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Media Create Sales: 6/16 - 6/22
- Thread starter cvxfreak
- Start date
Awntawn said:
I would imagine if anything that a Wii version would cost even less than what you're proposing - it may be that the 70million paid for "no expenses spared" luxuries, maybe the best motion capture technology or these flights around the world to study landscapes as research material for the localities in the game. The more probable explanation (and definitely the meat of it) is creating said environments.
(I was going to write a lengthy and detailed analysis of the models for Metal Gear Rex in MGS4 and the Gamecube remake, Twin Snakes, but it probably wouldn't have lead to much more than simply saying "takes more people")
Probably the easiest way to tell is to look at the staff credits for Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4, and see how many more people worked on MGS4 than there were on MSG2.
Awntawn said:
Square is notorious for its massive art team - simply put, I think they are the best and most talented in the entire games industry, and that most definitely doesn't come cheap. (My old boss once told me they had as many as 120 artists working for them, though I find that number a little hard to believe I would not be too surprised if that was the case.) For them you would have to compare them to whatever Final Fantasy 13 is going to cost them in the long run to make.
Azelover
Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
BorkBork said:
Wii Fit is hardware, are they the same price? Monster Hunter will probably pass Wii Fit but I don't think that's meaningful considering it's not even the best selling game on the Wii. In fact the comparison itself is leaving a lot of odds on the table for the sake of wishful thinking IMO, it's a small comparison made larger by deliberate preference, but whatever.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Wii Fit: 8800Azelover said:
MHP2G: 4800
MHP2G actually has passed up Wii Fit in Famitsu's version of things:
, but Wii Fit's legs are already proven as long, so if it can hold out it can likely retake the lead.
MGS 4 had put up excellent sales for a PS3 game, even if would somehow stop selling now. The drop-off is kinda big yes, but compared to other PS3 games it is doing very well. 
Yeah I know! Such an amazing thing to accomplish! Well done Konami! Finally, after more than 1.5 years one title has outsold the Dragon Quest Swords launch spin-off title with no meaningfull marketing. And it only took one of the biggest games that the PS3 has!sprocket said:
The Take Out Bandit
Member
Aeon712 said:
No, that's merely pretty good for a PS3 game.
Airkiru said:
I have Warhawk already.
Metal Gear is only relevant to Kojima fangirls like yourself really.
Bigger MGS4 drop than I expected, but as others have said, hardly surprising. I think it will crawl across 600K, which while possibly dissapointing considering the 1st day sales is still higher than most thought and significantly better than any other PS3 game.
Real disappointed at Shiren 3 really losing any semblence of legs. It might crawl to 100K and sell out its initial shipment, but still a bit disappointing.
Very interested in 1st day numbers for tomorrow. Can ToS behave more like the first Symphonia game and less like a spin off? I predict 100K 1st day/150K 1st week, about 300K LTD.
Real disappointed at Shiren 3 really losing any semblence of legs. It might crawl to 100K and sell out its initial shipment, but still a bit disappointing.
Very interested in 1st day numbers for tomorrow. Can ToS behave more like the first Symphonia game and less like a spin off? I predict 100K 1st day/150K 1st week, about 300K LTD.
Dragona Akehi
Retired
1) The 70$ million cost of development is purely rumour, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's bunk; hell even if it was HALF you're looking at a hell of a lot of money and manpower.
2) Why are we talking about MGS4 on Wii or 360?
3) Why are people with Snake avatars claiming it's the best game ever in a sales thread?
4) Why are people talking stupid shit?
2) Why are we talking about MGS4 on Wii or 360?
3) Why are people with Snake avatars claiming it's the best game ever in a sales thread?
4) Why are people talking stupid shit?
charlequin
Banned
sphinx said:
I think you misread. I was responding to the comments on the "other regions" only with that post. I agree that "poor" and "abysmal" are entirely accurate descriptors for Japan.
Awntawn said:
That's not how it plays out, though; no one just takes a photo of a brick wall and pastes it into a game. Creating a texture, even one based off of a photo, takes hand alterations and optimizations over the entire image, and the amount and level of detail those are going to require is going to be 2x-4x as much for a big HD texture as for something that you'd use in a Wii game. Same goes with higher-poly models. The same basic principle drove up the cost of game production from the PS1 generation to last generation.
Awntawn said:
And increased effects, and more significant animation, etc. etc.: yes, yes it does. Though again, I find the $70 million number doubtful. You'd need around 300 people working full-time for four years to hit that number.
In terms of other game budgets we've seen information about, though, the difference really is that big, relatively. A $10 million game on PS2 becomes a $20+ million game on PS3. A $20 million game on PS2 becomes... well, let's just say I'm very curious to see how much money they wind up spending on Final Fantasy XIII. :lol
jarrod said:
I think you have to look at the specific spinoffs in question. Mysterious Dungeon has always been a series that leans more towards the niche; Monsters has always been one that leaned more towards the broad market.
Hammer24 said:
As I mentioned upthread, if you assume that the percentage dropoff each week from now on will be the same as it was for MGS3, you top out at about 625k LTD. My instinct is to suggest that the dropoff each week will be the same or worse than MGS3, since the first week dropoff was significantly worse.
sprocket said:
Comparing with Famitsu 2007 top 500 data, the 533k of MGS4 sales would represent:
30.9% of all PS3 third party sales
20.0% of all PS3 software sales
19.3% of all Wii third party sales
4.7% of all Wii software sales
apujanata said:
Code:
Game Wk1 Wk2 LTD
MGS2 457k 88k 789k
MGS3 487k 123k 820k
MGS4 476k 68k ???Agent Icebeezy said:
Original MC average prediction was 307k Week 1, 537k LTD. If you interpret the high Week 1 sales as increased frontloading, then one could expect Week 2 sales to be much lower. If you interpret the high Week 1 sales as increased overall demand for the game, then one could expect Week 2 sales to be much higher.
JoshuaJSlone said:
You didn't make a prediction, so you can claim that you totally saw this coming.
charlequin said:
For MGS2, Week 1 & 2 sales account for 69.0% of LTD. If MGS4 follows, it would have an LTD of 772k.
For MGS3, Week 1 & 2 sales account for 74.4% of LTD. If MGS4 follows, it would have an LTD of 716k.
If MGS4 is even more frontloaded than MGS2 and MGS3 (say Week 1 & 2 sales = 80% of LTD), it would have an LTD of about 666k.
Using an inverse function to model the week-to-week sales decay (about 20% off for MGS2, but about 2% off for MGS3), MGS4 would have an LTD of about 589k.
blu said:
MC doesn't do numbers outside the top 10. For those of us interested in numbers up to the top 30, Wednesday morning about 9:30 A.M EST Famitsu numbers leak which have the top 30.
For this week, Famitsu has Shiren at 5,800, for a LTD of 78K. So its dying fast and might or might not break a 100K.
I don't understand all the (feigned?) disappointment in the face of "poor" MGS4 results. MGS4 is nothing but good news for the PS3 in Japan. To anyone who expected the PS3 hardware to now outsell the Wii consistently, it's not really MGS4 that you should be disappointed with, but your own ability to form expectations bound in reality.
Let's see:
1)Best-selling, fastest-selling PS3 game in Japan to date. The curse of 300k or 400k or whatever is broken.
2)The game single-handedly lifted PS3 2008 HW sales out from definitely underperforming 2007. It moved 10, 11 weeks worth of hardware in the span of two weeks. So much for "no bump". No, that doesn't place the PS3 anywhere near a winning position, but there sure as fuck was/is an MGS4 bump.
#1 is the point of significance here, because it basically proves that high-budget, high-profile PS3 exclusive titles can indeed recoup their development cost, if they are sufficiently awesome and receive a little marketing push. 500k copies is what, 2.25 billion Yen/22.5 million dollars of revenue for Konami? And that's from the home territory alone. I don't know what kind of budget MGS4 had, but it's surely turned a profit already, factoring in WW sales.
Now picture how this news might be received at Square Enix. We all kind of suspect that for the longest time they have intentionally held back FF XIII development because they wanted to sell to a larger installed base. Now what do the execs think after seeing MGS4 numbers? I posit that it's just about impossible for FF XIII to sell less than MGS4 in Japan. I'd predict somewhere between 50% and 100% more actually. Now how much of a risk would it really be to wrap up FF XIII development ASAP and release it?
That's, to me, the real significance of MGS4. It's a signal to publishers that the Japanese PS3 base is finally large enough and willing enough to buy software to an extent that higher-budget productions are viable. And that's good news, surely.
Let's see:
1)Best-selling, fastest-selling PS3 game in Japan to date. The curse of 300k or 400k or whatever is broken.
2)The game single-handedly lifted PS3 2008 HW sales out from definitely underperforming 2007. It moved 10, 11 weeks worth of hardware in the span of two weeks. So much for "no bump". No, that doesn't place the PS3 anywhere near a winning position, but there sure as fuck was/is an MGS4 bump.
#1 is the point of significance here, because it basically proves that high-budget, high-profile PS3 exclusive titles can indeed recoup their development cost, if they are sufficiently awesome and receive a little marketing push. 500k copies is what, 2.25 billion Yen/22.5 million dollars of revenue for Konami? And that's from the home territory alone. I don't know what kind of budget MGS4 had, but it's surely turned a profit already, factoring in WW sales.
Now picture how this news might be received at Square Enix. We all kind of suspect that for the longest time they have intentionally held back FF XIII development because they wanted to sell to a larger installed base. Now what do the execs think after seeing MGS4 numbers? I posit that it's just about impossible for FF XIII to sell less than MGS4 in Japan. I'd predict somewhere between 50% and 100% more actually. Now how much of a risk would it really be to wrap up FF XIII development ASAP and release it?
That's, to me, the real significance of MGS4. It's a signal to publishers that the Japanese PS3 base is finally large enough and willing enough to buy software to an extent that higher-budget productions are viable. And that's good news, surely.
bcn-ron said:
I definitely see your point, I do. But one thing to keep in mind is that the bar is set much much higher for FF13 than MGS4. The mainline FF games did what, 2M on average on the PS2? Add in the costs of developing a brand new engine for that game, and I'd say SE needs FF13 to do at least 2.5M in Japan. As of now that would be higher than the PS3's userbase in Japan, which is barely over 2M. I guess my main point is, the higher expected sales, the higher the userbase needs to be to absorb those sales.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
schuelma said:
(all Josh's numbers)
FFX - 2,264,067
FFX Mega Hits - 169,640
FFX Ultimate Hits - 179,959
FFX International - 240,940
FFX International Ultimate - 47,676
FFX-2 - 1,941,727
FFX-2 International - 288,745
FFX-2 Ultimate Hits - 44,887
FFX/FFX-2 Double Pack Ultimate Hits - 25,784
FFXII - 2,322,329
FFXII International - 137,040
So it's probably closer to 2.3-2.5 million on average.
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Big world-wide game release means a bunch of non-regulars popping into sales threads. We don't really see a whole bunch of ban shenanigans in MC threads anymore, but maybe it'll be different in the short window after major releases like MGS4? ;PDragona Akehi said:
I think the biggest cost, in terms of developing a monster game like MGS4 isn't simply the money that it takes to produce it - but the fact that you're having to direct a massive amount of your workforce towards creating it, thus cutting down on your ability to market other titles.
Let's say that MGS4 were on the Wii instead: Yes, it would automatically cost less to produce, but it would also take up a much smaller number of your employees, allowing you to market more products in a shorter amount of time.
Making one game that costs X amount of dollars and cuts your production line down to almost nothing for several years doesn't make as much financial sense as creating several games that cost y amount and gives you a better chance of finding some traction in an already changing business landscape. For the price of making MGS4, both in terms of yen and in terms of manpower, they could have produced maybe eight to ten games for the Wii (including a MGS4 that would've sold likely the exact same amount) in a similar amount of time.
I'm not saying they should have done that, just that the idea of putting all your eggs in one basket is a very very risky business venture. It'll probably work out in this case, but it's not a strategy that makes much sense to me.
Let's say that MGS4 were on the Wii instead: Yes, it would automatically cost less to produce, but it would also take up a much smaller number of your employees, allowing you to market more products in a shorter amount of time.
Making one game that costs X amount of dollars and cuts your production line down to almost nothing for several years doesn't make as much financial sense as creating several games that cost y amount and gives you a better chance of finding some traction in an already changing business landscape. For the price of making MGS4, both in terms of yen and in terms of manpower, they could have produced maybe eight to ten games for the Wii (including a MGS4 that would've sold likely the exact same amount) in a similar amount of time.
I'm not saying they should have done that, just that the idea of putting all your eggs in one basket is a very very risky business venture. It'll probably work out in this case, but it's not a strategy that makes much sense to me.
bcn-ron said:
Simply recouping the cost isn't enough. Companies want to maximize the returns on investments, so spending $70 million (or whatever) on a title to "only" break 700k (if that) in Japan won't be a particulary valid option for most developers, not when you can achieve similar numbers with lesser titles on other platforms at a lower cost. Not to mention that you need to pony up with the cash before hand, something that won't be as easy to do for those who aren't sitting on IP's of 'system saviour' calibre, especially when the platform itself edges out around 10k per week.
As for the "curse", this only means that most PS3 software numbers being thrown around in MC threads will need a disclaimer that says "exept for MGS4, the biggest and most hyped exclusive so far", just like the PSP's "exept for Monster Hunter and Crisis Core".
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Dragona Akehi said:
Interesting crowd this week.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
blu said:
It will break 100k pretty much guaranteed. At 400 copies per week over 1 year, it'd hit 100k.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
So I evolved that "Trajectory matching" utility PantherLotus inspired recently. Matching sales at one point can be useful in narrowing things down, but I thought being able to be more specific would be even better. By matching games at multiple points, you could try to find ones with similar legs. While I succeeded in making this work, the initial example I made for testing ends up showing games with some wildly different outcomes, so it goes to show that just because there are similarities, it doesn't mean there will continue to be.
Games that sold between 95K and 105K in 3 days - 30 matches
aaaand between 135K and 145K in 10 days - 4 matches
aaaand between 225K and 235K in 52 days - 2 matches
Even after matching that far, though, the games then diverged. One is last seen at 252K, the other at 373K.
Actually, it was using the first version of this tool for Shiren last night that made me realize multiple points could be useful. So many matched the "after 3 days" or "after 10 days" number that it was hard to narrow down the ones which had a decent opening but then poorer legs. So now I'll try plugging in numbers to see which ones are near-matches after 1 week and 3 weeks.
Between 53.5K and 63.5K after week one, between 73K and 83K after week 3.
13 games matched. Of those, only 2 passed 100K; at least while on the charts that are currently in the database.
Making things match a bit tighter, so in both cases they must match within 3K rather than 5K, there are only 3 results. One game eventually reached 92K, one game eventually reached 108K, and the other is Disgaea 3 so it's too recent to know how things play out in the long term.
EDIT: Actually, funny thing. The one game that most bucked the trend and passed 100K seems to be an impossibility. Venus & Braves appears to have had an 8K week increase its total by 30K... need to look into that.
EDIT AGAIN: Yeah, somehow Venus & Braves accidentally got a set of data that properly belonged to a Prince of Tennis game, so I'll fix that now. Which will change the earlier results a bit, but hey.
Games that sold between 95K and 105K in 3 days - 30 matches
aaaand between 135K and 145K in 10 days - 4 matches
aaaand between 225K and 235K in 52 days - 2 matches
Even after matching that far, though, the games then diverged. One is last seen at 252K, the other at 373K.
That would still be relatively leggy for a game that had such a drop into week 2 and week 3.Stumpokapow said:
Actually, it was using the first version of this tool for Shiren last night that made me realize multiple points could be useful. So many matched the "after 3 days" or "after 10 days" number that it was hard to narrow down the ones which had a decent opening but then poorer legs. So now I'll try plugging in numbers to see which ones are near-matches after 1 week and 3 weeks.
Between 53.5K and 63.5K after week one, between 73K and 83K after week 3.
13 games matched. Of those, only 2 passed 100K; at least while on the charts that are currently in the database.
Making things match a bit tighter, so in both cases they must match within 3K rather than 5K, there are only 3 results. One game eventually reached 92K, one game eventually reached 108K, and the other is Disgaea 3 so it's too recent to know how things play out in the long term.
EDIT: Actually, funny thing. The one game that most bucked the trend and passed 100K seems to be an impossibility. Venus & Braves appears to have had an 8K week increase its total by 30K... need to look into that.
EDIT AGAIN: Yeah, somehow Venus & Braves accidentally got a set of data that properly belonged to a Prince of Tennis game, so I'll fix that now. Which will change the earlier results a bit, but hey.
I really don't think you can go much further with just these variables. There's much more at play here.JoshuaJSlone said:
The first, obvious thing is simply quality, and you will never get a reliable reading of that from anywhere, you'll just see the impact. Good games get good word of mouth after launch, and go on to sell more. Crappy games don't. This also factors in the used copies that will compete with the new copies and limit sales potential. Another variable that's easy to overlook is the sheer length of a game. If a game's 60 hours long, and you haven't finished it yet [and maybe never will], you may still feel compelled to keep it, just in case the mood grabs you again. Long games are less likely to land in the used bin in large quantity. The same goes for games with [successful] multiplayer modes, but that's probably not much of a concern in Japan right now.
Then you have franchising factors, and it's not just "this franchise is popular, this one isn't". The predecessor's quality will go on to influence buyers' expectations for the next installment, counteracting the impact of the quality factor in many instances. See FF 8 => FF 9, FF IIIr => FF IVr.
These are mostly factors for which you will not find a source. Taste is inexplicable and errant and the love always sounds louder than the sober reality. People tend to want to be polite and not poop on other people's parties, and this will make it impossible to rely on quality readings gathered from a community's majority vote. Just take a look around at GAF and its taste in JRPGs.
Pureauthor
Member
HK-47 said:
I know. It's so much more grindy. :/
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
But looking back on things, this should've been expected. They'll disappear again from these threads in a few weeks, and then we'll see the same thing repeat when the next big PS3 or 360 game comes out.PantherLotus said:
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
XiaNaphryz said:
Let's not pretend that this type of crowd is limited to those formats.
JoshuaJSlone said:
You are really the coolest person on this board.
To make comparisons useful, you might have to restrict certain other variables, like platform (obviously), platform LTD at title release date, genre, and even the time of year it went on sale.
Great stuff, and I hope to see this method become a powerful predictive tool.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
bcn-ron said:
1. Quality effecting legs (the high used games available theory) -- I think this is a good point but should be measurable. You're suggesting that quality, when initially unknown, can cost a title future sales because of the availability of used titles? I think this makes sense but the impact cannot be known unless used titles are tracked.
2. Length of a game effecting legs (the low used games available theory) -- I think this is not a good point, although it makes sense on the surface. The evidence for this is everywhere, most recently the number of anecdotal copies of MGS4 showing up less than a week after it went on sale. More than that, I think the 60 hour+ games tend to be the the same ones that are almost entirely front-loaded with sales in the first place.
3. Franchise popularity effecting legs - I'm not sure how this relates to comparing multiple games in regards to their sales trajectory, other than making it another variable that CAN be tracked, rather than the opposite for which you have argued.
4. Taste, Love, Sober Realities -- these have nothing to do with sales trajectories, honestly. Not sure what the argument was there.
I do agree that Trajectories have NUMEROUS factors which we haven't entirely determined yet, but I disagree that it is a completely useless idea as of yet. I'd like to see it further developed using some of the variables already mentioned as well as some of the in my above post.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Platform would be an easy one to add in, but the others less so. At least, considering how few I'm guessing would want to make full use of such options, it seems more trouble than it's worth to do right now. However, I'll change the way it sorts them currently (by release date) to sort by platform first. I think most of us who'll mess with this would then be able to skim through the titles for a given platform and have some idea of where in the cycle that game was, and whether or not we want to ignore that particular result.PantherLotus said:
Actually, as long as we're considering Platform as a specifier to add, it shouldn't be any more trouble to add the other options used for the Game Search. I can imagine where they could come in useful at times, and ReleaseDate would at least let you specify a month if not a proper range. I can see ways it could be better, but those are things that need to be made better in the Game Search eventually, too.
Now that the tool is as functional as it is, I'm also wondering how it could be referenced by the individual game pages. For each sales bit there could be a link to see other games that performed similarly, but then it gets to a problem I've avoided until now: what should be the default for "similar". Sales to that point +-10K? Sales to that point +-10%? If there's a link for each week should it use those sales at that point as the only comparison point, or should each week build on the last to just get more and more specific until after a few weeks no other games would be able to match? Really for any of these questions there could be an option, but the defaults would be what get randomly checked out the most due to ease of use. For what it's worth I'd probably lean to matching only for one number/age at a time, +-10%, because something like that just seems the most fun to check out. We'd get the picture of one particular X,Y region on the graph, and see how various games came to and went from that point.
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
True, though it's the most noticeable case more often than not.PantherLotus said:
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Just a few more interesting uses for the trajectory matcher.
Games that sold over a million the first week. Having the first week be "0 to 6 days" makes it sound like it's not allowing for a seven day week, but "6 days" means 6 days after launch, which would be 7 days of sales. Perhaps my wording can be better.
Games that sold between 500K and a million the first week.
Games that sold less than 3K the first week, mostly notable because usually if they're that low they don't make the top 30 and they're thus under the radar. I set a salesmin of 1 rather than 0 because it was capturing a few games that had known ranks for their first week, but not known sales, so effectively they were at 0.
Games that didn't reach a million until year 2. Defined by asking for games that in the year 2 period have both an under-million and over-million LTD. There could be some that slip through the cracks if there's, say, only one year 2 appearance for the game at all in a Top 500 or whatever.
Similarly, games that passed the 2 million threshold in year 2.
Game that passed the 1 million threshold during year 3. Yep, one.
Games that sold over a million the first week. Having the first week be "0 to 6 days" makes it sound like it's not allowing for a seven day week, but "6 days" means 6 days after launch, which would be 7 days of sales. Perhaps my wording can be better.
Games that sold between 500K and a million the first week.
Games that sold less than 3K the first week, mostly notable because usually if they're that low they don't make the top 30 and they're thus under the radar. I set a salesmin of 1 rather than 0 because it was capturing a few games that had known ranks for their first week, but not known sales, so effectively they were at 0.
Games that didn't reach a million until year 2. Defined by asking for games that in the year 2 period have both an under-million and over-million LTD. There could be some that slip through the cracks if there's, say, only one year 2 appearance for the game at all in a Top 500 or whatever.
Similarly, games that passed the 2 million threshold in year 2.
Game that passed the 1 million threshold during year 3. Yep, one.
test_account
XP-39C²
What do you mean with "no meaningfull marketing"? That the current marketing didnt affect how many copies that were sold, that it would have sold just as many copies of the game even if there was no marketing at all?Neomoto said:
Oh I'm not saying this analysis is useless, on the contrary, I think that's really fun. I'm just saying that there are limits to the accuracy you can get when you only know a subset of the variables that are at play. I do believe in statistics and accurate predictions based on history and known variables. It's just that in the games market there are some variables of significance that you honestly can only guess, but not know, because they are too subjective and too hard to quantify.PantherLotus said:
Basically, if you devise a prediction model that is based only on the objectively determied variables (week 1 sales, historic franchise sales, marketing budget, director's marital status at the end of development, and even aggregate review score), don't be surprised when it errs spectacularly for some titles. That's to be expected always, because your model is still missing the magic ingredient that you can't obtain anywhere.
Great Rumbler
Member
Rock_Man said:
PS3 dropped 55K. Other than that, only minor changes for everything else.
Jasoncheng
Member
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
Pretty much what I was expecting, though I'd have thought PS3 to be around 25K.Rock_Man said:
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
Blame oil prices.dolemite said:
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
LiquidMetal14 said:
At least it isn't Wii Fit anymore. :lol I've lost a few pounds with it. It isn't hard to see why people like it. It is beneficial if used right.