TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Somehow I doubt it with this kind of mismanagement. The top suits that make this kind of decisions will blame first they developers...
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Square Enix's insane sales targets for Tomb Raider, Hitman, & Sleeping Dogs revealed
- Thread starter Road
- Start date
Somehow I doubt it with this kind of mismanagement. The top suits that make this kind of decisions will blame first they developers...
Just seen your tag. Got your 8bit Shield skin yet? ;-)
No idea, to be honest. But I still don't believe any of these three games will make back what SE expects.
Some poor sods at Eidos along with some execs at SE, I'll expect.
dragonbane
Member
These numbers can't be right!? How the hell did they even manage to ship 3.6M copies of Hitman? I thought the game bombed pretty hard, or did they just overship?
It admittedly IS possible some of the producers misled the higher ups on how well a game would do, but I figure their job is to figure out how likely it'd really do well, just as it is for the producers to sell them on being able to make the game they want.
And I decided to check on sales of CT again if anyone was curious, Joystiq story on sales of various SE games in that period, and story on wanting more sales to justify a sequel.
Overshipping and bombing tend to go hand in hand.
Whiteshirt
Member
Probably channel stuffing. That and Hitman, like a lot of Eidos' products, hit the discount bin pretty darn quick for major AAA titles.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
To bad that it keeps happening... with the biggest publishers.
dragonbane
Member
Man that's some crazy expectations. Absolutely ridiculous.
Sleeping Dogs probably got the smallest expectation because it was a new IP. A good chunk of the game was probably paid by Activision too, lol.
If the sequels take longer than these titles took to make then no. However if they're much shorter then we most likely will.
dragonbane
Member
Hitman and Sleeping Dogs are probably dead or close to it. Tomb Raider must have been profitable though. If not then they can fuck off with their mismanagement and crazy budgets.
-Pyromaniac-
Member
I feel like it would be hard to pinpoint the people who were specifically the most problematic in this spiral. That's why I ask. I guess there's some obvious ones. Wada being one.
They have basically confirmed sequels to all these titles already.
One is even getting a new studio to make it. (Hitman)
Here's Sleeping Dogs:
It's worth keeping in mind most of these titles will have notably shorter dev cycles since they're sequels.
You're more likely to get a sequel to Tomb Raider.
Edit: Just seen Nirolak's post, and you're in luck.
Raitosaito
Member
I can do without another Hitman if it's like Absolution.
I couldn't care less about that series now.
GraveRobberX
Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
It's almost like SE is trying to outdo THQ
Well you had your uDraw HD fiasco, fuck that, we'll show you how a 3rd Party Publisher really folds
Well you had your uDraw HD fiasco, fuck that, we'll show you how a 3rd Party Publisher really folds
Which I'm considerably more excited for.
shinobi602
Member
Fuck
Hitman
Another Hitman is already confirmed.
Square Enix's uDraw was Final Fantasy X|V.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Maybe they were actually profitable...
That's the hitman game in the universe but not with 47. Possibly different gameplay. No thank you
GraveRobberX
Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
Yeah but somehow that shit is being Reborn again!
Fucking SE and Phoniex Downs go hand in hand
A Spin-Off... Why?
You can't sell the reboot, and you go do a Spin-off...
WTF?
Seriously SE was chasing that Ass Creed money, has to be
You can't be that fucking stupid
dragonbane
Member
At least something. I hope they go through with it after the restructuring finishes.
Even at a four year dev cycle, Crystal Dynamics just isn't that big.
The team was like 100 for most of its life.
Even if we assume $90,000 per person per year on average, you only hit $36 million.
After how bad they ruined the franchise with Absolution? I'll take anything "new" they can come up with.
Gamer @ Heart
Member
The sequels for these games are bound to meet these targets on consoles with a quarter of the install base in 3 years. The industry is healthy. It is strong.
Profitability is only one aspect. The sales numbers are good and the critical reception was good. The foundation is solid. Even if it was at a loss, as long as it's not absolutely insane, it's a way to look at it like an investment.
then double that for marketing.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Exactly... thats why I founded pretty weird the report where they were downplaying Eidos/WesternMarket.
It was really gross watching Wada try and offload all the blame everything on the Eidos earlier, seeing these numbers show just how either out of touch with current markets or desperate management were.
Does anyone have the sales number on Final Fantasy XIII-2, I'd be very interested to see how well it did.
Does anyone have the sales number on Final Fantasy XIII-2, I'd be very interested to see how well it did.
AcceptableGhost
Member
How about... An Uncharted clone?
"Final Fantasy 14 tanked fuck! we need money or we're fired."
They already did that with Tomb Raider.
They seriously think 3.4M in half a month is poor sales? Tomb Raider may have been expensive but the month isn't even over yet. They potentially could reach that 5 million in the time period most AAA games sell. What a bunch of pessimists.
Yes, they wanted to ship 5-6 million. Their initial shipment was 3.4 million and they haven't sold through that yet. The sales probably need to be frontloaded, because if they only reach 5 million after heavy price cuts they're going to have to sell even more. That's probably why that analyst said they needed to sell 5-10 million units. 5 million at full price, 10 million at half price. Ridiculous.
This leaked out in December. Concept art from that hitman game. That looks like the hitman I know.
Fuck you SE
GraveRobberX
Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
Street Fighter X Tekken
Putting aside what's already been pointed out, when you look at those sales it'd seem to me you have series that are absolutely worth keeping around. If you can bring the budgets WAY down and still sell similar numbers then you'd have some solid million sellers to keep around, nevermind how some series can be grown to be more successful, Sleeping Dogs looks to have that potential at least. I imagine the problem is if the success of the series also plummet when you hack away at the budget, then it can be impractical.
Now if these games only did in the low hundred thousands I can't imagine them being worth keeping, they're high budget productions that would probably be devastated if you put them on a budget befitting games of those sales.
EDIT: I will note I'm sort of speaking on what SEEMS to make sense to me without really knowing any hard numbers, but it does seem to me that if a game can reliably sell 3 million + then it's definitely worth keeping around.
I suppose this will explain SE shenanigans in the UK, where they bomba the price 2-3 weeks after launch...
SE is releasing a special edition of it on Wii U. It will be the best game availible on that console. Sales wise, Human Revolution should move a thousand copies, if it's a breakout success and a majority of Wii U owners buy it, they may even break 5,000 copies world wide.
Sleeping dogs had almost no marketing budget compared to Hitman: Absolution and especially compared to the massive one of Tomb Raider.