Hcoregamer00 said:
Inazuma Eleven 2 is proving that Layton's insane success is not "lightning in a bottle," that they could develop and turn games into massive franchises. If anything, this makes the possibilities even more endless since they have shown the willingness to take risks that most Japanese publishers are not willing to do.
It's true, Level-5 is proving that, as a publisher, they're willing to take risks and be a bit creative with the games they're making. But it goes deeper than that. They're also showing that, as a publisher, they're willing to full-throatedly support the market leading platform in a way that most other publishers have, unwisely in my view, not been doing. A lot of the little projects or half-hearted stuff or spinoff games that have been getting put on the DS... it may have made sense for a traditional handheld, but given the actual market success of the DS, I think a lot of these publishers could've been a lot smarter with their software design. Just like if you contrast the way a lot of the Square games (a number of the Final Fantasy spinoffs and some weird little niche games) have struggled to sell with the way Dragon Quest 9 has performed (becoming not only the best selling Dragon Quest, but the best selling Japanese game in the company's history), it seems kind of clear where a number of these errors have come into play. Similarly, the approaches that Konami and Namco, for instance, have taken on it have often been downright weird. And I understand that Capcom's strategy of reaching for the global market more than the Japanese market has been effective for them, and I also understand that they've seen enormous success on the PSP with Monster Hunter, but I think they could've had a lot more success on the DS than they've had as well.
I think that's a huge factor behind Level-5's success. They didn't launch as a publisher and decide to do what most people would've expected, which would be a big PS3 game, but rather they focused on the system that had the strongest market success. What's more, they tailored their games to the strengths and demographics of the platform (coming up with smart ways to tap into the casual elements of the userbase), but they did this without compromising most of their core development principles and without sacrificing very high production values. Then, they supported their games with enormous advertising pushes -- because they weren't side games or spinoffs or cheap quick cash-ins, but serious projects (their first self-published titles, after all) that
needed to succeed.
So, you combine all of that with the willingness to do projects that are fairly original and stand out from the crowd (which I think has been the case with all of their announced published efforts so far) and you've got an enormously successful launch as a publisher. Obviously, to large extent most of this was possible because of the goodwill they acquired as a Dragon Quest developer, but they capitalized on that in the smartest ways possible. It's kind of remarkable when you think that their first new game as a publisher is now on the cusp of going platinum (around 950k in sales), its two follow-ups were almost as strong, and it's now cementing the success of a second new core franchise. I don't think it's an understatement to say that they've been one of the smartest Japanese publishers by far this generation.
duckroll said:
I don't think you really understand what Cardboard Senki is if you feel it's not a good fit for the PSP. [...] Now, looking at what IPs are successful on the PSP, won't you agree that robot games, multiplayer games and customization aspects are extremely popular on the PSP?
Yeah, there's no question that Cardboard Senki is very, very smartly designed for the platform, just like Layton, Inazuma, and Ninokuni were and are. And just like with Layton and Inazuma, it looks like Level-5's been developing a very clever and innovative marketing approach for Cardboard Senki, too, and I'm sure the advertising push will be very strong. The game will do quite well.
Personally, I'm extremely eager to see what kind of sales Level-5 will attain with Cardboard Senki, Ninokuni, and Fantasy Life. I think all three will do very well, but I'm looking forward to seeing just
how well. I find their publishing success pretty fascinating.
As far as Fantasy Life goes, I've said this before, but I think it's pretty clever how they're including an almost identical game for free with Layton 4. A Layton RPG is something they easily could have released into retail on its own, and it would've sold. That they're bundling it with another game prior to launching a similar product from the same developer, to me, indicates that they want to use Layton 4 as a Trojan Horse to get this into as many hands as possible, get people trying it and potentially interested, and then collect a ton of feedback in order to refine Fantasy Life as much as possible to make sure it's good. Aside from the exposure Layton gives it, I think Level-5 recognizes that word-of-mouth based on game quality has been a big factor in its publishing successes and they want to make sure they have that for this game.
And in all, that indicates to me that Level-5 sees the value of being committed to launching another new big, successful brand as greater than the value of releasing a Layton spinoff, getting whatever it would sell (and as I said, I'm sure it'll sell well), and then having the new brand launch not be quite as successful or big as it could have been.
