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NPD Sales Results for February 2012 [Up 3: Kingdoms Of Amalur, Syndicate, Asura]

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
Dat Skyrim affect perhaps helped boost Reckoning sales? At least Reckoning is something different than being another shooter. FPS games are a dime a dozen nowadays, regardless of quality.

It's really interesting that Skyrim 360 basically outsold FF13-2 360 for the month.
 

TheOddOne

Member
Syndicate is a true EA game though. They own the property but it was just being handled by an outside developer. Funny thing is Reckoning outsold Syndicate by a lot and that was an EA partners game with 0 advertising.
I totally forgot that Reckoning was a EA partners game. That makes this situation even sadder.
 

Mrbob

Member
It's really interesting that Skyrim 360 basically outsold FF13-2 360 for the month.

Wow. Shows how high Bethesda has risen and how far SE has fallen.

Also, I bet Reckoning is the second best seller for the month if it included Steam and Origin numbers.
 
I know this is just a personal anecdote, but Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game I've every purchased, and XIII-2 is the only FF (other than XIV) that I don't own. I'll pick it up eventually, but the "I need this now" mentality I've always had with FF is kind of gone now.
 

DMeisterJ

Banned
Most games from EA partner program have bombed, Crysis 2 being the exception. I'm worried about Insomnia's Overstrike.

The whole EA Parner's program is weird to me. So EA publishes the game, but doesn't own the rights to it. How does it help EA if it becomes successful? What stops a game from being made by a developer and published by EA, and then the dev getting a different publisher for a sequel, effectively getting EA to market a game that they may never see another dollar from?

I think the idea behind partners is good for developers, but it doesn't give enough of an incentive to the publishers.

As far as Overstrike, it'll likely do lackluster numbers. Insomniac aren't some amazing caliber developers, and most of their recent games have failed to sell more than average. Going multi-plat and losing the special-ness you get from being exclusive on one platform, and developing a game that no one is even talking about isn't gonna help them. Is EA going to give up stage time to Insomniac at E3 in order for them to push Overstrike, like Sony did for the Resistance series? I just don't see anything other than a 'meh' game with 'meh' sales when I see that game. I think the worst thing Insomniac did was to leave the guaranteed money of working with SCE. The videogame business is filled with developers who go under after a game doesn't sell and they lose support. Even after all of their spectacular failures with SCE, they were still pumping out games. Not sure EA is gonna be in the business for that.
 
Doesn't make sense to me. FFXIII sold more than XII. By your logic, should imply XII strengthened the brand.

Claiming that FFXIII damaged the brand because the next Final Fantasy game sold less copies, while also claiming that FFXII "of course" damaged the brand even though the Final Fantasy game that came after it sold more copies, is a clear case of cognitive dissonance.

But FFXII didn't sell less than FFXIII.

Shipped /= Sold

FFXII is still in the hands of more consumers last we heard.

And even then FFXII was the last FF of its generation, so like FF9 it's sales were bound to be low as the system it was on was close to dead.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
SE made XIII-2 because it was quick and cheap to turn out. Playing the two back-to-back was an eye-opener.

Just compare it to X-2, which recycled scene assets in much the same way, but had a completely new battle system and a ton of flashy new CG. If you add in X-2 International, that version had additional scenes, a 40hr plus monster capture/breeding/arena system and a whole additional game "Last Mission".

There is absolutely no comparison in terms of units required to turn a profit.
 
The whole EA Parner's program is weird to me. So EA publishes the game, but doesn't own the rights to it. How does it help EA if it becomes successful? What stops a game from being made by a developer and published by EA, and then the dev getting a different publisher for a sequel, effectively getting EA to market a game that they may never see another dollar from?

I think the more important question is, why doesn't EA do any marketing for their EA Partner games? This is what's scaring us fans of the developers under that program. Do you need to sell your rights to get some marketing?
 

Massa

Member
I think the more important question is, why doesn't EA do any marketing for their EA Partner games? This is what's scaring us fans of the developers under that program. Do you need to sell your rights to get some marketing?

I think it goes on a game-by-game basis. For example, Syndicate and Shadows of the Damned ran way over budget in development so EA simply cut their losses instead of throwing more money into marketing.

EA also said somewhat recently that they would focus on internally developed titles more.
 

dionysus

Yaldog
I think the more important question is, why doesn't EA do any marketing for their EA Partner games? This is what's scaring us fans of the developers under that program. Do you need to sell your rights to get some marketing?

Perhaps it would be better to think of EA Partner as giving independent developers access to EA's distribution system and retailer relationships and not as a typical publishing agreement. Aren't most EA partner games self-funded by the developer? I am sure there is flexibility in agreements but the more promotion EA does the bigger the cut they demand from the game, at least that is what I suppose.
 

Saty

Member
I think you have to go deeper to explain Syndicate's sales than it being a generic fps sent to die. Almost everybody expected the game to struggle but not that bad. Measly 26k copies in 4 days? I thought it's going to around Bulletstorm's first month (~270k) if somewhat lower, but it really tanked.

Maybe Bulletstorm wasn't as generic but it had to compete with KZ3. Both Bulletstorm and Syndicate don't have a competetive MP mode so i don't know if attributing its very low sales to that is feasible.

The Darkness II is also fps lacking competetive MP and it did better (~100k i think someone here noted), ofc nothing to write home about. D2 also had a 4 player co-op missions, much like Syndicate, so i say Syndicate was hurt by D2 launching earlier in the month.

Syndicate being turned to FPS wasn't a consideration at all for your typical 360\PS3 gamer.
The Darkness II being an IP that is fresher in the minds of current console owners also probably helped it.
 
LOL, what the heck is the point of those Azura's Wrath and Syndicate numbers? They each only had four days...

Look. This excuse gets trotted out everything single month for dozens upon dozens of games (and in some cases, hardware), and I cannot recall a single time when the second month ever bore fruit for the game. Either it tanks straight out or it slowly, over a long period of time, becomes evergreen.

You think AW and Syndicate qualify for that?
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Look. This excuse gets trotted out everything single month for dozens upon dozens of games (and in some cases, hardware), and I cannot recall a single time when the second month ever bore fruit for the game. Either it tanks straight out or it slowly, over a long period of time, becomes evergreen.

You think AW and Syndicate qualify for that?
GTA3, off the top of my head. It didn't go critical mass until a few months down the line.
 

GavinGT

Banned
Borderlands.

And you can reach a hell of a lot more than 40K people without having to appeal to kids or a mass market.

Borderlands is a great counterpoint to my argument. But it's sort of special in that it offers an open world and a super long campaign. That was clearly enough to make people think they were getting their money's worth. With Syndicate, however, I feel that they didn't do a good enough job convincing players that there's enough content to keep them engaged for weeks or months to come. There are tons of things to upgrade, sure, but what's the point when you're just running through the same set of linear levels over and over again?

Of course, it was also hurt by zero advertising and next to zero brand recognition.
 

TheOddOne

Member
The whole EA Parner's program is weird to me. So EA publishes the game, but doesn't own the rights to it. How does it help EA if it becomes successful? What stops a game from being made by a developer and published by EA, and then the dev getting a different publisher for a sequel, effectively getting EA to market a game that they may never see another dollar from?

I think the idea behind partners is good for developers, but it doesn't give enough of an incentive to the publishers.

As far as Overstrike, it'll likely do lackluster numbers. Insomniac aren't some amazing caliber developers, and most of their recent games have failed to sell more than average. Going multi-plat and losing the special-ness you get from being exclusive on one platform, and developing a game that no one is even talking about isn't gonna help them. Is EA going to give up stage time to Insomniac at E3 in order for them to push Overstrike, like Sony did for the Resistance series? I just don't see anything other than a 'meh' game with 'meh' sales when I see that game. I think the worst thing Insomniac did was to leave the guaranteed money of working with SCE. The videogame business is filled with developers who go under after a game doesn't sell and they lose support. Even after all of their spectacular failures with SCE, they were still pumping out games. Not sure EA is gonna be in the business for that.
I have no idea how the business stucture of the works, but I have some ideas how it might work. The companies get to keep their IP's, but get top tier marketing from a big publisher (in theory of course). This actually has done for a long time in the industry. EA pays some aspect of the development (instead of all), markets it and if it fails they can cut it loose. If it's a succes, tighter contracts and get to keep it under their umbrella for a long time.

EA had promoted their various partner games during big events though. The first thing that comes to mind is Shadows of The Damned, in which the brought the creative team on stage. For me, the partner program feels like they wanted to publish more risky games just to show the public that they support new games. They really didn't believe in the titles, it was just a generated for publicity and look how "edgy" they are.

On the other hand, there was a management shakeup more recently and the result of that is that EA Play (their casual business) got put on the forefront. Heck, the guy who use to run the EA partners program is now focusing on the casual brand. Maby it's a little bit of both my observations though, but to see EA drop the ball so much on the partner program is baffeling — it's like they want it or deliberately to fail.
 
Hmm...

So google tells me that Final Fantasy X-2 did 402K in November 2003. (Can anyone confirm this?)

Less days in November vs full month February - should kind of cancel out?

But I'm not seeing how FFXIII-2 is that big of a bomba.

EDIT: Oh it was posted earlier in the thread... yeah not seeing the bomba. Japan - definitely. US - seems in line with lesser sales for FF in general.
 

Massa

Member
Look. This excuse gets trotted out everything single month for dozens upon dozens of games (and in some cases, hardware), and I cannot recall a single time when the second month ever bore fruit for the game. Either it tanks straight out or it slowly, over a long period of time, becomes evergreen.

You think AW and Syndicate qualify for that?

What do you think the sales trend for a game looks like after the first week?
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
The whole EA Parner's program is weird to me. So EA publishes the game, but doesn't own the rights to it. How does it help EA if it becomes successful? What stops a game from being made by a developer and published by EA, and then the dev getting a different publisher for a sequel, effectively getting EA to market a game that they may never see another dollar from?

Almost certainly a "right of first refusal" clause.
 

jcm

Member
If she is a talking about "sold to consumers" then I can belive her.

FFXII's last shipped number that I know of is 5.2M. FFXIII has shipped 6.2M units, and was being reordered into 2011. It seems unlikely to me that there's still a million unsold FFXIII on retailers shelves right now. In any event, as far I know there's no evidence pointing definitively in either direction, which is why I asked for clarification.
 
It's the end of the generation folks, the IPs are all set standard in the consumer's mind. I'm pretty sure this always happens.

At this point, I really just don't see any new IP being a runaway success, developers and publishers are going to wait for next-gen to develop new IPs.

The problem is that at this point there are WAY too many games for customers to buy.

You can buy a new 360 and get, whatever, Syndicate or Asura's Wrath, but then you look at the shelf and you see CoD4, CoD MW2, Halo 3, 4, Gears of War, Skyrim, Oblivion, etc.

You don't really have a lot of games but you have heard your friends talking about it before. So then you can either buy a new game like Asura's Wrath at full price, or you can buy this SLEW of older games are much more discounted prices
 

jcm

Member
Yes.
FFXIII is massively overshipped. It has sold less to consumers in Japan and the US, with Europe ending at about the same as XII.

Again, for that to be true, there would need to be 1M units on shelves. It would be very surprising for that to happen particularly when 700K of those units shipped after the game's release date.

Do you have actual numbers to back up your assertion?
 
Again, for that to be true, there would need to be 1M units on shelves. It would be very surprising for that to happen particularly when 700K of those units shipped after the game's release date.

Do you have actual numbers to back up your assertion?

It's possible they are still in the distrubtion centres. Games don't go directly from the factory to the shelves.
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
Again, for that to be true, there would need to be 1M units on shelves. It would be very surprising for that to happen particularly when 700K of those units shipped after the game's release date.

Do you have actual numbers to back up your assertion?

USA 100k less
Japan 400k less
European sales of XIII would have to be really outstanding.
 

FLEABttn

Banned
I'm really not liking the use of "generic" being a code word for "they made an isometric game I like an FPS and now I'm bitter".

Syndicate is one of the better single player shooters this gen. Those sales are just sad.
 
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