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[Segata Sanshiro]

If I were a third party company I'd be moving all of my key franchises over to mobile phones.

hmm

 

[Kyoufu]

So what are people's predictions for PSP now that we know it sold out of 100k Deep Reds?

 

[Stumpokapow]

So what are people's predictions for PSP now that we know it sold out of 100k Deep Reds?

We have confirmation that there were 100k deep reds?

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

So what are people's predictions for PSP now that we know it sold out of 100k Deep Reds?

Next week?

Hardware: 110k
Software: 0k

 

[PantherLotus]

If I were a third party company I'd be moving all of my key franchises over to mobile phones.

hmm

If I were a 3rd party game I would be a

3rd-person aRPG based in a futuristic sci-fi world with vampires and genetically altered human races, with an over-arching theme of sin, forgiveness, and retribution.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

If I were a 3rd party game I would be a

3rd-person aRPG based in a futuristic sci-fi world with vampires and genetically altered human races, with an over-arching theme of sin, forgiveness, and retribution.

(FOMA 903i models and up)

 

[Hcoregamer00]

It sure is. It's got lower dev costs than the HD machines and (thus far) a pretty solid track record of sufficiently large-profile software: SE and Capcom have done very well (and will continue to do well with titles like Birth by Sleep and MH3p) and Namco and Konami have both had successful big-profile titles as well. That makes it more desirable than pretty much any of the consoles.

The fact that it's still not a great platform compared to other platforms in history just shows how treacherous the market is right now. Only the DS really has the true market-leader status, and most publishers still haven't figured out how to tap that as efficiently as they did the PS2.

You could argue that the DS is very similar to the PS1 at the moment, developers had a brand new leader and they struggled to gauge the market. People tend to forget when they parallel the PS2 and the DS that the PS2 has the PS1 to build on top of. The developers that took long enough to gauge the PS1 market payed off in spades because the PS2 adopters were essentially the same market.

The DS is getting a whole different market than the GBA, a market that buys a ton of games and wants console level quality experiences. They have to adjust to this new market and so far we seen success come to few.

 

[charlequin]

And, I mean, it's not like the Wii can't potentially beat the PSP in that category eventually, but right now there's kind of a first-mover problem: all the third parties seem to be holding back, waiting for someone else to release the titles that build the hardcore base. MH3 might help change that a little, but SE seems to be doing a lot less to actively develop the Wii platform than they've done for DS or PSP...

You could argue that the DS is very similar to the PS1 at the moment, developers had a brand new leader and they struggled to gauge the market.

Yeah, I agree. That transition was pretty difficult too, of course; publishers who did a good job taking advantage of the new platform right away (like, hmmmm, Square....) did extremely well for themselves, while others floundered for a while.

I do think everyone's going to figure out the DS pretty well; the money's obviously there on the table, and the rules of what does and doesn't bring it in are becoming clear at this point. I'm still waiting for people to actually figure out the Wii, though; I'm still kind of surprised at how reticent everyone is.

 

[schuelma]

And, I mean, it's not like the Wii can't potentially beat the PSP in that category eventually, but right now there's kind of a first-mover problem: all the third parties seem to be holding back, waiting for someone else to release the titles that build the hardcore base. MH3 might help change that a little, but SE seems to be doing a lot less to actively develop the Wii platform than they've done for DS or PSP...

Yeah I'm a bit perplexed at SE's reluctance. As of now they have 2 Wii projects- a WiiWare game and a game that might be cancelled (FF:CC:CB). I'm not expecting FF13 to the Wii or anything...but it seems awfully risky to not even try on the Wii.

 

[Hcoregamer00]

Yeah I'm a bit perplexed at SE's reluctance. As of now they have 2 Wii projects- a WiiWare game and a game that might be cancelled (FF:CC:CB). I'm not expecting FF13 to the Wii or anything...but it seems awfully risky to not even try on the Wii.

Exactly, while I admit that Sony likely has a reason for not doing Wii (because they want the PS3 to sell more, because they put so much money on the white engine that they could in turn make more games with) but it is risky to not support the number 1 selling console in the world when it could be used as a way to make money to subsidize the money pits.

 

[charlequin]

Yeah I'm a bit perplexed at SE's reluctance.

Well, S-E's biggest profile team committed early to PS3, and aside from that... what do they have going on internally for consoles? The Last Remnant? Most of their next-gen package so far is publishing for other developers on titles like IU and SO4.

I'm actually thinking that in 2008 we'll see two or three "real" announcements for Wii from S-E. It wouldn't shock me to see them try to push an SRPG on the system. And I still think the true KH3 is much more likely for Wii than any other system, especially if Disney has anything at all to say about it.

 

[schuelma]

Well, S-E's biggest profile team committed early to PS3, and aside from that... what do they have going on internally for consoles? The Last Remnant? Most of their next-gen package so far is publishing for other developers on titles like IU and SO4.

I'm actually thinking that in 2008 we'll see two or three "real" announcements for Wii from S-E. It wouldn't shock me to see them try to push an SRPG on the system. And I still think the true KH3 is much more likely for Wii than any other system, especially if Disney has anything at all to say about it.

We'll see. Of course, if SE is putting a lot of stock into Chocobo Wii..ruh roh

 

[duckroll]

Yeah I'm a bit perplexed at SE's reluctance. As of now they have 2 Wii projects- a WiiWare game and a game that might be cancelled (FF:CC:CB). I'm not expecting FF13 to the Wii or anything...but it seems awfully risky to not even try on the Wii.

So what would be trying on the Wii?

 

[Deku]

Well, S-E's biggest profile team committed early to PS3, and aside from that... what do they have going on internally for consoles? The Last Remnant? Most of their next-gen package so far is publishing for other developers on titles like IU and SO4.

I'm actually thinking that in 2008 we'll see two or three "real" announcements for Wii from S-E. It wouldn't shock me to see them try to push an SRPG on the system. And I still think the true KH3 is much more likely for Wii than any other system, especially if Disney has anything at all to say about it.

Given the piss poor sales of games I think S-E is in a holding pattern. I'm sure they know they can put a DQ title or a major FF title and get decent sales, but Chocobo's Dungeon looks to finish its run at under 200k, unless it gets a serious bump in the next few weeks (30k 1st day).

Until then they'll focus their publishing efforts on the one proven platform, the DS.

 

[schuelma]

So what would be trying on the Wii?

An announcement of something besides a Wii Ware King Story rip off. Let me be clear again- I'm not asking for the world here.

(of course, if SE does a full blowout on Crystal Bearers soon then I'll eat my words..but it sure sounds like that won't be happening).

 

[Hcoregamer00]

Yeah, I agree. That transition was pretty difficult too, of course; publishers who did a good job taking advantage of the new platform right away (like, hmmmm, Square....) did extremely well for themselves, while others floundered for a while.

I do think everyone's going to figure out the DS pretty well; the money's obviously there on the table, and the rules of what does and doesn't bring it in are becoming clear at this point. I'm still waiting for people to actually figure out the Wii, though; I'm still kind of surprised at how reticent everyone is.

Not to add to you point because everything that has been said has been said, but we also overlooked the huge sea change for a certain other company.

Level 5

They started publishing their own titles on the DS, and the DS has been nothing but a huge success story for them. Traditionally Level 5 would work with any of the big companies (and still do), but Layton was the first game they made and published themselves. This rags to riches story happened because Level 5 knew the DS market and they make the appropriate games for the DS.

Now look at them, Layton sold above 600,000 copies, the second game is at 400,000 and will have massive legs, the next title Inazuma Eleven looks like another hit.

 

[Lightning]

I think you'll find that is the reason why these mobile phone games are happening as they are very profitable and offset losses.

As for KH3, unless they use a different development team, don't expect that until the end of the generation on any system.

 

[Knastluder]

First of all SE should manage to release some of their SNES gems ,translated and with multiplayer coop on Virtual Console.















Ah yeah and pigs fly ....

 

[charlequin]

As for KH3, unless they use a different development team, don't expect that until the end of the generation on any system.

At this point I think I would be more surprised to see FF13vs. come out first than for it to be back-burnered in favor of an earlier KH3, actually.

 

[Deku]

Anyone else think DS 3rd party sales are kind of overated? Nintendo accounts for 57% of all software sales on it. Nintendo and SE account for 71% of all sales with probably like 10% of the units. Not to mention that recent thread with 3rd party million sellers. 360 already surpassed it with a small fraction of the userbase and time on market. It's doing very good for a handheld, which historically sell less software, but it's hard to believe 3rd parties could be content with only DS after all their success with the PS2.

Not really. Look at the 'other' category (this excludes all the well known 'majors'). 2.9 million units to 97k units. The simple games, h-games, niche games etc which were never meant to sell loads are filling in the gaps.
Put differently, if I am some development house who wants to put content on a portable platform, I have a 3 million software unit market to sell to, compared to a non-existant one on the PSP. And repeat it often enough and one of them may become a hit, like Level 5's Layton, which was never expected to do anything like it did.

Edit: Level 5 did so well Donny actually separated it out as its own brand on the listing of top 3rd parties.

 

[Lightning]

At this point I think I would be more surprised to see FF13vs. come out first than for it to be back-burnered in favor of an earlier KH3, actually.

We'll see. According to Nomura though, that won't be happening. He said he won't work on KH3 until after Versus XIII is completed.

Even so, you are still looking at fall 2010 and that is if the team dropped Versus XIII and started now. Still a bit late, no matter which way you look at it.

 

[iidesuyo]

And repeat it often enough and one of them may become a hit, like Level 5's Layton, which was never expected to do anything like it did.

Same can happen on the PSP though. Capcom was shocked by the great success of the Monster Hunter games, it was actually their most revenue generating game last fiscal year.

 

[Deku]

Same can happen on the PSP though. Capcom was shocked by the great success of the Monster Hunter games, it was actually their most revenue generating game last fiscal year.

Capcom is a major, they'd be in the top PSP 3rd party list just because of the volume of stuff they put on it. MonHun succeeding certainly didn't hurt that.

 

[Stop It]

If I were a third party company I'd be moving all of my key franchises over to mobile phones.

hmm

So you're the head of software planning at Square Enix then?

GET HIM.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

We'll see. Of course, if SE is putting a lot of stock into Chocobo Wii..ruh roh

Chocobo Wii looks like it will start better than half of their DS games from its first two years.

First weeks, as says Famitsu.
2005
Egg Monster Hero: 29,464
Rocket Slime: 43,995
2006
Children of Mana: 105,534
Final Fantasy III: 501,701
Chocobo Tales: 29,065
DQ Monsters Joker: 633,084

 

[Grecco]

So what would be trying on the Wii?

Mario RPG 2?

 

[schuelma]

Chocobo Wii looks like it will start better than half of their DS games from its first two years.

First weeks, as says Famitsu.
2005
Egg Monster Hero: 29,464
Rocket Slime: 43,995
2006
Children of Mana: 105,534
Final Fantasy III: 501,701
Chocobo Tales: 29,065
DQ Monsters Joker: 633,084

I guess it depends on what you're comparing it to- if you're comparing it to the previous MD games it's not doing well, but if you don't it might not look that horrible.

 

[Stop It]

Mario RPG 2?

If Nintendo / Square Enix jointly announce Super Mario RPG 2 for Wii I would physically swim to Japan and hug every exec of both company, seriously, that would make my LIFE, let alone my year.

DO IT NINTY/SQUEENIX.

 

[ethelred]

If Nintendo / Square Enix jointly announce Super Mario RPG 2 for Wii I would physically swim to Japan and hug every exec of both company, seriously, that would make my LIFE, let alone my year.

DO IT NINTY/SQUEENIX.

They should just get Alpha Dream to make Super Mario RPG 2.

For DS.

 

[Stop It]

They should just get Alpha Dream to make Super Mario RPG 2.

For DS.

I'd buy it, twice.

Stop teasing me with stuff I know will never happen, even the thought of it makes me stupidly excited.

 

[vanguardian1]

I'd buy it, twice.

Stop teasing me with stuff I know will never happen, even the thought of it makes me stupidly excited.

QFT, I'd never had so much fun playing an RPG before, as simple as it was. One of my top 10 games.

 

[donny2112]

Edit: Level 5 did so well Donny actually separated it out as its own brand on the listing of top 3rd parties.

Actually, it just made a good cutoff point. After Level 5 at 914K, the next publisher is SEGA at 441K and then Banpresto at 335K. Everyone else (25 publishers) is below 300K.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Hey, here's a question for some of the real dedicated number guys.

What percentage of software sales are we missing out on by tracking only the weekly Famitsu data versus the Famitsu top 500? Like, for example, if we track all the weekly sales for a year and end up with 25,000,000 units sold across all titles, and then the Famitsu top 500 ends up being 32,000,000 units sold across all titles, you would tell me ~20% of sales are missing. I don't want to know the average amount that each game is off by, just the amount that the total cumulative number is off by.

I'd ideally prefer the aggregate of all platforms, mainly because I know our 360 data is much weaker than our DS data over here, for example.

I realize that this might be a little hard to calculate, but I'm really interested in this particular number. The recent North American tie-ratio thread lead me to do some calculations, and I found out that between the legit and leaked NPD data, my personal NPD spreadsheet has an impressive 81% of all 360 software sales tracked in terms of absolute unit volume. I'm trying to sort of determine roughly what the accuracy is of that spreadsheet versus what we get on the Japanese side of things, and thankfully the top 500 yearly books provide a pretty useful 100% control group to compare weekly stuff to.

 

[donny2112]

What percentage of software sales are we missing out on by tracking only the weekly Famitsu data versus the Famitsu top 500? Like, for example, if we track all the weekly sales for a year and end up with 25,000,000 units sold across all titles, and then the Famitsu top 500 ends up being 32,000,000 units sold across all titles, you would tell me ~20% of sales are missing. I don't want to know the average amount that each game is off by, just the amount that the total cumulative number is off by.

Sum of 2005 Top 30s: 36.25 million
Sum of 2005 Top 500: 50.94 million

Sum of 2006 Top 30s: 58.97 million
Sum of 2006 Top 500: 71.84 million

I'd ideally prefer the aggregate of all platforms, mainly because I know our 360 data is much weaker than our DS data over here, for example.

Thanks to januswon, I'd say that our 360 data was more complete than our DS data. He usually posts the monthly Top 10 from Famitsu 360 in his Console Sales thread. The Top 10 for the month for 360 usually stretches down to < 2K.

 

[Stumpokapow]

The Top 10 for the month for 360 usually stretches down to < 2K.

... Wow. I feel like I've stumbled into a seedy underworld I never knew existed.

 

[Xeke]

How have they not decided to make a real sequel to Chrono Trigger yet.

 

[vanguardian1]

How have they not decided to make a real sequel to Chrono Trigger yet.

Copyright Issues/Ownership, IIRC

 

[reilo]

Copyright Issues/Ownership, IIRC

Plus the big 3 that made Trigger have left Square, so.

 

[Sage00]

Copyright Issues/Ownership, IIRC

They sure thought they owned it enough to shut down that fan remake project..

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Plus the big 3 that made Trigger have left Square, so.

Sakaguchi's gone, but Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama are still available.

Unless you meant the people really behind its success.

 

[reilo]

Sakaguchi's gone, but Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama are still available.

Unless you meant the people really behind its success.

Still need Mitsuda and Uematsu to do the OST.

How's their relationship with Square right now?

EDIT: Guess Kitase is still available, too. Well, that is if he lives long enough to finish FF13.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Still need Mitsuda and Uematsu to do the OST.

How's their relationship with Square right now?

EDIT: Guess Kitase is still available, too. Well, that is if he lives long enough to finish FF13.

I don't think Uematsu's got any beefs with Square atm, though he seems to be getting as much work as he can handle from Mistwalker. Mitsuda is mostly retired from game music, is he not? I doubt he'd come back to score a whole game of that scope.

 

[reilo]

I don't think Uematsu's got any beefs with Square atm, though he seems to be getting as much work as he can handle from Mistwalker. Mitsuda is mostly retired from game music, is he not? I doubt he'd come back to score a whole game of that scope.

Chrono game without Mitsuda is not a Chrono game. Moneyhats always work. He hasn't done anything since Xenosaga Episode I, has he?

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Chrono game without Mitsuda is not a Chrono game. Moneyhats always work. He hasn't done anything since Xenosaga Episode I, has he?

sez Wiki:
Shadow Hearts II Original Soundtracks (2003)
Hako no Niwa (soundtrack for Graffiti Kingdom) (2004)
Deep Labyrinth (2006)
Luminous Arc Original Soundtracks (2007)
Armodyne (2007)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2007) (Arrangement)
Inazuma Eleven (2007)

Doesn't seem to know how to retire very well.

 

[reilo]

sez Wiki:
Shadow Hearts II Original Soundtracks (2003)
Hako no Niwa (soundtrack for Graffiti Kingdom) (2004)
Deep Labyrinth (2006)
Luminous Arc Original Soundtracks (2007)
Armodyne (2007)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2007) (Arrangement)
Inazuma Eleven (2007)

Doesn't seem to know how to retire very well.

We'll consider him available for Chrono 3 then

 

[ethelred]

How have they not decided to make a real sequel to Chrono Trigger yet.

They did, but much of the fanbase shat on it so thoroughly that a number of the developers stated they didn't really want to go back and touch the series again.

Sakaguchi's gone, but Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama are still available.

Unless you meant the people really behind its success.

Like who? There were a lot of people involved in Chrono Trigger, and it's hard to pinpoint any one person who "made" its success. Akira Toriyama was certainly a big part of it, though. So was Yuji Horii, since he designed most of the scenario for the game. Then you can go down the line and credit people like Akihiko Matsui, Takashi Tokita, Yoshinori Kitase, Yasunori Mitsuda, Masato Kato... I'm not sure which one of them would be considered principally responsible.

EDIT: Guess Kitase is still available, too. Well, that is if he lives long enough to finish FF13.

Kitase was one of only three directors on the game. But it's moot, as the guy really doesn't do game directing any more, and he's not making (let alone finishing) Final Fantasy XIII. I think he likes his cushy producing gig too much now.

Chrono game without Mitsuda is not a Chrono game. Moneyhats always work. He hasn't done anything since Xenosaga Episode I, has he?

Um, yeah, he's done quite a bit.

 

[Grecco]

[QUOTEThey did, but much of the fanbase shat on it so thoroughly that a number of the developers stated they didn't really want to go back and touch the series again.

][/QUOTE]

Chrono Cross wasnt a real sequel.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

ethel, I was basically speaking to how people seem to credit the "Big Three" when CT was really a pretty big project with a lot of talented people on it.

 

[ethelred]

Chrono Cross wasnt a real sequel.

And that's why you'll never get another Chrono game. Suck on it.

 

[MCD]

Chrono Cross is awesome.