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[Fdkn]

what you're mentioning is the whole story of people transitioning from dedicated hardware to another section of the industry. can't find it here? they'll find it somewhere else. i'm saying it's something that isn't exclusive to genres or hardware makers. it's something that affects everything because everyone wants something that's a little cheaper and more accessible with more variety. there's no platform or game type that's immune to those demands and we're seeing it happen even here, where things used to be considered safe so long as the big software kept selling.

So let's call the PSXB subsection the 'core market' even if that's not how I think it is, just for the sake of giving it a name. The core is not failling because some games are failling. The spending is there. Winners grow, losers fall. I don't see a problem at all.

The Wii subsection, call it whatever you want, fell down because of its own mistakes. But that didn't put the core on danger, some could argue that it was even a new opportunity. If they fall in the future, it will be for their own mistakes too.

 

[AniHawk]

As others have mentioned, releasing all your major titles within a month or two of one another is catching up with the industry. I simply cannot afford to bite on all the games, so I wait till the end of year sales, and buy two or three, instead of just one on its launch day.

this is isn't the problem that's catching up to the industry. the problem that's finally catching up is the shortsightedness of making a kind of game for an increasingly smaller, and inelastic userbase. they did it at the expense of variety and in the name of competing directly for the same kind of dollar. this is what happened in japan that turned so many creepy moe games into mainstream titles and even had those elements introduced into mainstream franchises like fire emblem and zelda. but while those people might be reliable, they don't have an endless supply of money, and by catering to a specific group, it leaves others out and wary of the medium.

the problem is that there are less people buying games at retail.

 

[semiconscious]

I don't know how it will be perceived in the West but if a lot of people have a similar reaction to Conan it won't be pretty and it might displace NMS from the collective conscienceless...

okay, i've got a new favorite ...

 

[Iced Arcade]

Damn! leeh made a lot of friends recently.

Yeah I don't get what you just said lol

 

[Ninja Scooter]

This is probably why Sony is perfectly fine delaying their big gun games (Uncharted 4, Horizon) out of Q4 and letting third parties have that sales period to themselves.

 

[AniHawk]

So let's call the PSXB subsection the 'core market' even if that's not how I think it is, just for the sake of giving it a name. The core is not failling because some games are failling. The spending is there. Winners grow, losers fall. I don't see a problem at all.

The Wii subsection, call it whatever you want, fell down because of its own mistakes. But that didn't put the core on danger, some could argue that it was even a new opportunity. If they fall in the future, it will be for their own mistakes too.

i'm saying that the dedicated hardware market is in decline because there are fewer people spending money on hardware and software. your response is that the hardware market isn't in decline because while yes there are fewer people spending money on hardware and software, those people didn't actually matter so therefore there isn't a decline.

this is the handwaving i was talking about. and it's not relegated to nintendo. microsoft won't match 360 sales with xb1. sony won't match psp sales with ps vita. probably the best case scenario is that the ps4 hits ps1 sales, and when you stack everything up and compare this gen to last gen, that seems like a very sad, low bar to hit when the market has always grown gen over gen since the 80s.

 

[legend166]

In a contracting market (let's not kid ourselves any longer, the console market is absolutely contracting, especially in the US) sales seem to be concentrating to fewer titles. This has been happening for awhile now, but it seems to be even more prevalent now.

If you're not first, you're last.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

I expect in ten years we are going to see a book from Zampella where he reveals EA tried to buy Respawn "to help them out" in 2017.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

No surprise here. TF2 and ROTTR were victims of stupid marketing decisions.

^ ^ This.

 

[Fdkn]

i'm saying that the dedicated hardware market is in decline because there are fewer people spending money on hardware and software. your response is that the hardware market isn't in decline because while yes there are fewer people spending money on hardware and software, those people didn't actually matter so therefore there isn't a decline.

this is the handwaving i was talking about. and it's not relegated to nintendo. microsoft won't match 360 sales with xb1. sony won't match psp sales with ps vita. probably the best case scenario is that the ps4 hits ps1 sales, and when you stack everything up and compare this gen to last gen, that seems like a very sad, low bar to hit when the market has always grown gen over gen since the 80s.

The problem is that you consider the industry a sum of different markets (and that's true), but then consider one of those markets as a inamovible entity while in fact is also a sum of different things for different audiences and necesities.

And you keep talking about retail but the spending is not in freefall, and if you actually consider digital, it's more than possible that the spending is growing for that subsecion of the market that didn't shot itself on the foot.

 

[Novel Mike]

I think this shows a lot honestly.

It shows people clearly want new or different experiences in many ways which is why BF1 did so well. If it had just been another modern setting shooter it likely would have bombed as well. The setting of it really brought it to a different place, we'll see if it can retain those sales through the holidays but its pretty easy to guess why it did so well.

It also shows that people do want remasters but they want them to be properly done. The lazy remasters aren't selling worth a shit but the ones that are really being reworked like Skyrim are doing really well.

Tomb Raider was doomed, SE making it Xbox One exclusive for a year just pissed everyone off, it didn't matter if it was going to do well and if I remember correctly even then they put it up against Fallout 4 last year, that was a really dumb fucking decision and for this PS4 release they decided to still charge 60$!? Like you you serious? IDK if it has all the DLC or whatever else, no one wants to pay 60$ for a year old game.

Titanfall is the least surprising thing, it had everything going against it. Going right up against both Call of Duty and Battlefield, releasing against Skyrim remaster, making the original exclusive to one platform, ect. It's hardly surprising it bombed after all of that and its a damn shame because EA is at fault for all of it.

However I think the biggest take away from this is that people are just tired of having the same experience year in and year out. Many of these games aren't yearly sequels anymore but so many similar games are out now. Third person shooters, first person shooters, everything is a shooter or has shooting elements in some way and people are just flat out getting tired of it. It's part of the reason I think the Skyrim remaster did so well, people remember that game fondly and its very different then everything else that is out right now. BF1 may be yet another FPS but its not a setting that is generally explored and the development teams did a really great job on it (and its crazy to think that EA hated the idea of it, they just don't understand the market at all >.>)

FFXV has the same chance but I think they fucked themselves with the delay and a lot of the negative press surrounding it. That Conan segment was pretty funny but it makes the game look like garbage. I think it'll still do okay but I don't think the name alone will carry it as much as it might have back in September before the delay, it was almost a bad joke when it got delayed again after so fucking long.

I would like to believe that this will show publishers they need to stop playing it so fucking safe with every release and let their developers take risks and experiment but if I'm being realistic then most publishers are stupid and only care about making as much money as they can in as short of time as they can instead of thinking long term. Those that do think long term have lasted for a long time and have series that have lasted decades and always been popular, those that don't end up doing really well at certain times but the drop off happens fast and before they know it the rug has been pulled out from under them.

 

[The Lone Courier]

maybe selling a game with full of content is not the answer. I remember many people were whining when TF1 came out saying "NOOOO SP NO BUY!" or something like "Game has no content" yet when respawn did listen to them and put all that stuff in people didn't even buy it lol. IMO game devs should do what ever they feel is the right thing to do for their product and not listen to the internet lol. Titanfall2 selling this bad and GoW selling this bad is surprising to me though. They even sold less than SFV which is a super niche genre. As for Tomb Raider well.. the ship sailed long time ago. They should have released it alongside the xbox one version.

Sandwiching it between two popular shooters is what killed it. Not the content.

 

[KingHenrik30]

Fuck. I loved Titanfall 2. And Gears 4.

 

[Corleth the Fey]

Would you say the issue is that too many blockbuster titles are released side by side and only one or two will only actually do fine?

I think it's partly this.

There have always been lots of games released this time of year. Normally a mix of big AAA games and smaller titles trying to grab some end of year glory. The difference is that this year is that the smaller games are gone - it's nothing but big games.

Every year there are sales casualties and it's the smaller games that take the hit - but most people don't even notice or care.

Now this year it's big games that are going to have to suck up the bomba slack. Especially the ones with issues - poor previous releases, staggered releases, fading franchises etc. Everyone is of course noticing these games failing and that's how we get here.

 

[Jawmuncher]

I expect in ten years we are going to see a book from Zampella where he reveals EA tried to buy Respawn "to help them out" in 2017.

In the back of my mind. The whole TF2 release date thing, really does feel like a Bethesda style attempt to buy a company.

 

[Piichan]

Terrible scheduling decisions are the biggest cause here. Also, there's very little merit in picking up these games at launch. Most games you'll find much cheaper just 2 or so months later.

Publishers really need to rethink their release schedule. One or two AAA title releases per month seems like the sweet spot. It's okay to delay a game.

 

[AniHawk]

The problem is that you consider the industry a sum of different markets (and that's true), but then consider one of those markets as a inamovible entity while in fact is also a sum of different things for different audiences and necesities.

And you keep talking about retail but the spending is not in freefall, and if you actually consider digital, it's more than possible that the spending is growing for that subsecion of the market that didn't shot itself on the foot.

there is no immovable object in the industry. the psx market wasn't the same as the genesis market and that wasn't the same as the nes market. each first party appealed to something different and pulled in something unique. the point is that it all built off each other and started to grow. and now, it's shrunken considerably when staying steady would have been alarming.

and i'm specifically mentioning retail because i hold the opinion that it's a short hop, skip, and a jump away from buying your digital games on a physical platform to buying your digital games on a digital platform. this is when i start to evaluate what the current first-parties (aside from valve) are doing and seeing how they plan to adapt to the really obvious future in front of them.

 

[Delusibeta]

Mafia 3 did well, but all the sales figures I've seen combined is nowhere near the 4 million shipped figure 2k was bragging about. I get the feeling that it's been overshipped.

 

[chromatic9]

OP fails to mention that Mafia III is up 58% in the UK

BF1 is up 107% over BF4 in the UK

Also BF1 sold about half a million in October in the UK. BF1 sells 1.2 million in the US with a population size 5 times greater.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

Personally I'm someone that may have bought TR at launch on PS4 but when it eventually came out I just lost interest altogether.

 

[ModBot]

Please do not make threads about unsourced/unofficial tweets, especially if they are from previously banned members.