay times by an amount, but if the publishers and console companies and cooperating, they could delay title releases for a 'flourish' at a later release date. eg. RnC was probably produced too early. Now let's say it was released 6 months before a PS3 drop from $300 to $200, it'd probably be better to postpone it until the drop, and match price-drops with major releases to generate an extra push.

This is tying in with other comments in other threads, that perhaps should be consolidated into a market evaluation thread?
 
But RnC isn't exclusively a kiddy title. It's a title however that's being released in a tough month, but how much competition is it going to have over the next year? Insomniac made Resistance, and then one year later they produced RnC. Probably Resistance part 2 is in the works now and will be available next holiday, but so will RnC still be, it will have probably already have reached 500.000 easily (people buying it in an otherwise slow month) and with the PS3 at that point being 299 or less, demographics will keep opening up for the game for years to come. It's going to be very interesting to see where it stands come March.
 
Besides appeal, the other reasons could be competition from other titles. They are too many promising ones this fall, so people may be delaying purchases.
 
It's great fun. It kept me playing all last night. Great gameplay, graphics, and production values. I love the references to previous games, like the IRIS Q & A and the Plumber who "hardly recognized" them "in high-def."
 
As much as the PS3 is in dire need of good titles (I should know, I bought the PS3 when it first came out and have 0 games for it), I don't understand why Insomniac chose to release the game in Oct? Are they hoping that sales will pick up around Christmas. Maybe want enough players to sample it early so that it will be an item of choice when the big Christmas sales hit?

Then again with quite a few interesting titles just around the corned will it stand a chance?
 
My copy arrived yesterday. It could take a while until get to play it though. I´m busy playing the Witcher now, COD4 and Uncharted are around the corner.

I will take it to a friend tomorrow though to showcase it on his new TV.
 
macabre said:
My copy arrived yesterday. It could take a while until get to play it though. I´m busy playing the Witcher now, COD4 and Uncharted are around the corner.

I will take it to a friend tomorrow though to showcase it on his new TV.
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Make sure you play through the entire Sargasso level. That's my favorite :)
 
patsu said:
Besides appeal, the other reasons could be competition from other titles. They are too many promising ones this fall, so people may be delaying purchases.
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This is wishfull thinking.

If a game doesn't sell the first weeks with marketing, no sales data ever recorded (except for bundles and specials deals) will raise sales.

There is nothing that suggest that R&C will suddenly start selling a lot, AFTER lots of other promising titles this fall has released, with NEWER marketing campaigns and more fresh hype.
 
Ostepop said:
This is wishfull thinking.

If a game doesn't sell the first weeks with marketing, no sales data ever recorded (except for bundles and specials deals) will raise sales.

There is nothing that suggest that R&C will suddenly start selling a lot, AFTER lots of other promising titles this fall has released, with NEWER marketing campaigns and more fresh hype.
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Say that to Resistance.
 
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