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Holy crap, what does developer have to do to make a PSP game that sells well?

L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
I was off for the past two weeks and just now saw the September sales thread. Despite knowing that PSP software sales haven't been the greatest lately, I just can't believe that LocoRoco, Tekken DR and UGnG couldn't sell more than 25K copies in the US in the first month of their release (it was the first month, right?) Also, looking at relatively low sales sales of stuff like Daxter and Syphon Filter, I can't help but wonder what exactly is that developer needs to do to make a PSP game that sells well? Is Killzone going to sell? Is GTA:VCS, for that matter? Is the sales situation any different in Europe? I know LocoRoco got tons of advertising push there for example, but I have no idea how well it sold.

I don't even think PSP hardware sales are that bad. 160K in September should be simillar to what it sold last year this time I think - but I have to wonder what is going through the heads of some people developing PSP games right now, looking at games that could be more marketable than what they are making, still selling poorly.
 
K

klee123

Member
It's pretty hard when the cost price for the system itself is still more expensive than the competitor and also that their competitor's first party games are so popular.


Also, I believe piracy is one of the few reasons why PSP games sell so poorly in general.
 
D

Danj

Member
klee123 said:
Also, I believe piracy is one of the few reasons why PSP games sell so poorly in general.
Click to expand...

It'd be interesting to make a comparison graph with Memory Stick Duo prices over time and PSP games sales over time, to see if there's any correlation between Memory Stick prices dropping or bigger capacity sticks being introduced and a drop in sales.
 
D

DaCocoBrova

Finally bought a new PSP, but then pushed the demon onto someone else. Jesus.
People know the PSP is out there. If they wanted it, they'd buy it. Maybe piracy is eating up UMD sales... That or people not wanting to have to deal w/ the load times, because they are significant.
 
N

Netrunner2k2

Member
UncleGuito said:
I never see any PSP game advertisements. Sony needs to step it up.
Click to expand...


I don't either. I was watching Heroes last night and after I saw two DS commercials I was reminded that I havn't seen a PSP commercial since launch.
 
S

Striek

Member
Eh, 3+ software:hardware isn't really that poor compared to traditional handheld game sales (and the DS only had a tie ratio of ~1 more game per system for the month). Well it is poor, but not dire.

Problem is totally with Sony too. Marketing, marketing, marketing. Drop that price. Etc.

Tekken was in its third month, I think, btw.
 
D

DarienA

The black man everyone at Activision can agree on
klee123 said:
It's pretty hard when the cost price for the system itself is still more expensive than the competitor and also that their competitor's first party games are so popular.
Click to expand...

That of course fails to explain the fact that software sales in proportion to the current amt of SOLD PSP's is complete ass.

DaCocoBrova said:
People know the PSP is out there. If they wanted it, they'd buy it. Maybe piracy is eating up UMD sales... That or people not wanting to have to deal w/ the load times, because they are significant.
Click to expand...

The last 3 PSP games I played were:

Field Commander
Syphon Filter
Tekken DR

I noticed no significant load times in any of them.
 
K

klee123

Member
Another thing I reckon Sony should do is drop the price of their games from 40 to 30USD. 40USD to the mainstream gamers is just too much for a handheld game.
 
B

beelzebozo

Jealous Bastard
their format is just very unappealing to me as far as portable gaming goes.
load times and scratch potential ftl.
when they switch to a different format i'll be on board, regardless of cost.
 
J

jarrod

Banned
Striek said:
Eh, 3+ software:hardware isn't really that poor compared to traditional handheld game sales (and the DS only had a tie ratio of ~1 more game per system for the month). Well it is poor, but not dire.
Click to expand...
DS has legacy playback to factor in though... lots of people buy cheapo GBA games to play on it. Same happened with PS2 to a degree.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
I'm not sure if the piracy is a valid excuse. Yes, it's ridiculously easy to pirate on PSP, but so is on the X360, and games are selling really well on it.

Do The Mario said:
Port it to DS
Click to expand...
From what I could see, DS 3rd party games are mostly selling like crap too, the thing is, DS has Nintendo software to fall back on to, so it's mostly a non issue. With PSP, the sales problem exists for both 3rd and 1st party games right now.

Striek said:
Tekken was in its third month, I think, btw.
Click to expand...
I think it was released on August 25th, so it was probably it's most important month, unless it sold really well in those first five days in August?
 
S

sonycowboy

Member
Obviously the past several months have not been kind to the PSP, but overall, it's actually doing well enough.


LTD HW Sales
NDS 6,241,521
PSP 5,177,029


LTD SW Sales
NDS 19,998,826
PSP 17,750,076


TIE RATIO
NDS 3.20
PSP 3.43


LTD SW sales (excluding first party)
PSP 13,173,300
NDS 7,897,401

You should look at that 3rd party deal there. If you do the math, basically a DS buyer in the first 2 years has only bought 1 third party game.
 
S

sugarhigh4242

Banned
advertising, for sure.

The last PSP ad i saw was for Pursuit Force, and it was just another dustball commercial. They didn't even talk about the game directly.

You can't expect people to just know about a game like Daxter or Syphon Filter. Maybe a big name like GTA can get away with that, but even Liberty City Stories had a fair amount of TV ads behind it.

And i've yet to see a Tekken ad on TV. That game would move hardware if people knew it existed.
 
J

Jeff-DSA

Member
beelzebozo said:
their format is just very unappealing to me as far as portable gaming goes.
load times and scratch potential ftl.
when they switch to a different format i'll be on board, regardless of cost.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the UMD format stinks.

I really, really, wish that I could enjoy my PSP more. I pick up things here and there and am rarely satisfied. I want to see the handheld do well, but up to this point I can probably name 10-15 DS games that are all better than any PSP game.

I'm not exactly sure what Sony needs to do, but the PSP on the whole just isn't as enjoyable as the DS or even the GameBoy. The software is too bulky for a handheld and it's usually lacking that "portable feel" that I look for to give me a change of pace from console gaming.

In fact, I'd say there are as many hardware issues with the PSP as there are software issues.
 
P

Pallaris

Member
I don't think piracy is the problem either considering that playing games via unsavoury means on the DS is a million times easier for the average joe.
 
S

Striek

Member
Marconelly said:
I think it was released on August 25th, so it was probably it's most important month, unless it sold really well in those first five days in August?
Click to expand...
July 25th.

33k July
49k August
??k September


Edit; 24k for September

106k in 3 months isn't that bad
 
R

Ranger X

Member
The PSP may just have some identity problem.
The UMD went to the crapper and in the meantime the console didn't distinguish itself with games. Now it's a bit late to begin it seems or it's gonna be a slow start.
Sony should have prevented all those cheap "renamed PS2 games" and ports and tried to bring a library of unique titles and IP.
Now when there is an original game it does bomb. I guess Vice City Stories will be a good indication as to know if the PSP will ever truly take off.
 
S

sugarhigh4242

Banned
Also, neither Madden for PSP has really delivered.

Madden on the go could be a surefire killer-app for the masses.

Except EA has taken the 2 weakest Madden's yet, and watered them down further for the PSP. They should just take the 2004 game and inject the current roster into it. I don't even like football games, and i'd consider buying that.
 
W

winston_pr

Member
beelzebozo said:
their format is just very unappealing to me as far as portable gaming goes.
load times and scratch potential ftl.
when they switch to a different format i'll be on board, regardless of cost.
Click to expand...

I agree. UMD sucks. Had it been a 12gb HD combined with Network Stored games, thinner unit etc. Also, to be honest, the shouldebuttons and other buttons just feel pretty crappy. With tweaks it could've been damn interesting.
 
C

Chû Totoro

Member
PSP is for most of buyers more a multimedia device than a console...
They're listening to mp3, watching movies (no UMDs) and sometimes they're playing...
And of course the piracy thing is certainly a bad point for the game sales.
 
M

Matix

Member
Even though piracy is probably an issue, I doubt its the core problem with the PSP lack of software sales. Pirating exists pretty much on every gaming platform around, but normally its not the cause of a console demise. Hell, for the most part its easier/safer to pirate tons of games on the DS compared to the PSP, but has this effected the enormous success Nintendo has had with the handheld.. ?!

IMHO, PSP biggest problem is Sony themselves. They have obviously neglected their creation, like some bastard child (E3-06, TGS-06, the entire year of 2006 for example). They have done little to promote the worth/potential of the handheld to masses, which has easily equal up to massive disappointments. Still I believe the PSP future can be so much brighter, if Sony actually puts worthwhile support behind their little gem.
 
T

TiVo

Member
LOL @ the idiots walking around with the PSP using it as an MP3 player('cause that used to be me). My PSP honeymoon was over months after I bought it. I never bought a UMD movie in my life. I have an entire DVD collection which I ripped to my PSP and now to my video Ipod.

Spend more time and fun with the DS. Warmed up the car the other day and in the 15 minutes it took I logged onto Wi-Fi and played 2 people in dart throwing(Clubhouse Games). Usually when I take a dump I get up and wipe immediately but with the DS I find myself sitting their for almost hours in my filth cursing at the snakers in Mario Kart or yelling Objection.

IMO it is too late for the PSP. Go to most PSP forums and you find the PSP owners who are quick to call Nintendo "kiddy" and the DS as a gimmick talking about NES, SNES, GBA roms. If the PSP gets that touchscreen overlay it will be moments away from playing DS roms.
 
J

Juice

Member
Jeff-DSA said:
Yeah, the UMD format stinks.

I really, really, wish that I could enjoy my PSP more. I pick up things here and there and am rarely satisfied. I want to see the handheld do well, but up to this point I can probably name 10-15 DS games that are all better than any PSP game.

I'm not exactly sure what Sony needs to do, but the PSP on the whole just isn't as enjoyable as the DS or even the GameBoy. The software is too bulky for a handheld and it's usually lacking that "portable feel" that I look for to give me a change of pace from console gaming.

In fact, I'd say there are as many hardware issues with the PSP as there are software issues.
Click to expand...

Blasphemy! You can't say that on GAF!
QFT

Danj said:
It'd be interesting to make a comparison graph with Memory Stick Duo prices over time and PSP games sales over time, to see if there's any correlation between Memory Stick prices dropping or bigger capacity sticks being introduced and a drop in sales.
Click to expand...

Danj, that graph wouldn't be so interesting because of two heavily confounding factors:
1. Over time, more people "getting into homebrew" are likely to have either upgraded or purchased a PSP with upgraded firmware that is far less trivial (or impossible) to rollback and get devhook running.

2. Over time, UMD iso files of major games have generally grown from the 30MB-300MB of most games in the first year along with MemoryStick capacities.
 
J

jjasper

Member
Matix said:
IMHO, PSP biggest problem is Sony themselves. They have obviously neglected their creation, like some bastard child (E3-06, TGS-06, the entire year of 2006 for example). They have done little to promote the worth/potential of the handheld to masses, which has easily equal up to massive disappointments. Still I believe the PSP future can be so much brighter, if Sony actually puts worthwhile support behind their little gem.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. It is the PS3's fault
 
G

Gigglepoo

Member
Marketing has a lot to do with it. If you buy an NDS, you are buying it to play games. If you buy a PSP, games are just one thing you can do for it. But the focus is just not there. We know there are X number of millions of systems out there, but we have no idea how many of those systems are owned by "gamers." If you buy a system because it's cool and you want to watch movies on it, you aren't going to buy games. The PSP clearly has a strong lineup at this point. I can't think of any other reason games aren't moving other than the marketing and the people who own these things.

There is a similar situation with Nintendo 3rd parties. People buy Nintendo system for Nintendo games. It doesn't matter if the 3rd party games are great or genre defining, Nintendo owners buy the system for Nintendo games. PSP owners may just be buying the system for reasons other than great games.
 
M

Mr. Wednesday

Banned
Make it available outside of the slow-loading battery-sucking UMD format. Hopefully in the future DLC will not just be limited to demos and PSone games.
 
K

kaizoku

I'm not as deluded as I make myself out to be
I always feel like I am in tune with the mainstream gamer, I border on being one myself cept I dont buy mindless licensed crap.

Simple reason is, people just dont care for the games. They might be really good, but theres a lot of other stuff out there thats more compelling and cheaper.

Not many PSP games make me go "wow".
 
J

jerrymaguire

Member
i bought the psp on japanese launch. i don't use any sort of emulators or devhook or anything like that on it. so far, i have bought 3 games for it. if there is a game out there that is appealing to me i will go and buy it, but at the moment i dunno what the next purchase will be.
 
M

Mistwalker

Member
Agreed that Sony has pretty much dropped the ball on pushing the PSP as a must-have portable gaming experience.

To their credit, they've admitted as much (more than once), stating their focus is all on the PS3 launch for now but they haven't forgotten the PSP.

Then again...you'd think SCE could market two things at once, at this point.
 
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