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[ethelred]

(eh, close enough)

:lol

 

[BishopLamont]

Okay.

Let me try to make this a little more clear.

If a band that has sold 10 albums in their entire thirty year career releases a Greatest Hits album and that album sells 1,000 copies, is that a "bomb" or a "success"? It's a success. The popularity of a Greatest Hits album is essentially limited to the pre-existing popularity of the band. If Dr. Phil starts a new show that gets 30% more ratings than his previous one, is this a "failure" because it's still not as popular as Oprah, or a success because it's more popular than what he's done before? It's a success.

So when a pop culture phenomenon that's practiced by anywhere from ~100,000 to ~1,000,000 people in a country on a regular enough basis to call themselves practitioners sells more than 100,000 copies with a new iteration of their product, is that a "bomb" or a "success"? It's a success.

For Face Training to be a bomb, you have to assume that the objective of Face Training was to RADICALLY expand the popularity of Facening, rather than to provide a product that allows existing Facening practitioners to cheaply and easily practice. If your supposition is correct, then Face Training crosses the line from a corporately irresponsible product that relies on preying on the stupidity of a segment of the population to a downright insidious product that relies on actively attempting to blindside previously normal people and convert them into idiots.

There are two ways to look at Face Training:
- It's a success because it did well based on the popularity of Facening.
- It's a failure because it failed to actively expand the popularity of Facening and corrupt and mislead the Japanese population.

This is absolutely compounded when you take into account the idea that the production budget on the game was about a buck and some change, and 100,000 is well past the promotional and development breakeven line. It was an incredibly profitable product.

So I'll say again, this LanceStern-esque mentality of boiling everything down to the numbers and failing to actually analyze the product in question is pathetic, incorrect, and easily demonstrated to be so when confronted by anyone who actually knows anything about the product. Your failure is that you look at Face Training as a DS product whose premise happens to be Facening, when in reality it's a Facening product whose medium happens to be the DS.

It's a failure compared to other training games. It's a failure in expanding the DS audience. Yes I'm sure it made a profit considering it's budget, but at this point I think Nintendo is more concerned with expanding the DS audience, and it this regard it didn't do so well. I'm not one to support the magical LanceStern "300k success" theory, but Nintendo is a special case where profiting isn't just enough, they really want to expand the audience more then ever.

 

[Jacobi]

Not really. In recent memory only FFIII had long legs as far as that series goes. I think FFIV will have longer legs than CC FFVII as well, but that's just a pure guess.

But isn't FF:CC the game to buy if you just got a new PSP? It stands out imo

 

[Kurosaki Ichigo]

Media Create Numbers
15. Call of Duty 4 (PS3)
22. Call of Duty 4 (360)

Famitsu/Enterbrain Numbers
21. (360, Activision) Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare - 26,000
26. (PS3, Activision) Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare - 21,000

I demand a recount :lol

 

[jesusraz]

Strongest week for S-E in quite a while, no? Seeing three of its games in the Top 10 seems odd to see for some reason!

And wow, major differences in the sales data between Fam and MC this week :O

 

[Shiggy]

I demand a recount :lol

 

[jgwhiteus]

2. Wii Fit (Wii) : 135k (LTD 884k)

7. (Wii, Nintendo) Wii Fit - 81,000 (818,000)

That's a pretty big difference between the Wii Fit numbers - Famitsu made it seem like it was falling off or supply constrained (though it could well be constrained; it's only available on amazon.co.jp at a huge markup); MC makes it seem like it's still going strong. Didn't someone say before that MC tends to cover more department and general retail stores, and Enterbrain/Famitsu tends to cover more gaming stores? Could explain the big difference for a title aimed at a more general audience.

EDIT: and now that I think about it, if Wii Fit had as good a week last week (and isn't the first week of January supposed to be one of the strongest in the year?), it might well cross a million in this week's MC.

 

[charlequin]

It's a failure compared to other training games. It's a failure in expanding the DS audience.

The game was not intended to do either of these things.

The first criticism is like saying Kirby was a failure at 1m sales because it didn't sell as well as "other platformers" like NSMB. Sure, the games share a genre, which makes them somewhat comparable, but the purpose of releasing one is very different from the other.

Basically, you can't just look at the publisher, see that it's Nintendo, and decide that the game is expected to do as well as Nintendo's best performers. Stumpokapow's comparison to a hypothetical "South Beach Diet DS" is a good one -- there was never a possibility that this product would sell beyond the bounds of what other products under the Facening brand sell, which means it almost certainly was greenlighted with the specific goal of selling at those very same levels.

 

[Stumpokapow]

It's a failure compared to other training games. It's a failure in expanding the DS audience. Yes I'm sure it made a profit considering it's budget, but at this point I think Nintendo is more concerned with expanding the DS audience, and it this regard it didn't do so well. I'm not one to support the magical LanceStern "300k success" theory, but Nintendo is a special case where profiting isn't just enough, they really want to expand the audience more then ever.

Which audience were they trying to expand into? The Facening audience? They did that. That's what the sales were. If it's some other audience, why do you think a Facening product was supposed to do that?

If Nintendo announced "South Beach Diet Wii" for the Wii, which of the following audience do you think would be a healthy target for the product?
a) People who have heard of South Beach Diet and are interested in a South Beach Diet product
b) People who like Halo 3 and Coors Lite

If your audience is B, "South Beach Diet Wii" is probably not a good product fit. I honestly believe that Nintendo aren't total fucking morons even if they sometimes act like it, and so I don't suspect they would expect to get a non-Facening audience with a Facening product.

This issue is further compounded by the fact that the particular cultural fad in question is totally fucking bogus. I mean, Facening is something I would expect to see in a three pack with "Read your Tarot Cards" and "Talk to Angels" products for 45 year old women who loved "A Million Little Pieces" until they found out it was fake and then they "hated it all along". In all of your posts, I've genuinely failed to see anything that constitutes an admission that you read and understood my repeated explanations of the fact that this product is an utter sham.

If you want to know what will REALLY expand the DS audience, your best bet is to look at Nintendo's own words. Iwata has repeatedly said that they want DS Download data for movie listings, bus times, sports info, inside restaurants, and everywhere in your life. Face Training DS takes your Facening routine and involves the DS. No good if you don't have a Facening routine. EVERYONE, though, has a daily living routine that will involve transportation and entertainment and eating and going places.

There are still some great ideas in terms of DS software, but I don't necessarily expect any of them to be BT-style successes. Nintendo doesn't need those right now. I'm sure they'd rather 15 titles that all appeal to different audiences selling 100k a pop than one title that sells 1.5 million. Diversification is okay. If you look at the secondary DS tier, like all the Kanji dictionaries and lifestyle guides and travel guides and such, that's the next level of the expansion. Not just blockbusters, but slow burning utilities too.

But I can't stress enough that whatever expansion you want to conceive of, Face Training could never be a part of it and it would be a pathetic disgusting hollow shell of a shit-filled world if Facening ever was an agent for expansion and change.

 

[BishopLamont]

Ok, ok I concede, you guys got me. My original point though is that there is a lack of training games this year that keep the non gamers interested, I mean yeah you got Focus Flash training that did 700k, but everything else didn't sell so well. The last thing they want is for all these non gamers to stop buying the non-games.

 

[donny2112]

I mean, Facening is something I would expect to see in a three pack with "Read your Tarot Cards" and "Talk to Angels" products for 45 year old women who loved "A Million Little Pieces" until they found out it was fake and then they "hated it all along".

I believe that Tarot Card Training was released a couple of weeks back.

Spoiler

http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/ds/data/943460.html

 

[cvxfreak]

But isn't FF:CC the game to buy if you just got a new PSP? It stands out imo

Obviously not since it's not on the charts anymore -- that title belongs to Monster Hunter Portable 2nd, which is continuing to sell at full price despite the expansion coming in March.

 

[Hereafter]

(eh, close enough)

:lol

XKCD FTW

 

[Fuzzy]

Some Media Create (are they definitive?) numbers for week 24-30 december from http://www.inside-games.jp/news/262/26204.html

Yeah, it's up on gpara.

http://www.gpara.com/ranking/mediacreatebn/ranking_20080109.php

 

[Monk]

I dont know how face training can been seen as anything but other than a success. It makes what Apple is doing with their Ipod a joke in comparison. When you manage to sell something that people dont need on any level, i think that is when you can declare yourself a "WINNAR" in the business world.