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marvelous entertainment airing out grievances over wii game sales
- Thread starter robox
- Start date
Eteric Rice said:
Not so popular genres meaning...what? Basically, you mean Japanese developed games at this point if you're saying Atlus, etc. Then, yes, of course it's natural they are mostly on the DS and PSP. Because that's where the market is in their home country. There is still some niche games on the home consoles as well from these companies, but considering where the market is in their home country...it's going to be on the DS/PSP.
I don't entirely understand why Gamestop has 500 copies of Orphen, Under the Skin, Future Tactics, Eternal Ring, Madden 97 and other $4.99 wonders occupying large sections of walls if retail space is so valuable. Is it just that even selling a $3 used game yields more profit than selling a new copy of Baroque?
Night_Trekker
Member
jay said:
I own Under the Skin and recently bought Eternal Ring... used at GameStop :lol
Good question, though.
MidnightScott
Banned
I don't own any of their other games except for No More Heroes. Harvest Moon & Rune Factory are boring to me, which is why I do not purchase those titles.
I'm really not into most of their stuff, but I am definitely picking up Muramasa & Arc Rise Fantasia when they come out later this year. I may pick up Little King's Story, don't know too much about it yet...
Companies really need to learn how to actually advertise their games in the west. I see that they have commercials for every little game that comes out there, but why not in the US?
Gaming is really popular during recessions because it is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment after start-up costs of $300-$400...
If you can't afford to market a game, then team with another publisher...seriously.
I'm really not into most of their stuff, but I am definitely picking up Muramasa & Arc Rise Fantasia when they come out later this year. I may pick up Little King's Story, don't know too much about it yet...
Companies really need to learn how to actually advertise their games in the west. I see that they have commercials for every little game that comes out there, but why not in the US?
Gaming is really popular during recessions because it is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment after start-up costs of $300-$400...
If you can't afford to market a game, then team with another publisher...seriously.
DeaconKnowledge
Member
One thing I don't get.
I thought Ubisoft published NMH in America. Why do I hear Marvelous' name stapled to it?
I thought Ubisoft published NMH in America. Why do I hear Marvelous' name stapled to it?
Gamestop must see new games as a necessary evil, though it's not instantly apparent why they are even necessary. Maybe they are necessary just to get initial foot traffic in and start the cycle of life for their profit yielding used games, or maybe because publishers will send ninjas to assassinate GS managers if they cut them out entirely.
MarzipaNMOS
Member
DeaconKnowledge said:
people are confusing developer/publisher. Muramasa isn't being published by MMV in NA either, Ignition is.
jay said:
New games are the hook to selling used games. Come in to pick up your pre-ordered game, perhaps you'll pick up some used ones as well while you're in there. Also, don't forget, if you have old games you're not playing anymore, trade them in for credit on that new game. Oh, btw, when you're done with THAT game, trade it in for extra money on your next preorder.
Etc. Very easy.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Well Little King's Story could potentially be one. Did Sim City launch with massive fanfare and large pre-orders? The Sims even? Guitar Hero? Final Fantasy 1? Doom? What about smaller titles like the Settlers? I honestly don't remember because any title that has been a major success eventually gets major support even if it is a few weeks or months after it initially launched, and for the smaller titles that do moderately well on word of mouth it is pretty hard to quantify.Zachack said:
Maybe if the pre-order system didn't exist then LKS would get no sales, we'll never know, but we do know in this instance that if the pre-orders don't improve, then stores are not going to stock a game which by all accounts is very good.
jaundicejuice
Member
I don't see how used games continue to be such an omnipresent threat, the consumer gets so little of their money back that trading in games simply isn't worth it and the prices of used games are so ridiculously high. I would rather pay the extra 5$ to get an undamaged copy of the game with a case, if it has one, that isn't covered in mystery stains or wasn't used as a drink coaster. Obviously that isn't the view of the average consumer.
The industry itself is partly to blame by instilling the belief in their own customers that their own products have little worth with yearly iterations of various franchises. Retail stores with used game programs just capitalized on this. What to do with your Madden/NHL/NBA Live/Nascar/MLB/Guitar Hero/Tony Hawk/etc 2009 when 2010 comes out? People don't value the games they buy, they just trade it away like it's a disposable product/experience for the next shiny new thing but then why buy a game in the first place? Why not save yourself the loss of 40-50$ and rent the game?
Marvelous just needs to figure out how to get consumers to value their products--limited print runs and kick ass pre-order bonuses--and build up a niche audience like Atlus has been able to foster. It's nice that they've got aspirations as a publisher, they've bank rolled some of the more compelling and interesting games on the Wii, but I think they've got to scale back their ambition a bit.
The industry itself is partly to blame by instilling the belief in their own customers that their own products have little worth with yearly iterations of various franchises. Retail stores with used game programs just capitalized on this. What to do with your Madden/NHL/NBA Live/Nascar/MLB/Guitar Hero/Tony Hawk/etc 2009 when 2010 comes out? People don't value the games they buy, they just trade it away like it's a disposable product/experience for the next shiny new thing but then why buy a game in the first place? Why not save yourself the loss of 40-50$ and rent the game?
Marvelous just needs to figure out how to get consumers to value their products--limited print runs and kick ass pre-order bonuses--and build up a niche audience like Atlus has been able to foster. It's nice that they've got aspirations as a publisher, they've bank rolled some of the more compelling and interesting games on the Wii, but I think they've got to scale back their ambition a bit.
duckroll said:
While MMV is lamenting their sales, I don't think they've actually said that they're losing money. Dalthien would know better than I since he keeps up with the financial reports thread, but I'm pretty sure MMV is not making losses.
poppabk said:
Ummmm...I think you are misinterpreting what is being said. This is not about a game not being sold at all. We're talking about the difference between shops ordering 30k of your game in the first shipment vs 100k of your game. The difference between there being one or two copies in specialty shops, and their being a decent number of copies in general shops with higher foot traffic.
Word of mouth is still important, and a super niche game with a low print run can still be a breakout success if the 15k people who buy all the initial copies shout how awesome the game is from the high heavens and tell all their friends, who then run to their retailer and keep asking about it. It's pretty easy for a retailer to order another shipment of a game, but a publisher can't force a shipment on a retailer, unless, like we said earlier, they're someone huge like Square-Enix or EA.
Your earlier plan of no one doing pre-orders ever again might fix things eventually, but in the 6 months or so it would take anyone to notice and care, 100s of great games would fail and their publishers go bankrupt because even fewer of their games would make it to market. And retailers would still order a million copies of Halo: ODST day one, even without a single preorder, because they know it will sell. Stopping preorders hurts the small guys more than the big guys, so it really is a better system.
jay said:
Used games are nothing but profit, have a high turnover rate, don't require anything in the way of logistics (they can just be thrown in a bin). They're like a cheap money printing machine that GS uses until the disc breaks. A new game is only useful for how often it can be resold. I'm sure Gamestop hates me, because I don't buy used products, and I almost never sell anything.
Eteric Rice
Member
jaundicejuice said:
I would like to see Marvelous become big. They really are a great little company when it comes to game making.
Also, Little King Story and Arc Rise Fantasia will be day one.
You have a huge point there. I work at Gamestop and the thing that always makes me go "WTF!!" is that you can find a used game of a new release one week after. It boggles my mind, why buy it when you are just gonna get rid of it a week later. Not sure of the game? Rent it then.jaundicejuice said:
Its just that people have the luxury for the videogames I guess, that's why it is deemed as a reception proof industry. Gamestop makes their money anyways and I get paid, but its sad for some publishers.
xs_mini_neo
Banned
Drinky Crow said:
So you're two Drinky Crows duct-taped together, then?
Deku said:
Fixed.
Hero of Legend
Member
So remind me, how much does a publisher gain from WiiWare and VC games?
My Little Shop is 1500 points and has been in Japan since April 28, and Reel Fishing Challenge was just announced for JP and will be out in July 14 for a measily 500 points.
Hudson's seen great success doing WiiWare games, they even said if I recall that the Wii has a high online userbase, so hopefully MMV will see success there.
Luckily you won't ever have to worry about shipments and stock amounts in stores.
My Little Shop is 1500 points and has been in Japan since April 28, and Reel Fishing Challenge was just announced for JP and will be out in July 14 for a measily 500 points.
Hudson's seen great success doing WiiWare games, they even said if I recall that the Wii has a high online userbase, so hopefully MMV will see success there.
Luckily you won't ever have to worry about shipments and stock amounts in stores.
Hero of Legend
Member
May as well post this here, but I finally found proper gameplay of Reel Fishing: Angler's Dream.
And just today, EBGames lowered the price of the game from $40 to $30.
Someone tell me it's cuckoo season *clicks gun*. :|
And just today, EBGames lowered the price of the game from $40 to $30.
Someone tell me it's cuckoo season *clicks gun*. :|
If it's to believe to this blogger on their latest shareholders meeting, MMV announced they'll be porting one of their (recent?) Wii titles to PS3/360
http://www.air-be.net/finance/20090624_mmv/
ARF pretty please
http://www.air-be.net/finance/20090624_mmv/
I sense a great disturbance in the force.bloke said:If it's to believe to this blogger on their latest shareholders meeting, MMV announced they'll be porting one of their (recent?) Wii titles to PS3/360
ARF pretty please
http://www.air-be.net/finance/20090624_mmv/
As if the voices of a thousand Wii sales defenders were silenced at once...
AceBandage
Banned
Hunahan said:
Watch it be Reel Fishing.
SilverLunar
Member
LKS sounds more likely to me.
Cosmonaut X
Member
SilverLunar said:
Why? What makes that more appealing on the 360 than something like Arc Rise Fantasia that would seem to play to the audience that picked up the 360 and the various exclusive RPGs MS secured?
bloke said:If it's to believe to this blogger on their latest shareholders meeting, MMV announced they'll be porting one of their (recent?) Wii titles to PS3/360
ARF pretty please
http://www.air-be.net/finance/20090624_mmv/
This is surprising.
Surprised nobody thought it would be Muramasa: The Demon Blade. I mean it translates well for graphics and they should be able to port easy. It could MAYBE be ARF but I dont see why LKS would be ported to 360/PS3. ARF would look butt ugly on the 360/PS3. Im willing to bet its Muramasa.
EDIT:
EDIT:
I HIGHLY doubt its that game also.
bloke said:
Well, whatever it is, I hope it pays off for them. They deserve it.
(Rune Factory Frontier?)
MORE:
Chumly said:
Yeah, I dunno. Just tossing it out there.
Muramasa seems pretty likely, though, yeah. (Since XSEED lost it, I've stopped mentally associating it with MMV, I guess. :lol )
SilverLunar
Member
Hmm well real time strategy games are well received on the system more than JPRGs.Cosmonaut X said:
And i was just giving an option ..=P
AceBandage
Banned
SilverLunar said:
You can hardly market LKS to the RTS crowd....
Ok this looks totally legit, I missed the link to financial report PDF; I hope I got this right... number of planned releases for next term in Japan (till Q3 2010?)
Wii 6
Wiiware 2
DS 10
PSP 9
PS3 2
360 2
Planned shipment numbers for those PS3/360 titles seem really small; 75k and 25k...
It's on 29th page
http://ir.moovii.jp/cast/download/2/77/2_77.pdf?541570-2049
Wii 6
Wiiware 2
DS 10
PSP 9
PS3 2
360 2
Planned shipment numbers for those PS3/360 titles seem really small; 75k and 25k...
It's on 29th page
http://ir.moovii.jp/cast/download/2/77/2_77.pdf?541570-2049
Captain Smoker
Member
Hunahan said:
AceBandage
Banned
bloke said:
So, about the same as what their games sell on Wii? And yet, their Wii games aren't selling?
AceBandage
Banned
LiK said:
Or you could get a Wii and play it and its sequel, rather than hoping for something that won't happen.
well, it's definitely the most marketable recent property, but it's hard to decide which one it would be. i'm thinking it'll either be Muramasa (though still think that one's pretty unlikely) or Arc Rise Fantasia. ARF is also pretty marketable. we'll see. i hope that XSEED gives ARF a pretty strong push...cress2000 said:
AceBandage
Banned
doomed1 said:
I just can't see ARF being looked at favorably on the 360/PS3.
Graphically, it's passable as a Wii game, but putting it into HD would just show the flaws (like lack of any real lighting) more.
We'll see though. I still think it's just Reel Fishing.
The Muramasa devs said that they had to make the game for Wii as they couldn't afford to do the visuals in HD on the budget they had. Where has anyone heard different?
Edit:
Not exactly. From Vol. 243 of Nintendo Power, they said when they were first shopping the game in October 2006, publishers only wanted 3-D games for PS360. That might've changed, though. They also confirmed that they make the visual in HD and then compress them down to the system that it runs on. They even took care to make sure that any errors that would show up on an HDTV were taken care of, so it looks like they were trying to keep the door open for an HD release, at least. Maybe it is Muramasa, then.
Edit:
Not exactly. From Vol. 243 of Nintendo Power, they said when they were first shopping the game in October 2006, publishers only wanted 3-D games for PS360. That might've changed, though. They also confirmed that they make the visual in HD and then compress them down to the system that it runs on. They even took care to make sure that any errors that would show up on an HDTV were taken care of, so it looks like they were trying to keep the door open for an HD release, at least. Maybe it is Muramasa, then.
yeah, i just can't see how ANY games that MMV produces would be looked upon favorably on HD consoles. i mean, despite how everything is prebaked in ARF, it's a JRPG with a distinct style about it, they can get away with it.AceBandage said:
but yeah, you're right. it's tough to imagine anything that would be very marketable to these audiences. Reel Fishing, as much of a joke it would be if it were true, is probably most likely.