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NPD May 2012 Sales Results [Up4: Max Payne 3, Dragon's Dogma, Ghost Recon]

Not if the handheld game is worth a shit. It might have made sense to have cheap handheld games in the DS, GBA, and GB days (which they never were cheap) when development costs to make those shit looking games was cheap. PSP, 3DS and especially Vita games take an actual budget.

Well, maybe they shouldn't. If they don't sell, then they're overpriced, no matter what their budget is. Put them on a console, and make portable games for portables.
 

Surfheart

Member
I don't understand how new hardware is going to fix the malaise?

Dev costs will go up further and I think it will be even more likely that we will see the same old safe, tired genres and IPs trotted out but now boasting 1080p and some extra shinies.
 
Given the branding difficulties Nintendo has faced with 3DS, it's astounding to me that they're calling their next console WiiU.

It's a little different though, Nintendo only released 1 Wii, so WiiU could be viewed as a second "wii". DS by comparision had DS, DS Lite, DSi, DSiXL, and now 3DS. After 4 versions with different acronyms that were basically the same hardware with slight upgrades calling the next one 3DS for the casual audience was probably too similar. While most hardcore instantly realized 3DS was the next system, a lot of my casual fans thought the 3DS was just "a DS with 3D". WiiU probably won't have the issue because you probably won't be able to buy just a tablet at launch, so if anyone wants the new "wii tablet" they'll have to buy the new console.
 

mujun

Member
Maybe gaming was a fad. Perhaps all the people who flocked to it over the last 5 years or so have moved on to things like the iPad and now enjoy spending their time editing photos, interacting on Facebook and mucking around with whatever app is popular at the time.
 
Maybe gaming was a fad. Perhaps all the people who flocked to it over the last 5 years or so have moved on to things like the iPad and now enjoy spending their time editing photos, interacting on Facebook and mucking around with whatever app is popular at the time.

This should be Nintendo's biggest fear with the Wii U. If that Wii market doesn't exist anymore, or can't be bothered to spend $300-400 to play MORE Wii Fit and stuff like NintendoLand, they are fucked hard. Could be similar to how the bottom fell out of the plastic instruments market. They kept making more and more games and sets not realizing that for most people, one game/set was enough and they were good and then moved on to the next fad.
 

icecream

Public Health Threat
Maybe gaming was a fad. Perhaps all the people who flocked to it over the last 5 years or so have moved on to things like the iPad and now enjoy spending their time editing photos, interacting on Facebook and mucking around with whatever app is popular at the time.
The sooner everyone accepts this, the better off everyone will be!
 

mr stroke

Member
People are over reacting to the economy causing the poor sales.

While the economy isn't the best it's deffinitly better than prior years. Stock market is up, Auto sales are up, home sales are slowly increasing, Apple products are selling like crazy, People are spending money.


We shouldnt expect big numbers with crusty hardware and poor software.

WiiU and next gen consoles can't come soon enough
 

NateDrake

Member
The sooner everyone accepts this, the better off everyone will be!

I fully expect the next-gen to return to the 50mill range for sales. We won't be seeing the PS4/Xbox8/Wii U each selling in the 70 mill range. Gaming will have a dedicate base but this generation was something for the record books.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
People are over reacting to the economy causing the poor sales.

While the economy isn't the best it's deffinitly better than prior years. Stock market is up, Auto sales are up, home sales are slowly increasing, Apple products are selling like crazy, People are spending money.


We shouldnt expect big numbers with crusty hardware and poor software.

WiiU and next gen consoles can't come soon enough

I don't think this is the case. The report just released showed that the economy is going well for the super-rich. The middle-class has had their incomes/total wealth drop while every other cost is rising.

The extra money for the middle-class (i.e., the vast majority of the consumer base) just isn't there any more.
 

Foffy

Banned
wow those numbers seem kind of, uh, dire

That's what happens when you artificially extend the length of your consoles lifespan. The anemic E3 showing goes hand in hand with this: the 7th generation platforms need to be replaced, and fast.
 
No idea why Rockstar dedicated so many resources to a hardcore, old school, shooter. The rumored budget was like $105 million or something and it took nearly 5 years to make?
 

Amir0x

Banned
That's what happens when you artificially extend the length of your consoles lifespan. The anemic E3 showing goes hand in hand with this: the 7th generation platforms need to be replaced, and fast.

man i really think it's super unhealthy for the industry to always be changing out systems every few years, because R&D for new generations of consoles is super costly and half of the developers and publishers in the world are going under

i'm genuinely not sure what the solution is anymore
 

SteeloDMZ

Banned
MP3 sales blow my mind. Never would have guessed that the next big R* game was going to underperform. Even LA Noire sold much better, and that was a new, niche as fuck, I.P.
 

Opiate

Member
Not if the handheld game is worth a shit. It might have made sense to have cheap handheld games in the DS, GBA, and GB days (which they never were cheap) when development costs to make those shit looking games was cheap. PSP, 3DS and especially Vita games take an actual budget.

Are you suggesting that games should cost more because they have a higher budget? "My game cost 100,000,000 dollars to make. Therefore, it should cost 60 dollars!"
 

Pranay

Member
man i really think it's super unhealthy for the industry to always be changing out systems every few years, because R&D for new generations of consoles is super costly and half of the developers and publishers in the world are going under

i'm genuinely not sure what the solution is anymore

Create some better models for selling games next gen thats we can hope.
 

Foffy

Banned
man i really think it's super unhealthy for the industry to always be changing out systems every few years, because R&D for new generations of consoles is super costly and half of the developers and publishers in the world are going under

i'm genuinely not sure what the solution is anymore

I guess that's the streaming argument comes in, but that too has a series of nightmarish problems.
 

LOCK

Member
This is what happens when console prices are high and few must have software offerings.

I think the 3ds is doing decent all things considered. If it is ahead just a bit during the non holiday months that indicates to me that the holidays will be gigantic. The 3ds did have a top heavy first year for its holidays and I expect that trend to continue until a bunch of must have software is released. Nintendo is trying to fix that with Mario.
 

Tobor

Member
The console hardware market needs to contract. We don't need 5 dedicated systems on store shelves anymore. The demand just isn't there.

Somebody really needs to bow out.
 

larvi

Member
The middle-class has had their incomes/total wealth drop while every other cost is rising.

The extra money for the middle-class (i.e., the vast majority of the consumer base) just isn't there any more.

Right this is the problem, salaries have been pretty much stagnant while the cost of food, gas, insurance, utilities, etc have all gone up leaving less disposable income for most. Plus the days of easy credit are gone. I was suprised recently to find out Chase had recently reduced my home equity line of credit to 0 available credit even though I have a near perfect credit score, saying that the draw time period had expired. In the past it was just something that was always renewed automatically and had just assumed that I would have the credit as long as I owned the house.
 

mujun

Member
man i really think it's super unhealthy for the industry to always be changing out systems every few years, because R&D for new generations of consoles is super costly and half of the developers and publishers in the world are going under

i'm genuinely not sure what the solution is anymore

I don't understand why there isn't some sort of AI generated assets solution out yet. Something along the lines of Speedtree but for "worlds" or cities.

Enter parameters (huge city, modern, European) and then employ people to tailor the stuff so that it doesn't look like the next game's city.

Sure, handcrafted is the way to go given the resources but if that's what it takes to get more companies profitable then I can live with it as a gamer.

EDIT: Significant price drops on hardware (100 off 360 + PS3 at least) might also re-energize the market and spike software.
 

Auto_aim1

MeisaMcCaffrey
Wow complete collapse. This gen has gone on for far too long, even a price drop for PS3/360 won't be that effective.
 

donny2112

Member
which begs the question: how is that possible?

Maybe they're having trouble deciding which lines of clothes/furniture/fish/bugs/animal talk to repeat from the previous games.

Edit:
Oh, and they have to decide which good features that have hung around since the wonderful GameCube version need to be cut this time to be replaced by useless additional content like a market place with more animals who don't sell anything interesting.
 

Sky Chief

Member
People are over reacting to the economy causing the poor sales.

While the economy isn't the best it's deffinitly better than prior years. Stock market is up, Auto sales are up, home sales are slowly increasing, Apple products are selling like crazy, People are spending money.

Consumer spending has increased in 19 of the last 22 months.
 

icecream

Public Health Threat
I don't want to accept it. If it does happen I'll just move on to whatever takes big budget gaming's place, indies, free to play, whatever.
Isn't that the point? It's not that Apple and app/social gaming are going to become the only game in town, but that they will supplant traditional home and portable console gaming. A future where everyone is focused on high quality-low cost, low time commitment gaming.

Indie, doujin, MMOs, F2P games and the like will always have a viable home on the PC, they never really needed consoles to support them.
 

Fjordson

Member
I wonder if L.A. Noire harmed the Rockstar brand a little.
Eh, doubt it. LA Noire sold and reviewed fairly well. Only in the shadow of something like Red Dead could it look disappointing. But LAN was another example of how their non-open world games don't catch on the same way as GTA and Red Dead. Happened with Bully as well (Bully and LAN technically had open worlds, but both were pretty far removed from what GTA is).

Not to mention they blue-balled every single GTA fan out there with that GTA V trailer back in November. The comments all over their official newsire and their YouTube are filled with stuff like "FINALLY MAX PAYNE 3 IS DONE WITH, GIVE US GTA INFO NOW R*!!!". Just didn't have that much fanfare from R* fans I think.
 

Sky Chief

Member
MP3 sales blow my mind. Never would have guessed that the next big R* game was going to underperform. Even LA Noire sold much better, and that was a new, niche as fuck, I.P.

It makes me sad, you can really see the amazing hard work and money that went into that game. I rented it at first but then bought it to support such an awesome and ambitious game.
 

Concept17

Member
Again, I think people underestimate just how many people are playing Diablo3. Its the kind of game people play for more than 2 weeks at a time, and this DID take attention away from other titles this month.
 

AniHawk

Member
has it been said when it was ever this bad?

ms: 160k
nintendo: ~285k
sony: ~195k

total: roughly 640k systems sold for the month of may. that's including psp, ds, vita, 3ds, ps3, wii, and 360.

in may 2004, there were 548k ps2s, gamecubes, and xboxes sold. that was without the gba (can't find those numbers, but the gba was selling at or higher than ps2 levels at the time).
 

Fjordson

Member
Again, I think people underestimate just how many people are playing Diablo3. Its the kind of game people play for more than 2 weeks at a time, and this DID take attention away from other titles this month.
True. This is anecdotal, but it's been almost CoD levels of people and family I know that don't usually play games coming out of the woodwork for D3.
 

Ridley327

Member
I can't imagine that Rockstar is too happy with those Max Payne 3 numbers; to do less than half of what LA Noire did is mind-boggling.
 

Kusagari

Member
I can't imagine that Rockstar is too happy with those Max Payne 3 numbers; to do less than half of what LA Noire did is mind-boggling.

The marketing budget alone had to be insane. Seemed far bigger than what they did for L.A. Noire. And rumors say the game itself cost a shit load too.

Doubt they'll see it as anything but a bust.
 

KorrZ

Member
man i really think it's super unhealthy for the industry to always be changing out systems every few years, because R&D for new generations of consoles is super costly and half of the developers and publishers in the world are going under

i'm genuinely not sure what the solution is anymore

7 years is extremely long for tech. Apple is conditioning people to always want the new thing every single year, a 7 year old piece of tech just isn't "sexy". We need new hardware.
 

Tobor

Member
I have no idea what the sales numbers were for Max Payne 1 and 2 were, but it was never really that big of a deal, was it? Why sink all that money into the IP?
 
Another month of xbla madness for me. Honestly if it's not an AAA game I'm not budging. Until next gen it will continue this way for me. There are new ideas on xbla and psn and hardly any with the $60 releases.
 

Fjordson

Member
I have no idea what the sales numbers were for Max Payne 1 and 2 were, but it was never really that big of a deal, was it? Why sink all that money into the IP?
The second game certainly under performed, but Max Payne was a hit I think.

I'm guessing they were hoping for something similar to Red Dead Redemption, coming out with a sequel to an older IP but changing it up to fit their style. But like I said, it would seem that a lot of R* fans out there are just into their open world games. Or maybe the IP was just too old at this point.
 
man i really think it's super unhealthy for the industry to always be changing out systems every few years, because R&D for new generations of consoles is super costly and half of the developers and publishers in the world are going under

i'm genuinely not sure what the solution is anymore

Everyone wanted to have a longer gen to keep costs down, but it has also kept excitement and interest down from consumers. And now they are taking a huge fucking gamble by not announcing systems and drumming up excitement for the next gen. People are starting to lose interest in games due to stagnation in hardware and software (and not just IPs, but game concepts-- every other game is a freaking shooter) and are looking to other mediums like netflix and iPads and smartphones for entertainment.
 

Dalthien

Member
has it been said when it was ever this bad?

ms: 160k
nintendo: ~285k
sony: ~195k

total: roughly 640k systems sold for the month of may. that's including psp, ds, vita, 3ds, ps3, wii, and 360.

in may 2004, there were 548k ps2s, gamecubes, and xboxes sold. that was without the gba (can't find those numbers, but the gba was selling at or higher than ps2 levels at the time).

I've got 269k for GBA in May '04.
 

Ridley327

Member
The marketing budget alone had to be insane. Seemed far bigger than what they did for L.A. Noire. And rumors say the game itself cost a shit load too.

Doubt they'll see it as anything but a bust.

It'll be interesting to see what their key takeaway is going to be from this; although I don't think any of their currently announced titles are anything else, this might scare them off from doing non-open world games again.
 
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