SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Humble Bundle definitely played a part in those Capcom numbers.
I didn't notice Dead or Alive V?
I didn't notice Dead or Alive V?
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A Look at Japanese Game Sales on Steam - Oct 2016 edition [Steamspy figures]
- Thread starter kswiston
- Start date
Absolutely.
Of course, the massive revenue they must be making with the Dark Souls series on Steam is probably one hell of a motivator. Enough to shake up even an old Japanese publisher.
If you want to compare the viability of late ports with late ports, I'm more than ready to do so.
XCOM2 sold more than 1 million copies on Steam. It was ported to consoles (not as late and not as badly as DQH was ported to PC) and sold less than 20k in its first month in NPD.
DS3 sold 1 million copies at full price. Tales of Zestiria sold 90k copies at full price (comparable to its western console sales at release, despite being the first game on the platform). All the other day-and-date releases also did a significant fraction of their sales at full price.
GhostTrick
Banned
Give some indication of western sales if you are going to argue that a particular Steam version sold poorly.
Given what Monster Hunter does first month via NPD, I find it hard to believe that a copycat game like God Eater 2 is selling in large enough quantities to make over 50k copies in 2 months not worth the effort.
Given what Monster Hunter does first month via NPD, I find it hard to believe that a copycat game like God Eater 2 is selling in large enough quantities to make over 50k copies in 2 months not worth the effort.
Sure but then the same questions come up as did when talking about that. Does the increased effort increase revenue proportionally(I'd say probably)? Does launching day and date actually increase total unit sales or just divide them between SKUs? What kind of ASP do you get between SKUs?
The big advantage Steam has, and will continue to have, is that will have a much longer period of sales than a retail console release.
EDIT:
I think you're misinterpreting me completely. I already acknowledged that the Steam release was probably totally worth it and the console sales would have been just as bad.
Not to derail though but if you're bringing up Monster Hunter that's on 3DS and portables are supposed to be dead in the west.
GE should be able to do better IMO. It was released during a quite busy time and the game doesn't have any effort on marketing didn't help either.
Except it's not copycat though.
Otherwise people wouldn't snarkily write in their steam review to play the abomination that is MHO instead just because it had Monster Hunter in the title.
GhostTrick
Banned
It'd be hard to tell if it does increase the total sale. But there's one thing for sure, if it divide them between SKUs, they at least make up that with a higher revenue per copy sold SKU.
The big advantage is indeed longer period of sales. But this big advantage includes other major advantage:
-Bigger revenue split
-Bigger controls over stocks and sales/price control
Steam is an attractive platform because the entry cost is low and it offers a lot of flexibility for developpers.
I think it will. Definitely a game that could end up in the 200 to 400k range.
oh man, that makes me so sad
guys, please buy tits sc, its a good game. really underrated.
btw. these are the japanese steam sales, so the translation and OUR problems arent connected to those sales.
its just a new unified platform to sell games. they have other distrobution-platforms for games on pc.
so, steam/valve can be happy to have those sales.
I'd say the answer to that is in the data for anyone willing to look.
Just compare e.g. Tales of Xillia (2) western sales to Tales of Zestiria western sales. The latter actually increased in pure console sales in NPD (from 43k to 58k in their release months), despite Steam additionally providing 90k full price sales around launch and another 150k at >=17$ on top of that later on.
I don't have the numbers for the other day-and-date releases at hand, but I'm sure they'll paint a similar picture.
CertifiedFP
Member
Speaking of Valkyria, where's Sega's 2016 PC port they've said they're working on? They're usually announced around now. Maybe Early 2017 instead and they're going to pull another Binary Domain and release a PC port of Yakuza 0 or Persona 5 a month after console launch?
Sure, you might be completely correct.
It will be interesting to see if Berseria replicates that though. Tales of Zestiria had the novelty of being one of the first non-AAA Japanese games on Steam.
Berseria is a much better game at least.
John Rabbit
Banned
Best game in the series outselling worst game in the series by ~1000 makes me unexpectedly angry.
Tizoc
Member
I know right? Well tomorrow is Halloween so maybe we get news tomorrow? Don't forget that spike Chunsoft tweeted that there would be Zero Escape news this october and well
Tomorrow is the last day of October!
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
I know estimates at this level are really inaccurate, but seeing the sales at this level (especially with ZTD much higher) is pretty sad. Root Double is a great VN, and it's pretty much exactly what fans of 999 would be looking for, but it just got absolutely no attention.
Well, it seems almost impossible for a VN to find success these days if it's not part of a major ongoing franchise (ideally with a well known anime adaptation that people have seen), but it's still a shame.
Tizoc
Member
You do realize that EDF 4.1 released this year on Steam? 70K in under a year compared to 69K over the course of what 2+ years is pretty good.
Azure Phoenix
Member
Planetarian on 4000 after all these years is downright depressing, I feel like I've gifted half of that amount myself. Also Neptunia VII on 29k is crazy low, it's genuinely the best in the series and the most recent mainline entry yet is getting stomped by Neptunia U which is a pretty rubbish spinoff.
Looking at the entire list I feel like this year just hasn't been kind on Japanese games on Steam, like some of those numbers are low enough that I can see some publishers completely dropping all future PC support.
Looking at the entire list I feel like this year just hasn't been kind on Japanese games on Steam, like some of those numbers are low enough that I can see some publishers completely dropping all future PC support.
Basileus777
Member
Steam has been so absolutely flooded with shitty VNs that even VN fans have little way to parse what is worthwhile. The boom seems to be over in any case and I wonder how that will affect future localizations when a few thousand sales is the ceiling for most titles. The dropoff between Grisaia games especially looks brutal.
Well, if it helps, in terms of revenue 4.1 probably outperformed Insect Armageddon by at least a factor of 4 (already, and it still has lots of sales at lower price points ahead of it which already happened for Insect Armageddon).
Tizoc
Member
Hell Persona 4 Golden on Steam sold somewhere between the $20-30 range would do pretty well for them.
...but I'll leave it at that.
Though me selling Anime cards at high prices is a matter of luck for me :v
And hasn't been on many sales yet. 4.1 is MUCH more successful than Insect was.
And in fact it's one of the notable Japanese games where the later game that was released after the novelty wave has been more successful.
Probably because they don't release like 8 games in a 2 year span.
It released in the middle of July. Those are 70k sales in just 3 months and the lowest price was 32s.
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
Yeah, it's a damn shame, but there's just so much absolute shit out there that there's almost no way of knowing if something isn't shit unless you recognize the name.
I hope that folks are still able to make a profit at this level, because otherwise we might be going back to the way things were years ago if localizations become completely unworthwhile again.
I added icecream's visual novels. I will go through the thread and see if I missed anything else noteworthy, but I would prefer to skip the 1-5k sellers unless they have some significance in Japan or are from one of the established pubs.
The God Eater games were created as a response to the success of Monster Hunter. I am sure it does its own thing in many ways, but it was created to be a me too franchise in the same way that several monster collecting RPGs were in the wake of Pokemon. That's what I meant by copycat.
More to the point. I have never seen any indication that God Eater sells anywhere close to Monster Hunter in any region. Based on what I have seen from Sales age threads, 55k (22k in the US) seems to be on par with what I would expect from a niche game like that in its first two months.
It's worth noting that God Eater did manage around 40k copies before the discounts started. I fully expect it to be over 100k the next time I do an update thread. It's not Dragonball Xenoverse, but that game has shipped/sold over 3 million units outside of Japan.
The God Eater games were created as a response to the success of Monster Hunter. I am sure it does its own thing in many ways, but it was created to be a me too franchise in the same way that several monster collecting RPGs were in the wake of Pokemon. That's what I meant by copycat.
More to the point. I have never seen any indication that God Eater sells anywhere close to Monster Hunter in any region. Based on what I have seen from Sales age threads, 55k (22k in the US) seems to be on par with what I would expect from a niche game like that in its first two months.
It's worth noting that God Eater did manage around 40k copies before the discounts started. I fully expect it to be over 100k the next time I do an update thread. It's not Dragonball Xenoverse, but that game has shipped/sold over 3 million units outside of Japan.
Azure Phoenix
Member
Grisaia's dropoff is huge, but it makes sense. Just finishing 1 route alone takes forever, and considering how Labyrinth consists of a backstory and a bunch of epilogues you really need to have finished all routes before starting it (something which took me over 90 hours). Combine that with the large cost, lack of any major discounts and potential dropoff from people who didn't like Fruit.
And yeah, I agree with your point about VNs on Steam. A year ago I was regularly checking greenlight and adding stuff to my wishlist, now there is so much garbage that I've basically stopped bothering.
GhostTrick
Banned
You're just looking at it without any context. Neptunia VII was release later, at a nearly twice higher price point. Lowest price for Neptunia VII was 30 dollars. Lowest price for Neptunia U was 8 dollars. U regular price is 30 dollars. As for Neptunia games, their sales keeps getting higher and higher in the long term run.
Disagree here. A lot of games has indeed seen some nice legs. Some titles will obviously won't have any, but it's just that a lot of games released this year and some have yet to see a meaningful sale.
Basileus777
Member
Sales are still way better than the dark days before Steam. But we're already seeing some shift in localization with MG moving away from focusing on all-ages titles for Steam and even Sekai Project getting involved with Nutaku. But I don't know how sustainable a lot of the Japan driven self-publishing of VNs is outside of the big multi-media franchises. Will Dies Irae and the like sell? Visual Arts will probably do fine even if their other titles don't match Clannad's success.
VNs are an interesting topic. I really don't have a good grasp on how much they need to sell for translations to be worth it.
I blame inertia.
The kickstarter might have helped make it worth for them. There were 2200 backers with an average pledge of roughly 70usd (if I didn't mess up the math), which makes things seem a bit better.
CertifiedFP
Member
I think the blame here lies on companies taking a quantity over quality approach to selecting what they localize.
Like, seriously, I'd take Steam's VN library being cut down to 1/10th, maybe 1/20th of its current size if it meant getting some of the truly legendary VNs that have yet to be localized getting a western release, like Type-Moon's library (Fate/Stay Night+Hollow Ataraxia, Tsukihime), 428, Policenauts, or a PC port of the (Already localized) Sega CD version of Snatcher.
Oh well at least we finally have Steins;Gate on Steam.
I actually find it kinda a shame that Kojima is continuing to make action games. What ever happened to that VN he said he was working on a few years ago? Seriously it's made even the Tsukihime Remake seem like something tangible instead of vaporware.
In some instances, it's a matter of resources at the time of a big (for them) release.
The biggest transgressor on this list is Square-Enix. I see zero reason why FF XV isn't a simultaneous or near simultaneous launch on PC. The Final Fantasy games have sold millions of units, so clearly people play them. However, they aren't GTA. Releasing a late port of FF XV a year or two late is going to cut how many units they sell and what price they can sell them for. Especially if FFXV is closer to FFXIII than FFVII-X in reception.
If the PC version was being released in November, it would easily do Dark Souls 3/Metal Gear Solid 5 range numbers. Probably not much worse than the game will end up doing on Xbox One.
R10Neymarfan
Member
I wish Bamco would release the Digimon games on PC as well.
I wonder how much of the issue there is with the localization companies, and how much of it is due to the original rights holder.
Some of those are reportedly impossible to work with.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Is it weird that every subsequent sequel sold less than the previous game? For something like Neptunia, I wonder why so many people got the first game in the first place.
Basileus777
Member
It depends on licensing costs, lower profile titles without big name voice actors can profit on very low sales. Companies like MangaGamer have survived on narrow margins and low sales for a while.
Most of the VNs on Steam aren't Japanese, they are made in the West. Companies like Sekai Project publish them because they are probably low risk and low investment opportunities that sell enough in the aggregate.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
Indie publisher Fruitbat Factory appears to be doing quite well for itself, although I know a lot of their games have been bundled to hell and back:
http://steamspy.com/dev/Fruitbat+Factory
http://steamspy.com/dev/Fruitbat+Factory
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
The biggest issue isn't the localizations. It's the ever growing glut of original English language VNs flooding Steam, with more and more coming seemingly every week.
CertifiedFP
Member
Oh yeah, everything I hear about Type-Moon from people who've worked on localizations before say they want very large sums of cash up front for licensing compared to other VN studios - And honestly, considering just how rapidly Type-Moon's IPs exploded in value in the mid-2000's, it makes sense.
And you can see it with how the DVD/BluRay release of Unlimited Blade Works costs a few hundred dollars - I mean jesus I think HBO DVD releases are cheaper, and I've always considered them expensive as hell.
That too. Although let's be fair - Someone at Sekai Project thought bringing over the Sakura series was a good idea.
ThreePiMatt
Member
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - 1.147.000
Resident Evil 6 - 923.000
Something about this seems wrong. The idea that there's only a 200k difference between one of the best games released in its year, and a game who is most widely remembered for the fact that its logo looks like a giraffe getting its dick sucked. I have to assume that MGSV has gotten very few big sales and RE6 must have been given away at the various holiday sales or something.
Resident Evil 6 - 923.000
Something about this seems wrong. The idea that there's only a 200k difference between one of the best games released in its year, and a game who is most widely remembered for the fact that its logo looks like a giraffe getting its dick sucked. I have to assume that MGSV has gotten very few big sales and RE6 must have been given away at the various holiday sales or something.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
I can't help but be a bit concerned about the figures here. For pretty much all the smaller developers, the first title does fine, but there's a massive drop-off with every successive game they release. I'm not sure if it's more attributable to the Steam market being flooded, or a lack of novelty once a developer has already put something on the platform. I have to wonder if it's quickly reaching a point where, despite early success, PC is becoming an unappealing platform for some of these guys.
Tizoc
Member
It was released at a time when Steam users were well 'thirsty' for traditional-like jRPGs. Far as I've gathered aren't the later sequels more of the same but fixing up prior stuff from its predecessor?
But thats normal when the first title been on sale or bundle a few times already.
Tizoc
Member
Think of it this way; even if initial sales are low, as time goes on and with further sales not only will it cover up its costs but after doing so will mainly be making good revenue for the publisher.
Danny Dudekisser
I paid good money for this Dynex!
But look at a company like Degica, where their first shmup, Mushihimesama, sold 30,000, and everything else sold less than half of that, despite Mushi only coming out a few months prior. I don't think it's something that can necessarily be explained away by sales or bundles.
Resident Evil 6 goes on sale for $7.50 every couple of months. MGS5 hasn't been cheaper than $40 (it's regular price after Konami did a permanent price drop) since July, and hasn't been much cheaper than $20 on Steam (any legit digital store?) as far as I know.
I expect MGS5 to be one of those titles that eventually tops 2M units when it starts getting sub-$10 sales.
CertifiedFP
Member
I can explain the dropoffs easily: Bad first impressions and backlogs
1. Bad ports: Look no further than Tecmo Koei
2. Bad games: Most of Ghostlight's releases (Agarest, Mugen Souls, etc), save for WotS.
3. Limited appeal: The Neptunia games. They're hardly great games, but they have their merits. But there's going to be a lot of people burnt by the first one who don't move on.
4. Backlog: This is the case I'm having for Neptunia. I bought ReBirth 2, but won't play it or buy ReBirth 3 or VII until I beat Nep1 and move on to RB2. Likewise, this is also the case TiTS has going for it. I simply need to find the time for them, and unfortunately Overwatch, BF1, and Witcher 3 are preoccupying what little time I have for gaming now. So until either one of the former 2 get stale or I beat Witcher 3 (lol)...