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Media Create Sales: Week 27, 2014 (Jun 30 - Jul 06)

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Honestly, why is Yokai Watch 2 already launching...

Level 5's business model revolves around launching a product on a 12 month schedule every year until it's no longer viable and then hoping they find the next viable product before the last one dies.
 

Jigorath

Banned
Level 5's business model revolves around launching a product on a 12 month schedule every year until it's no longer viable and then hoping they find the next viable product before the last one dies.

Sounds like the Activision strategy. They're both prioritizing short term success over long term.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Sounds like the Activision strategy. They're both prioritizing short term success over long term.

While I definitely agree there's a similarity, I feel Activision actually does a much better job maintaining their brands as a whole.

Like switching CoD to three year cycles and going with the whole parallel team thing in the first place for both CoD and Skylanders is a lot more effort than Level 5 puts in to maintaining their brands.

A lot of the Activision brands that ended up doomed were also significantly less viable for long term survival. Like how long could Guitar Hero plausibly last, when almost every popular rhythm series has enjoyed a short to moderate window of success and then faded away?

Skateboarding (Tony Hawk) and licensed games (Warner's are not licensed, they own the IPs) are also businesses that totally imploded at retail on consoles from all angles.

Now, Activision's behaviors certainly didn't help with the aforementioned declines, but in recent years I feel they've taken maintaining their brands much more seriously than Level 5 still.
 

Jigorath

Banned
The difference is that Activision actually manages to keep its IP's going for a long time.

Activision ran Guitar Hero into the ground in 3 years, Tony Hawk 6. COD has been going a while I'll give you that. Skylanders could be irrelevant soon with due to so many competitors flooding the market.
 

DaBoss

Member
Activision ran Guitar Hero into the ground in 3 years, Tony Hawk 6. COD has been going a while I'll give you that. Skylanders could be irrelevant soon with due to so many competitors flooding the market.
What are the other competitors other than Disney Infinity?
 

vinnygambini

Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
Which IPs do you feel they've killed off notably quickly, especially relative to Level 5's "after three entries at most it's pretty much fucked" run rate.

- Crash Bandicoot
- Guitar Hero
- Tony Hawk
- Spyro (debatable - Skylanders)

Though management certainly have a better grasp, comparatively to their earlier years, in maintaining the status quo as their properties such as Call of Duty and Skylanders have blossomed.
 

DaBoss

Member
Dat Amiibo :p
Nintendo so far. I think we'll see a lot more in the future.
I believe they have explicitly said that they will not use amiibos in a way that is similar to Skylanders and Disney Infinity so that they won't directly compete. We know they will work throughout various games.

I do not view amiibos as a competitor to Skylanders or Disney Infinity nor do I think that any more people will join in the console market. Maybe for mobile.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
- Crash Bandicoot
- Guitar Hero
- Tony Hawk
- Spyro (debatable - Skylanders)

Though management certainly have a better grasp, comparatively to their earlier years, in maintaining the status quo as their properties such as Call of Duty and Skylanders have blossomed.

Yeah they definitely did a notably worse job in the past. They seem to have had a lot of trouble maintaining series that lost their original developers especially (Crash, Guitar Hero, and the first incarnation of Spyro). Tony Hawk they managed to tank despite owning Neversoft.

What did Gungho ever see in Acquire?

Well they bought Grasshopper due to the CEO of Gung-Ho having a personal friendship with Suda, so I'm guessing a similar situation.
 

javac

Member
Also that pokemon rumble garbage.

To be fair I think that was just Nintendo testing the tech and seeing how responsive people were to it. Seeing how people reacted to the size, price, packaging, manufacturing and retail implementation (since that was Gamestop exclusive in the US and GAME exclusive in the UK, no?) I don't think Nintendo had big ideas for that on a grand scale since its execution was strange. I think Amiibo will be a huge thing for Nintendo.
 

QaaQer

Member
Nintendo so far. I think we'll see a lot more in the future.

I think you underestimate the might required to get places like walmart to devote have a row of shelfspace to one game. It is a huge barrier to entry. Maybe Nintendo still has enough pull to get some of that, but I doubt anyone there are many others.
 

Jacobi

Banned
Another depressing week for Japanese video game culture. But it's interesting that Western blockbusters play a more important role now.
 

Tomohawk

Member
I believe they have explicitly said that they will not use amiibos in a way that is similar to Skylanders and Disney Infinity so that they won't directly compete. We know they will work throughout various games.

I do not view amiibos as a competitor to Skylanders or Disney Infinity nor do I think that any more people will join in the console market. Maybe for mobile.

Nintendo may not see skylanders as competition, but they are definitely competing. You can't release a skylanders like problem with out parent deciding between the two.
 

friz898

Member
I was under the impression the MC numbers were considered the more exact/accurate or "superior" tracker of the two.


Which one is the GAF favorite?
 

QaaQer

Member
I believe they have explicitly said that they will not use amiibos in a way that is similar to Skylanders and Disney Infinity so that they won't directly compete.

They are figurines for videogames, you bet they'll be in direct competition for store space, eyeballs, and allowances.
 

javac

Member
I think you underestimate the might required to get places like walmart to devote have a row of shelfspace to one game. It is a huge barrier to entry. Maybe Nintendo still has enough pull to get some of that, but I doubt anyone there are many others.

Although that's very true I think with things like this it only takes one straw to break the camel's back. You don't really need to try hard with things like this in order to make people grow tired and move on.
 

Alrus

Member
Nintendo so far. I think we'll see a lot more in the future.

I'm not sure, that kind of product need a pretty hefty investment, and a lot of influence on retail (since it takes a ton of shelf space). There aren't many companies that would be able and or willing to try it.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
But Layton got 5 entries and two spinoffs.

Yeah but look at the sales.

Layton series:

1: 1,002,561
2: 945,630
3: 872,170
4: 676,069
5: 394,003
AA: 328,861
6: 249,366

If we add in the West it looks even worse in terms of polarization toward the beginning.
 

Jigorath

Banned
I believe they have explicitly said that they will not use amiibos in a way that is similar to Skylanders and Disney Infinity so that they won't directly compete. We know they will work throughout various games.

I do not view amiibos as a competitor to Skylanders or Disney Infinity nor do I think that any more people will join in the console market. Maybe for mobile.

Nintendo doesn't like to view themselves as competitors with anyone. They're making figurines to use in video games, as a result it's going to be competing with Skylanders and Disney.
 

wrowa

Member
While I definitely agree there's a similarity, I feel Activision actually does a much better job maintaining their brands as a whole.

To be fair, it's a lot more difficult to keep the attentions of kids over an extended period of time than to keep the attention of teenagers and adults. When you're aiming at kids, there's always the next cool thing on the horizon (while the kids that liked your "old" stuff are growing out of it), so if you don't think that you've got a really great "evergreen" brand on your hand, it's a better bet to milk the popularity for as long as you are popular.

Of course, it's entirely possible that Level-5 has got their hands on a brand that has the potential to stay, but I doubt they expected this kind of success. They wanted a successor to Inazuma and got something that dwarfs it by comparison. It doesn't look like launching YK2 so soon is a mistake either. To the contrary, it feels like it's firing up the hype even more.

It'll be interesting to see how Level-5 handles the franchise from now on, though, considering that YK2's release date was probably already set (internally) before the anime made YK a phenomenon in Japan. Will they milk it further or are they going to handle it more carefully than their past franchises?

Either way, Level-5 will come up with the next franchise eventually. Some of their new IPs might not set the world on fire, but they've proven that it's always just a matter of time before they find something new.
 

Jigorath

Banned
not sure in what realm 20% higher and "almost exactly" are the same thing.

Percentage increases are meaningless when the numbers are this poor to being with. A 2k increase YOY is pretty weak considering the massive exclusives WiiU has gotten since. 3D World, Donkey Kong, and Mario Kart 8 weren't even out back then.
 

javac

Member
Yeah but look at the sales.

Layton series:

1: 1,002,561
2: 945,630
3: 872,170
4: 676,069
5: 394,003
AA: 328,861
6: 249,366

I don't know why but as soon as the 3DS game dropped shit just died. I remember everyone being ho-hum in regards to its announcement prior the the 3DS launch. A lot of excitement was brewing for the AA crossover but I think that took way too long to materialise. I think jumping to the 3DS funnily enough in this scenario was the wrong move. They were betting on the casual audience picking up the 3DS but by the time they started getting on board it was too late. What do you think?
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I don't know why but as soon as the 3DS game dropped shit just died. I remember everyone being ho-hum in regards to its announcement prior the the 3DS launch. A lot of excitement was brewing for the AA crossover but I think that took way too long to materialise. I think jumping to the 3DS funnily enough in this scenario was the wrong move. They were betting on the casual audience picking up the 3DS but by the time they started getting on board it was too late. What do you think?

I do think that conceptually a lot of the broadbase audience for the series is now on iOS/Android instead.

It's a harder setup to monetize certainly, but we're talking about a series that sold 15 million copies worldwide (if you add up the Japanese sales, they're only a small part of that).

This was done mostly with the first few entries on DS, the casual audience of which largely did not transfer to the 3DS.

It's also harder to continually sell iterative products to the casual audience. Making one f2p Professor Layton app on iOS/Android and then doing constant updates to it would have made a lot of sense. There's probably actually still a market for it given it's been a while since most of their audience even realized that a new Professor Layton game came out.
 

idlewild_

Member
So i would say maybe Janurary 2015 the Ps4 may pass the 360 sales? I doubt it would take longer than the Wii u but I could be wrong.

I don't think 1m consoles sold over the next 6 months is a very reasonable expectation, even including the holiday season. It has no compelling software announced for the next 6 months in Japan and is tracking close to the Wii U atm which only sold ~900k the entirety of last year.
 
Hopefully Level 5 can see the mini-Pokemon level of success Youkai Watch can bring them and deal with the IP intelligently.
Probably not.
 
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