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Media Create Sales: 04/13 - 04/19
- Thread starter PantherLotus
- Start date
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
MoogPaul said:
Even if it was, imagine that you're developing a $50 million game, and you want to do $20 million in marketing...
... and Microsoft tells you if you spend $5 million porting (which will invariably increase your net sales), they'll cover the $20 million marketing... and they'll subsidize near-100% of the porting costs, send you teams to help work on it and port it, share technology... AND they'll give you $5 a unit you sell extra.
Now, obviously $50m/$5m/$20m/$5 a unit are made up numbers. Of course. But let's run with those for now. And people are saying more than incentives are necessary?
Again, like I said, there is precisely one "proven" case of "moneyhatting" this generation, and it was a loan, not a cheque. We're also discussing Square Enix, a company who released a product exclusively for Xbox 360 (Infinite Undiscovery) that was funded near-fully by Microsoft / co-published / co-marketed / produced for incentives.
I don't see what the case against incentives is here.
near
Gold Member
Stumpokapow said:
What do you mean by executive to executive bribes? The business entity concept states that financial affairs of the business and the owner are seperate. The business accounts are only concerned with the financial transactions of the business itself, not the actions of the owner. Wada 'could' have recieved some money from Microsoft, on a personal agreement. The concept would apply here.
I'm not saying that this was the case, I really don't know what to think of this allegation to be honest. But I don't think you can say that it didn't happen based on S-E's financial reports which didn't highlight the transaction.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Airkiru said:
That's what I just described.
You are suggesting a bribe.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Airkiru said:
You're the CEO of a company. You're offered, say, $20 million to sabotage your own company from another company. You take the payment and somehow manage to pull the wool over shareholders and greenlight a money-losing project. Your company loses, you profit.
... and your premise is that this is not likely to be found criminal on the part of either the payer or the payee?
They barely had it running on 360Kagari said:
I think development has been moved to some other team (TOSE?) and that's why Square is coy about development. It's been more than six months now, so I would figure any exclusivity incentivization (if there WAS any) has expired.
I think it's really important Sony launch at the same time as MS next gen with the same level of support and tools. And if they can't do that after what they did this gen, they should go home.
Less competition means more potential sales despite a smaller theoretical audience. Other IPs have made the transition much more gracefully. Capcom leads the way yet again with Devil May Cry and Resident Evil. Blockbuster franchises MGS, Halo, GTA, Call Of Duty etc remain viable on current-gen platforms to say the very least.Stumpokapow said:
Even if individual entries may be down slightly on the predecessors, they all more than justified their investment at this point.
Star Ocean did not fare so well in the US, and AFAIK it's one of the better performers in the genre still (it and Lost Odyssey). Whatever excuse might exist for that is also evidence that betting on the US, and on Xbox 360 only at that, for JRPGs, is maybe not so wise.
I'm curious to see how White Knight Chronicles sells in the US. Even if it bombs proportionally to the relative install base sizes against the Xbox 360, which is possible, we're still only talking about a <=100k difference in sales. Compared to what can be gained in Japan by putting the game on the PS3, that's a completely acceptable loss.
near
Gold Member
Stumpokapow said:
Depends on the perception then I guess. If you view this that way, then yeah, I agree with you that that is a bribe. Wait, we're still talking about just FFXIII right? or are you talking about all those other games? If it's the latter I still agree with you, but the former, no.
distantmantra said:
The PS3 version is still listed on http://na.square-enix.com/remnant/landing.html.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Airkiru said:
It doesn't depend on perception. Paying another company's CEO to manipulate the decisions of that company is bribery, and it's criminal. What you are suggesting is criminal.
Here's a five minute Google overview:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_41416.html
http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.asp?StoryId=1093245077
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/b...acircpound1m-payment-was-no-bribe-640765.html
http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2007/12/10/daily33.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/495/1043495/recent-siemens-cfo-fingered-in-bribery-scandal
If your claim is that MS is engaging in criminal bribery of CEOs to get games, fine. We can look at that claim. But it's important that you understand that's what your claim constitutes.
Tylahedras
Banned
Stumpokapow said:
MS is throwing money at SE, that's hardly criminal. Good for square, taking advantage of the situation. That's a sign of good leadership rather then bad as far as I'm concerned.
near
Gold Member
Stumpokapow said:
For starters I thought you was refering to just FFXIII. In which case I said it's a matter of perception.
You're the CEO of a company. You're offered, say, $20M to port software to a new platform. You take the money on the basis that you never had any objections in the first place to porting to that system. That company spoke to you directly rather than through your company.
This is a private transaction. An accounting concept that states that things like that cannot be included in the business accounts.
Yes I know the definition of 'bribe'. But I was objecting to your idea of this being a bribe because it doesn't constitute to the business entity concept.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
I should shortly have this in a form where you all can use this, but I'm pleased enough that my first few tests are working out generally as wished that I want to show them off.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Tylahedras said:
Okay please read the thread.
Me: MS is throwing money at Square, but not writing cheques.
Other people: NO THEY ARE WRITING GIANT CHEQUES
Me: Where's the evidence in the financial info of either company?
Airkiru: Maybe they're writing a cheque directly to Wada to hide the money.
Me: That's bribery.
Airkiru: No it's not.
Me: Yes it is--list of links.
Airkiru said:
That would still be bribery. It is against the law, as a CEO, to take external payment personally and use that to influence the direction of your company. How is that not clear from the 5 examples offered?
It's not important whether you're taking a payment on the side to do a good idea, a mediocre idea, or a bad idea. What you are suggesting is bribery. It's just more patently obvious if it's a bad idea--which it would need to be for us to assume that MS needs to offer money at all. If it's a good idea, why can't we accept that Square Enix is doing all their decisions of their own volition?
But it's bribery.
Business entity concept is intended so that CEOs can't loot their own company coffers, and that companies don't need to account for all the cash CEOs have stashed--not so that CEOs can take payments on the side to buy influence within the company.
Tylahedras said:
It's only good leadership if that exclusivity contract generates more revenue than a muli platform approach. So far this tactic has exploded in Wada's fase. Their 360 games sell like crap in Japan and sell like crap in the west. SE must have hoped that the bigger 360 market in the west would make up for the lost sales in Japan (if those games had been released on the PS3 instead) but that just didn't happen. They probably could have sold more games with exclusive PS3 JRPGs and they certainly would have sold more games by going multiplatform right from the start.
SE isn't the only Japanese company to have fallen in Microsoft's exclusivity trap. Namco is equally guilty of this of course.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Stumpokapow is on fire today. Holy flipping spit.
It's a boring week in terms of sales, gotta make up for it somehow.
bmf said:
It's a boring week in terms of sales, gotta make up for it somehow.
Grampa Simpson
Banned
What the hell happened to this thread? This is just stupid.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Are we sure we can trust TOSE with anything? This is a team that couldn't do last-gen ports on more powerful hardware with 100% accuracy. All of the technical issues in SO4 and TLR are simply going to jump a dozen-fold if they're handling the PS3 versions.
Joe211 said:Maybe you have bad taste?
I mean I played Chaos Legion on my ps2 and for me it was one of the best game on the machine
That's helpful, thanks. Yeah, the game sucks, everyone in the official thread who loves it are just all crazy, and famitsu was just bought off. I'm sorry you don't have any HD JRPGs to play - don't take it out on me.
AranhaHunter said:
On the contrary, FFXIII is probably the least likely to be moneyhatted - it's the one SE property that remains a major-league $$$ player in the US, and therefore generates the highest financial benefit in being ported to the leading HD system in the US.
near
Gold Member
Stumpokapow said:
Would it be a bribe if I'm paying Wada directly to give me a game? I skimmed some of those articles and didn't notice anything in that sense.
I'm just under the assumption that a bribe occurs when you're paid money to hinder the judgement of someone, and therefore becomes corruption when that decision affects someone else; illegally. Bearing in mind what I said above, if that is a bribe, then I'm absolutely wrong, and I was simply confused with the context of the situation.
Thats not really what I'm saying though. I'm just saying that as a CEO you have an obligation to keep your personal finances seperate from your firms.
MarzipaNMOS
Member
Wow, Oboro sold almost identically to OS's second:first week ratio (23.3% compared to 23.2%). 14.6% is OS's second week to ltd ratio, and so applying that to Oboro we get 38.4k. 63.1% is OS's first week to ltd ratio, and applying that to Oboro we get 38.0k. Looks fairly obvious where it'll end up, unless it really is supply constrained to a significant degree.
Mr. Wonderful
Member
I think we're all going to buy Wii MotionPlus and then in a year and a half from now, Nintendo will reveal the Wii 2 with the Wii MotionPlus already built-in and we're all going to be like "Why the heck did I drop $40 buying this accessory that only had a mid-level of support in that time frame?"botticus said:
AranhaHunter
Banned
Tylahedras said:
Some folks believe that MS did not moneyhat 3rd parties for their exclusives and instead they only offered incentives to 3rd parties. They want prove that MS did in fact moneyhat 3rd parties.
Other folks believe that MS did moneyhat 3rd parties, they might've included other incentives as well, but moneyhat was involved. They want prove that MS did not moneyhat 3rd parties.
Of course neither party will be able to provide indisputable evidence so here we are. Insiders might know, but they ain't gonna say shit, so here's a case of he said she said. Look around and research and see what makes the most sense, I believe MS did moneyhat 3rd parties.
bmf said:
I agree.
Anyways, I want to see the Top 50 this week, I'm wondering if the PS3 boost was able to keep Demon's Soul and Yakuza 3 in the charts.
Pristine_Condition
Member
Stumpokapow said:
If I was suggesting something, I'd suggest a nice travel junket where "Industry Leaders" are invited to "consult" on "future products" or give a speech or panel on "industry leadership" and are payed a "consultation fee" or "speaking fee" (naturally) as well as all the food/drinks/ect. (ect. being the really fun stuff) the "industry leader" wants and...oh, wow...you won the grand prize in our golf tournament/whatever too!
...It happens all the time. It ain't bribes, it's business.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
OK, I think I've got things working as intended; tell me if I've unintentionally busted something. Now the Japanese Software Sales Line Graph Generator will allow you to use Group IDs as well as Game IDs (which are still the default). Beyond that, it should work the same way. The end visuals are changed very slightly--now rather than just the ID number showing in the legend, it's preceded by "G" if it's a game, or "Gr" if it's a group. While I was meddling with this I also made it right-align the ID numbers, which looks a bit better.
Just as a general note, these group values are bound to be less accurate than the individual game data. When we get a new LTD for a game, that's it--that's the LTD. However, every point for a group is just the summation of the latest available LTD for each game at that point in time, so some are bound to be outdated. Still, much better than nothing.
BEHIND THE SCENES for the few of you who go deeper and use things like the direct SQL access; the rest of you can ignore the rest of this post. My initial plan was just to have all the summing of game numbers done from within linecomparegamejp.php itself, but I soon realized that seemed like a heck of a lot of repetitive work to result in the same set of numbers over and over and over when any given group line was requested. So I set up a new table, GroupWeekly. It basically mirrors SoftwareWeekly, except that instead of GameID it uses GroupID, and there's no Rank. I'll just need to remember to run the file that generates the GroupWeekly data when new sales are added or new groups are created.
There is one especially goofy thing introduced in this table to most simply work with all the existing things on Garaph, though. For individual games, it was easy to set a 0 point at the game's release date. I wanted something similar for game release dates in the groups, so a 400K opening week wouldn't appear as a long diagonal since the last number from the previous game. So I needed to set these values which went between the usual sales weeks. However, I've always used the beginning date to define a sales week, so if I had a game listed with 303K in its first week of "2008-11-17", how should I represent its zero point at its launch date of 2008-11-20, which is apparently after? The solution was to subtract 6 days from the actual release date. Then, any programs that automatically know that a week of "2008-11-17" really means the numbers are through November 23 will also know that the in-between date of "2008-11-14" really means the number is for November 20.
Just as a general note, these group values are bound to be less accurate than the individual game data. When we get a new LTD for a game, that's it--that's the LTD. However, every point for a group is just the summation of the latest available LTD for each game at that point in time, so some are bound to be outdated. Still, much better than nothing.
BEHIND THE SCENES for the few of you who go deeper and use things like the direct SQL access; the rest of you can ignore the rest of this post. My initial plan was just to have all the summing of game numbers done from within linecomparegamejp.php itself, but I soon realized that seemed like a heck of a lot of repetitive work to result in the same set of numbers over and over and over when any given group line was requested. So I set up a new table, GroupWeekly. It basically mirrors SoftwareWeekly, except that instead of GameID it uses GroupID, and there's no Rank. I'll just need to remember to run the file that generates the GroupWeekly data when new sales are added or new groups are created.
There is one especially goofy thing introduced in this table to most simply work with all the existing things on Garaph, though. For individual games, it was easy to set a 0 point at the game's release date. I wanted something similar for game release dates in the groups, so a 400K opening week wouldn't appear as a long diagonal since the last number from the previous game. So I needed to set these values which went between the usual sales weeks. However, I've always used the beginning date to define a sales week, so if I had a game listed with 303K in its first week of "2008-11-17", how should I represent its zero point at its launch date of 2008-11-20, which is apparently after? The solution was to subtract 6 days from the actual release date. Then, any programs that automatically know that a week of "2008-11-17" really means the numbers are through November 23 will also know that the in-between date of "2008-11-14" really means the number is for November 20.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
No important reason. It being the first date listed on all the source sales pages and GAF sales threads it's just how I started doing it. Since we can always tell the last date of the week given the first or vice-versa it hasn't really made a difference until now.donny2112 said:
First, a view would still essentially end up doing the same work over and over again; I'd just be moving the query code outside any individual PHP file. Just seems more efficient to make it a table of static data to be read from.
Second, I know single SQL queries can get much more complicated than I've ever done, but I'm not sure how I'd set this up in such a way. Without throwing a bunch of code into this thread (though if anyone wants to see it in PM that's fine), what I've had it do is first do a query that generates a list of dates the group will need values for: any weeks in which any games had a new weekly or LTD number, along with all the release dates.
Then I have it loop through those values in PHP, and for each relevant date it creates two new queries. One finds the sum of all weekly values for a given date (that one I could see how to combine with the initial "get a set of dates" query). The other finds the maximum LTD value every individual game has had up to and including that date, then sums them.
JoshuaJSlone said:
Actually trying to put one together, it's not as straightforward as I thought. Regardless, it's definitely faster and less intensive to pre-generate the query results once a week instead of having them be generated every time someone executes the query, so your idea should still be faster for the end-user.
Liabe Brave
Member
I agree with this--very few RPGs besides the Square biggies have ever done well in the West--but doesn't that argue for bcn-ron's point? He's saying that the advantages of the 360 userbase in the West don't offset the advantages of the PS3 userbase in Japan, given the genre. Historically poor performance of JRPGs in the West, regardless of platform, isn't exactly a strike against that idea!Stumpokapow said:
Y2Kev said:
I suppose, but if everyone acted like Nintendo, I doubt Nintendo would be in the software situation they are. The reason Nintendo is where they are is because they are fiscally conservative while other companies are apparently willing to lose billions of dollars to attract games to their platform. Which is to say, Nintendo (present day, mind you) really isn't doing anything wrong, but in comparison they seem stingy, because Microsoft and Sony are so eager to bleed money for years on end.
If everyone handled their business in a fiscally responsible fashion, I doubt there would be such a predilection towards Microsoft and aversion from Nintendo.
With all that said, I think this is occurring because Microsoft can afford it. It's a money war, basically. Microsoft is not known for the razor thin margins they run in the E&D divisions: remember that their overall profit margins are near 30%, frequently even higher than Nintendo's. Thus, the 360 does not fit their typical, mature business approach. Why would Microsoft allow this division to run at such low margins? I believe it's reasonable to conclude that they're willing to bleed money in order to force their competitors to bleed money -- precisely because they can bleed for a lot longer than Sony or Nintendo can.
Y2Kev said:
They have some of the top selling software this gen. At least 5 of the 10 top are from Nintendo.
If you mean sales charts in general , than Wii and DS software usually dominated the charts. The DS still does. Actually the Wii and DS still have more software in the top 30 than the PS3, PSP, or 360.
onipex said:
No, I assume he means third party support. Do you agree that the Wii and DS have both received far less support from third parties than one would presume given their market position?
If you disagree, why? If you agree (and I assume you do), how do you explain this? It is reasonable to believe the Sony and particularly Microsoft offer far more financial incentives to develop for their platform, including the possibilities that Stump mentioned in his excellent post two pages back. Which is to say: third parties haven't avoided Nintendo simply because of some irrational fear of Nintendo (although, to be honest, some of that may indeed be in there), but because Microsoft and Sony do a better job of courting third party publishers and providing more palatable fiscal environments.
BishopLamont
Banned
You mean the same Nintendo that has practically never made a loss doing videogames? Yeah good luck bleeding them out.Opiate said:
Let me emphasize this because it's an important point: Nintendo's profit margins are not unheard of. Their profit per employee is historic, but not their profit margins. Nintendo has typically run about 25% profit margins, which is very solid -- about what you'd expect for a company that's run as responsibly and successfully as Nintendo has been. Microsoft (the whole company, not E&D) runs 25-30% margins, for example. Microsoft is also a well run company. There are many companies (including large ones) that run at profit margins of 100% or greater, although few are in the tech field.
What this tells us is that Nintendo's profit margins are perfectly normal and healthy. It does not indicate unfairly greedy or underhanded business practice. What is abnormal, however, are the profoundly low profit margins Microsoft's E&D division has been run at, as well as Sony's Game division: even in their best times, Sony has only managed ~10% profit margins. Those are boom times for Sony Gaming. When they were kings of the market with nearly complete domination, their profit margins reached as high as 12% over any given 3 year period. If you aren't well versed in financial metrics, let me tell you unequivocally: that's not good.
To wit: based on the financial data available to us, it isn't that Nintendo is unreasonably greedy, it's that Sony and Microsoft are unreasonably liberal with their spending. In comparison, Nintendo seems greedy, but what they're doing now is exactly what a responsible and well run company should be doing. However, it's important to remember that Sony and particularly Microsoft don't have to be responsible: they can afford to be grossly generous, and they are doing so. Likely because they believe there is a larger payoff down the road, but whatever they're motivation, that's what they're doing.
What this tells us is that Nintendo's profit margins are perfectly normal and healthy. It does not indicate unfairly greedy or underhanded business practice. What is abnormal, however, are the profoundly low profit margins Microsoft's E&D division has been run at, as well as Sony's Game division: even in their best times, Sony has only managed ~10% profit margins. Those are boom times for Sony Gaming. When they were kings of the market with nearly complete domination, their profit margins reached as high as 12% over any given 3 year period. If you aren't well versed in financial metrics, let me tell you unequivocally: that's not good.
To wit: based on the financial data available to us, it isn't that Nintendo is unreasonably greedy, it's that Sony and Microsoft are unreasonably liberal with their spending. In comparison, Nintendo seems greedy, but what they're doing now is exactly what a responsible and well run company should be doing. However, it's important to remember that Sony and particularly Microsoft don't have to be responsible: they can afford to be grossly generous, and they are doing so. Likely because they believe there is a larger payoff down the road, but whatever they're motivation, that's what they're doing.
Stumpokapow said:
The problem is one of market distortion. "Incentives" would be limited and transitory in a healthy market. Market leaders wouldn't have much need of them and marginal players wouldn't have the resources to offer them consistently or in much depth.
Opiate you might want to check some financial statements. MSFT profit margins are slightly higher than 25-30%
FredFish said:The problem is one of market distortion. "Incentives" would be limited and transitory in a healthy market. Market leaders wouldn't have much need of them and marginal players wouldn't have the resources to offer them consistently or in much depth.
Opiate you might want to check some financial statements. MSFT profit margins are slightly higher than 25-30%
As to your first sentence, that's precisely my argument as well, although said more eloquently. Prepare to be cribbed by me in future discussions.
As to your second, I see their 5 year net profit margin as 27.9 percent.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/compare.asp?Page=ProfitMargins&Symbol=MSFT