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Media Create Sales: 6/16 - 6/22
- Thread starter cvxfreak
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LizardKing
Member
just about any game would do better on wii. i always thought though, that companies should put their big budget games on the leading console and some smaller budget games that are hidden gems on the lesser selling consoles to give them more exposure. this doesn't ever seem to happen though
LizardKing
Member
Vinci said:
that did happen though. in the us at least.
LizardKing
Member
Vinci said:
i'm talking about with melee. fire emblem was virtually non existant in the US before melee which created a demand and they localized every one since then. not sure if one was localized before melee? guys help me out.
I don't know why people say that AAA games are would be so much cheaper on the Wii. It's not that just because the system is less powerful, they're going to stop trying to push it to its limits. MGS4 was (likely) expensive as hell to make because they wanted to make the best game that they possibly could, and if they wanted to make the best game that they possibly could on the Wii, chances are it would probably hit the 40~50million mark as well. The reason why Wii game budgets aren't nearly as high is because quite simply no developer has made a dedication to putting out a full-out super-high production value product on it yet. Where every motion is captured, every single line of dialogue is recorded, the crew flies around the world finding locations, consulting professionals in the military, having a Hollywood composer do the score, etc. All of this has absolutely nothing to do with the resolution of the textures.31 Flavas said:
Look, they don't HAVE to invest extra tens of millions on producing the most impressive production the platform is capable of just to make an HD game. They CHOOSE to do so because it is their flagship title and they decided to go the extra mile in order to make the game the best it could possibly be. Even if their flagship titles ended up in SD on the Wii, no doubt they would have chosen to go the extra mile and dedicated the extra resources to do the same there.
neverknowsbest
Member
Well at least the PSP is doing well somewhere. Now Sony needs to keep that momentum and transfer some to the US, which looking at the titles that are selling, won't happen. MGS4 drop was disappointing, I don't think PS3 games will have legs until the system gets cheaper, and by then it might be too late.
LizardKing
Member
here vinci, from wiki. getting way off topic now sorry
Ash Sparrow
Banned
Metal Gear is doing a little better than i expected, mainly because i lowered my expectation before ralease. I still think Konamis got to be pretty happy with overall numbers.
When I look at my Wii - I feel no love
But when i look at my PS3 - Love is in the air.
I don't care if the Wii is winning. The PS3 brought me already so many fantastic gaming moments. And I really hope the 360 as soon as possible. I hate this mistreatment by the most 3rd party developers.
But when i look at my PS3 - Love is in the air.
I don't care if the Wii is winning. The PS3 brought me already so many fantastic gaming moments. And I really hope the 360 as soon as possible. I hate this mistreatment by the most 3rd party developers.
I mean, we're building castles in the sky here, so it doesn't really matter, but... just for arguments' sake, ya know?Vinci said:
Wouldn't the rabid dedication of the fanbase mean that it would have sold the same no matter what console it would have been released on? The only thing I could see is a slightly less dramatic drop-off and a bit better legs due to the rapidly growing userbase gobbling up the apparently great game at a greater rate than used games being sold back.
I don't think it's the HD Textures and High poly models that make a game expensive as much as it the time and effort by programmers in order to optimize the engine and make it playable, correct me if I'm wrong here. Look, say I take a 7.2 megapixel picture of a brick wall, and I want to use that as my texture. It doesn't cost me less money to reduce that resolution to 1/4th the size, does it? What I'm saying is that developers go the extra mile in terms of production and optimization on PS3 and 360 AAA games that they simply don't bother with on the Wii, and THAT is what causes the game costs to be higher.ElFly said:
Take other technological features in HD games such as normal mapping, HDR, dynamic shadowing, etc. From here, you can take two sides. Either they are possible on the Wii at lower resolutions, or they're not because the system is too weak. If you take the former, you're saying it IS possible to squeeze those features in with effort. That effort would take a lot of time and money. The thing is, they don't HAVE to implement these features in PS3 and 360 games. They choose to because they CAN. And if it is at all technologically possible to put them on the Wii, they WOULD put the extra dollars of development cost and time in to make it work if they really wanted to. Any less would be use of the forbidden word "downgrade", and thereby a lesser experience. If, let's just say, the features were not possible on the Wii, and the developers were perfectly happy with that, then surely they would be perfectly happy leaving them out of the HD versions as well? If the argument is that the experience can be made just as enjoyable on the Wii, then the argument that the game would cost less to make on the Wii is moot, because producing that exact high quality experience is what costs money, regardless of the hardware that it is on.
That's about visuals. Any other aspects, and the whole argument is moot. Less sound? That would lessen the experience of something so story-driven. They didn't HAVE to put that much sound in the game, they chose to. Smaller maps? Lessens the experience gameplay-wise. People are making the argument that the exact same games could be put on the Wii, albeit a bit less pretty. If that's the case, you can't cut corners as such. Overall, I just don't see the hardware specs as the reason why the game development costs are different.
AnimeTheme
Member
Terrell said:
Since when is Dragon Quest >>>> Metal Gear so mind blowingly new to you?
Jammy said:
It's nothing better than a wild guess at this point.
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
Hammer24 said:
It should be worse with the supposed flood of MGS4 sold back to stores.
Please stop jooooooooking~Awntawn said:
Seriously high poly models don't take a significant amount more effort than low poly ones? HA! Not to gloss over programmer effort (I'm a software engineer myself) either but do you really think making textures is as easy as taking a picture of a brick wall and resizing it? :lol Visual effort increases just as exponatially as programmer effort when going to HD.
It's not, I was just commenting how a semi-lame game sold nearly as much as PS3's biggest blockbuster to date PURELY on brand and not on quality in the slightest.AnimeTheme said:
Awntawn said:
You go very long-winded here, but it all comes down to you thinking that a similar game would not cut costs significantly because a similar amount of labor would be required to max out the Wii. Which is entirely INSANE.
Awntawn said:
That's an interesting analogy, but it's not quite right. A higher resolution texture doesn't cost less to produce when you reduce it in size, but it DOES take more processing time to get right. In 3D modelling it's not simply a case of taking a photograph of tree bark and slapping it onto some tree-shaped polygonal model - there is a lot of work involved in touching up the texture beforehand, making it seamless if it is designed to repeat over a polygon surface, removing any undesired imperfections on the image (such as odd scratch marks or leaves) altering the brightness and contrast to match all the other assets in the game. You have the exact same process to take care of in Standard Definition assets, but with higher resolution stuff it takes extra time and effort and care. There is quite a lot of pressure on artists to fulfill this level of quality in the strict deadlines of a game development process (even something as relatively lengthy as Metal Gear Solid 4's development lifespan) and for this to be achieved there are usually more artists working on a game than near enough any other type of staff. It's very very expensive to sustain and there have been some companies that have been trying to reverse the process either by scaling back more ambitious projects, or to have a larger focus on user-generated material that doesn't need an artist to pre approve everything in the game beforehand. The latter is exactly the reason why Spore was created like it was.
It's not that they don't bother with doing that on the Wii games - they might not be putting much effort into third party offerings on the console, but even if you took some of the best texture work on the console (say for example Smash Bros. Brawl) that probably would have taken relatively less manpower and money to produce the artwork for than Metal Gear Solid 4. To get the same standard of quality for a higher power console, it takes a LOT more work.
Your sarcasm would work if this was one mediocre game against another... unless that is what you're implying in the first place.kpop100 said:
Dragon Quest Swords, selling on name alone, versus the PS3 system-seller/#2 talking point for the console's entire success as a platform (#1 being FFXIII, #3 being GTAIV).
But yeah, there's no justification to draw a comparison, because a lump of shit with the brand "Dragon Quest: Slime Turd" would outsell MGS4. At least according to your snide little quip.
Awntawn said:
each new graphical trick, like normal mapping, means not only a graphic wizard programming it, but also making the asset pipeline take it into account. This means not only tools, but designer training. Yeah, with time tools and people's training costs fall, as everyone knows it/every tool does it, but this is not the case with MGS4, a game that was developed for a new console, on a completely new engine.
And just because you can take a texture from a photograph, doesn't mean it is done all the time. Most of the textures are hand painted, and more resolution = more detail to put attention to. And even if they used photographs as textures, it doesn't mean they can just take a photograph and paste it into a model. They have to retouch it and work with it until it looks right. And more resolution = more work to make sure everything looks right.
Then, you have sound. Here I am on shaky grounds, but I remember Kojima saying he wanted 5.1 audio for everything. That's not for free either.
I was reading your post and was going to mention Spore if you didn't but alas. Indeed expectations for visual quality and detail are increasing constantly. A HD game doesn't only require high quality art and models but also requires MORE of these in any scene than what's expected from a generation ago (more props, increased variety in textures).SovanJedi said:
AnimeTheme
Member
ElFly said:
A DQ spinoff can sell 1.5M on NDS, tho.
Seriously, there is no point to compare DQ:S and MGS4 in many ways.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
just ignore the Wii guys. there that's better
It is undeniable that higher resolution textures and models cost more to produce that lower resolutions, but how much of the cost goes into that as opposed to just overall raising the bar in terms of production value? People make it sound like MGS4 took 70m to make on PS3 and would have taken less than half of that to make on the Wii. Does it seriously amount to a 35mil difference just for higher resolution textures and higher poly models? I would imagine that at least a higher percentage of the budget went to aspects that could have been done on lesser hardware. Once again, correct me if I'm wrong, it just doesn't seem to make sense thinking about it.SovanJedi said:
What spurs me to think this is stuff like this: I can only assume, for example, that SE spent quite a deal of money on Crisis Core's production. That's for the PSP. I imagine there are plenty of games with lower budgets than that on the PS3 and 360 that visually look much better due to being on a HD console, with higher poly count, texture resolution, native render resolution, lighting, shadowing etc.
Any "because they don't have to" arguments should be tossed out the window because AAA flagship titles don't cut corners like that. Either they couldn't, and therefore they couldn't make the same game, or they could and would and therefore would spend a lot of money on it. I just feel that people saying that KojiPro could have put the same MGS4 game, or SE the same FFXIII (or any other PS3 or 360 AAA flagship title) on Wii for a fraction of the price have virtually no argument. Either, A) they couldn't put the same game on due to technical limiations, so it would be a much lesser game for a fraction of the price, or B) they could and would try to fit as much of the same things as they could into the system given its specifications, and yes it would be cheaper to make, but hardly a "fraction of the price".
duckroll said:DQ spinoffs selling over a million is not surprising in the least.
DQ remakes selling several million is no surprise either.
Some DQ spinoffs fail to clear a million, such as Shonen Yangus, Slime Morimori, and the GBA DQM. Welcome to the club, DQS!
No DQ remake has sold over 2 Million.
Don't forget the levels themselves, the architecture would be more complex and detailed, because more powerful consoles can push more polygons it would be expected.Awntawn said:
Look at it this way: what would be the biggest time increase when putting a pacman game on atari2006 with one level and then a 3d pacman on a modern pc with several levels?
domokunrox
Banned
Tmac said:
I LOL'D at this.
MGS4 on 5 DVDs....not going to happen, dude. Not going to happen.
I'm not saying that MGS4 will be on 360, but with audio taking up a large proportion of the data, the game could fit on 2 or 3 DVDs with some audio quality reduction. This does bear in mind that the game doesn't fill the blu-ray disc on PS3, potential compression, and potential dupes on the PS3 version taking up more space.domokunrox said:
MGS4 seems as though it would take up a lot of data, even if you lower the quality of certain aspects of it that not so many people will recognise, and even less will care about. However, it wouldn't be a problem, in terms of storage, for the game to go on 360, it seems.
And technically, if certain things cannot be redone on 360, a nearly as good looking port could happen, maybe with some optimisations that make certain areas of the engine stronger in the 360 version.
Financially, it'd make a lot of sense, unless the title has been moneyhatted. The game would sell loads on 360, and would certainly make a big profit, especially as the game will only be a port. Is the game moneyhatted?
Politically, however, it seems like Kojima don't want to see MGS4 ported. Or at least that's what I remember.
I think that if MGS4 doesn't make it on 360, it would be because of either a paid exclusive deal by Sony, or because of Kojima-san.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
MGS certainly had a huge drop, but considering its first week put it significantly ahead of every other PS3 game it just plain doesn't have as much room to grow as a normal game. Its two-week total is something I probably would've doubted as a lifetime total a few weeks ago.
That's probably about as much to do with it as GameCube's failure being due to a dislike of SD gaming.Kasumi1970 said:
It was quite possible to spend dozens of millions of dollars for PS1 games. I'm sure someone could manage (or mismanage) a $70 million Wii game if they so desired.sprocket said:
Yeah, as long as it's legitimate Japanese sales data it's good to go in these threads, regardless of the Media Create numbers being the specific cause for a new week's thread to start.Tmac said:
It was nonexistant. Did Fire Emblem characters appearing in Melee help kick things off? Maybe, but we can't make a comparison of how FE games did pre- and post-Melee.LizardKing said:
I don't think so. Japan-GameCharts's million sellers list includes none. For the period/consoles accounted for on Garaph, Torneko's Adventure 3 and DQ Swords are the tops, but I'm not sure how high the SNES/PS1 Torneko games got.cw_sasuke said: