• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Media Create Sales: Week 30, 2017 (Jul 24 - Jul 30)

I'm not a Monster Hunter fan at all, but MHW looked surprisingly good. I thought a PS4 MH would just be a 3DS port in 1080p.

Glad they proved me wrong.
 
How is Yokai Watch as a franchise going?
Didn't 3 come out last year with no sign of 4?
The west is getting the second version of 2 last i checked.

I think they'll probably focus on mobile going forward since they already ported YW1 to it
 

Terrell

Member
It's not like they're trading away their handheld audience for Monster Hunter World — Japan will still see titles on the Switch in the future.

Considering the financial investment being put into MHW, I think it's a bit premature to say that there will be MH titles on Switch post-MHXX unless the expectation is that MHW fails to meet Capcom's sales goals and needs a cheaper means to monetize the MH brand, and even then it's still no guarantee that is what will happen. I don't think it does anyone a service to say it will definitely happen, at this point.

So if I'm understanding correctly, Monster Hunter World will cause a decline in sales in Japan because it's not on a portable system but the game that is on a portable system will underperform in Japan because of the game that is not on the portable console? Which is it?

Those things aren't mutually exclusive. To speak hypothetically, it is perfectly within reason that one could lose interest in buying MHXX because of it looking like a crass money-grab compared to MHW AND not buy MHW because it lacks the on-the-go local multiplayer, the net result being that neither game gets bought. Not to say it will, but surely that is a possibility. I think we can see a very small set of examples of exactly that phenomenon in just about every MH thread on GAF since E3.
 
Nice DQ numbers, drops will be very big for the PS4 version if they don't have a second shipment in quick enough.

MC threads seem more popular than usual lately....
 

MoonFrog

Member
Nice DQ numbers, drops will be very big for the PS4 version if they don't have a second shipment in quick enough.

MC threads seem more popular than usual lately....

DQ is number one game in the universe. Everyone in the world was on pins and needles to see how it'd go.

And yes, I really could not help but e-mail family members the positive results. I was very happy!
 

Eolz

Member
Sorry for the late reply but:

Who said it suddenly disappears? Let's say Nintendo platform versions of MH in the west have a base of 1 million (change this number to whatever you want) then that number would likely grow when the IP and brand has gained popularity overseas.

It'd be a lot easier to convince my friends to play MH Switch with me if they fall in love with MHW next year.

I completely agree with your last point, but that's a big IF.
The IP has grown and gained popularity overseas, and part of the userbase lost from Nintendo platforms will be found in another userbase on Sony (PC/X1) platforms, but won't necessarily make it grow in comparison.
That's my point, that this growth happened, but there's nothing shown so far in marketing and userbase tastes that it'll suddenly sell 4M in the West and becomes a franchise as popular as let's say Dark Souls (to compare with a mostly similar audience).

That's the main issue with the loss of MHXX in the west for example, it's that adding more games on different platforms would make grow the audience. In this case, it's switching one for another, and alternating versions later on.

Anecdotal for my side, but I either got friends that played MH on 3DS (and most will buy MHW), friends that stopped after the PSP games (and half of them want to get back with MHW, most on PC), and other friends with more "mainstream" tastes are just not interested with it, either due to the franchise's reputation (grinding, quest system, etc) for those that tried to look about it or by just not being attracted by this (as we've seen, it's closer to the MH we know and love than the rumor of being westernized etc).
Aka, I don't see how the awareness of this franchise will suddenly grow, then convert more players to this. It's not linked to hardware releases, there's no huge gameplay shifts, marketing is still aiming for the fans so far since the reveal trailer, etc.

People overseas are well aware of the MH brand; they just never cared.

They were aware of it when it was unveiled to them as MHFU and MHFU2 on the 80-million sold PSP.

They were made aware of it when it was unveiled as MH Tri on the most popular home console system that generation.

They were made aware of it when it was unveiled once again as MH4U for a system with a 60m+ userbase.

The mainline series never broke-through in the West, and now that it's coming to the PS4 you're expecting not only MHW to be successful here but so much so as to elevate a game that's now being relegated as a parallel series?

I mostly agree with this until the last part.
The PS4 version can make the overall fanbase bigger, but I don't see it the breakthrough that it needs, aka, making the userbase really bigger than in the past.

Yo-Kai Watch 4 on Switch confirmed.

Lol nice.
 

schuelma

Wastes hours checking old Famitsu software data, but that's why we love him.
Considering the financial investment being put into MHW, I think it's a bit premature to say that there will be MH titles on Switch post-MHXX unless the expectation is that MHW fails to meet Capcom's sales goals and needs a cheaper means to monetize the MH brand, and even then it's still no guarantee that is what will happen. I don't think it does anyone a service to say it will definitely happen, at this point.

Capcom is really really stupid sometimes, but even I think its too much to believe they would skip a successful portable in Japan for their top Japan portable series.
 
Considering the financial investment being put into MHW, I think it's a bit premature to say that there will be MH titles on Switch post-MHXX unless the expectation is that MHW fails to meet Capcom's sales goals and needs a cheaper means to monetize the MH brand, and even then it's still no guarantee that is what will happen. I don't think it does anyone a service to say it will definitely happen, at this point.

Already kinda made that bet with Matrix man and some other poster. They seem confident.
 

MoonFrog

Member
Also, @MatrixMan.EXE was it Nirolak who talked about the depressing effect of cross generation? That could apply to the issue you are having.
 
How is Yokai Watch as a franchise going?
Didn't 3 come out last year with no sign of 4?
The west is getting the second version of 2 last i checked.

I think they'll probably focus on mobile going forward since they already ported YW1 to it

I've heard the first Youkai Watch game did really well in Europe, supported by the anime. YW3 did similar to YW1 in Japan, but has been on a decline. The last week with Youkai Watch 3: Sukiyaki in the Media Create top 20 was Week 19, 2017. The game should be around 750k sales now, which is very underwhelming. Together with Youkai Sangokushi (545k), it's the only 3DS game in the series with less than 1M lifetime sales.

Regarding Youkai Watch on mobile, there already are a couple of spin-offs on mobile that did okay. A port of the first game is coming, but it takes Level-5 ages. It's been delayed multiple times now. It takes forever.

I think it's a Level-5 curse (or whatever you want to call it). They come up with a lot of great ideas, but they can't maintain a franchise. All of their cross-media projects died within 3-4 years, with Inazuma Eleven being the exception; that one rapidly lost popularity after its 4th year. It looks like Youkai Watch will meet the same fate. Now that they're soft-rebooting Inazuma Eleven, it'll be interesting to see how long they'll be able to keep that interesting, but since the biggest part of the company itself looks like a mess right now, I'm not really sure about anything being a success.
 

Square2015

Member
Dragon Quest series Famitsu debut history:
Code:
1988 III  ~1,370,000 [5 days of sale]* 
1990 IV   160,000    [1 day]*
1992 V    680,000    [1 day]*
1995 VI   1,455,000  [2 days]*
2000 VII  1,862,000  [2 days]
2004 VIII 2,237,000  [2 days]
2009 IX   2,343,000  [2 days]
2012 X    420,000    [4 days]
2017 XI   2,081,000  [2 days]

*projection from the point system era
With III give or take 100k, proper formula not yet established during famitsu's 5 retailer years (1986-1989).
 

Sandfox

Member
How is Yokai Watch as a franchise going?
Didn't 3 come out last year with no sign of 4?
The west is getting the second version of 2 last i checked.

I think they'll probably focus on mobile going forward since they already ported YW1 to it
The YW1 port has completely disappeared and we haven't heard anything since it was delayed to early 2017 back in October.

YW3 is finishing up it's DLC run soon so we'll see what's next for the franchise. I can't find the quote, but I remember Hino saying that the franchise now only appeals to kids and they are trying to fix that so we'll see what they come up with other than the upcoming movie.
 
Capcom wants to grow the brand in the west. They've been talking about taking measures to grow the Monster Hunter brand overseas for a while now. We've been talking about that topic for a while here too. This isn't really news to anyone so I'm not sure why you're confused.

Capcom selling less units overall of MHW is acceptable if they grow the brand in the west considerably which is essentially the entire purpose of the PS4 game. They're obviously not getting 4 million sales in their domestic market and this is something they accepted the moment they started work on this project, but growing the brand in the west means they'd have an IP, brand and franchise that has strong global reach rather than in just one region. This would benefit their future Switch titles as well as allowing them go entirely multiplatform (PS4, Switch, Xbox, PC) for maximum sales potential.

Capcom expects MHW to make up a sizeable portion of their 10.3 milli sales forecast

how they gonna do that without 5 or 6 million sales world wide for MHW
 

ksamedi

Member
Considering the financial investment being put into MHW, I think it's a bit premature to say that there will be MH titles on Switch post-MHXX unless the expectation is that MHW fails to meet Capcom's sales goals and needs a cheaper means to monetize the MH brand, and even then it's still no guarantee that is what will happen. I don't think it does anyone a service to say it will definitely happen, at this point..

The expectation is to maximize sales. I think it would be stupid to make a Switch exlusive portable version, but a multiplat strategy going forward makes a lot of sense, even so much so that they would get a lot of hate from shareholders if they choose to stay exlusive to only the playstation, for example.
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
less work and employees necessary to get high profits

It won't be less work your talking about partial 3DS games (only the g rank stuff require actual development time) in comparison to PS4 expansions or whatever. How well can even monise MH is a large question. Sure you can sell loot boxes with skins and what have you but would western players really care enough to continue play the game for years on end. You still have to maintain that playerbase which isn't easy.
 

test_account

XP-39C²
?
I thought MHW was essentially MH5, and the direction going forward.
It is, but both Monster Hunter X(X) and Monster Hunter World are both the big, main games in the serie. They are also built on the same formula/core mechanics as previous MH games. If MHX was called MH5, i cant imagine that people would be surprised by it. Its the same way that Call of Duty Black Ops, Ghosts, Advanced Warfare etc. could be concidered as spin offs, but each game were concidered as the next big, main CoD game on release.
 
It won't be less work your talking about partial 3DS games (only the g rank stuff require actual development time) in comparison to PS4 expansions or whatever. How well can even monise MH is a large question. Sure you can sell loot boxes with skins and what have you but would western players really care enough to continue play the game for years on end. You still have to maintain that playerbase which isn't easy.

Those days were gone anyway with switch being HD .
Either way it was going to take longer to make content for MH with them moving from 3DS.
 
MK8 DX vs MK8
kart.jpg

Code:
------------------------------------------------------------- 
|    |   Mario Kart 8    |  Mario Kart 8 DX  |  Difference  | 
|    | [WIU] (2014/05/29)| [NSW] (2017/04/28)|              | 
|----|---------|---------|---------|---------|--------------| 
|Week|  Weekly |   LTD   |  Weekly |   LTD   | MK8DX – MK8  | 
|----|---------|---------|---------|---------|--------------| 
|  1 |  325.892|  325.892|  284.823|  284.823|       -41.069|
|  2 |   73.051|  398.943|   90.652|  375.475|       -23.468|
|  3 |   42.261|  441.205|   36.440|  411.915|       -29.290| 
|  4 |   28.112|  469.316|   28.781|  440.696|       -28.620| 
|  5 |   23.520|  492.837|   26.993|  467.689|       -25.148|  
|  6 |   19.386|  512.223|   20.984|  488.673|       -23.550|  
|  7 |   15.143|  527.366|   16.596|  505.270|       -22.096|  
|  8 |   14.992|  542.358|   16.822|  522.091|       -20.267|  
|  9 |   18.129|  560.487|   13.545|  535.636|       -24.851| 
| 10 |   18.067|  578.554|   14.423|  550.059|       -28.495| 
| 11 |   20.860|  599.414|   13.436|  563.495|       -35.919| 
| 12 |   28.221|  627.635|   11.554|  575.048|       -52.587| 
| 13 |   12.075|  639.710|   12.980|  588.028|       -51.682| 
| 14 |   11.148|  650.858|   13.841|  601.869|       -48.989|
| 15 |    8.221|  659.079|         |         |              |
| 16 |    6.839|  665.918|         |         |              |
| 17 |    6.396|  672.313|         |         |              |
| 18 |    5.936|  678.250|         |         |              |
| 19 |    4.517|  682.767|         |         |              |
| 20 |    3.996|  686.763|         |         |              |
|----|---------|---------|---------|---------|--------------|

The only thing stopping Mario Kart 8 DX from outselling Mario Kart 8 is a sequel at this point if it keeps selling like this for the next four years o_O.
 

Sterok

Member
You know what's better than selling DLC and microtransactions to an audience of 4 million? Selling them to an audience of 8 million. You still need a lot of people consistently playing your game for GaaS to bring in the money.
 

MoonFrog

Member
We'll see, but since the game doesn't seem westernized to hell and back I think it can do okay on PS4. Okay on PS4 is, of course, no where near Monster Hunter good.

They're going to need a LOT more in the West and really successful monetization to make this work well. I think the game will do fine but that that fine won't be enough to have made the gamble really worth it.

If they've got Switch MH coming soon thereafter for the traditional audience--okay. Especially if some of the work put into World feeds into that game too.

If not, they really screwed up.

But we'll see. Maybe it sells ridiculously well in the west. It's something to watch. Maybe closer to launch it looks better or worse for Japan.
 

Fiendcode

Member
GaaS isn't new to Monster Hunter. Their GaaS title is Frontier.

Thing is it's not only about selling copies .
MHW can sell 4 million copies and still make more money than any MH thanks to DD DLC etc etc .
Looking at things just as units sales only is not the way to go .
Of course we don't get access to that data but it's still something to think about .
The thing is previous installments already did dlc as full price G expansions. It's not like MH4 as a project moved just 4.1m copies, it really moved 8.2m copies.

I'm really curious how World will approach the traditional G release model.
 
GaaS isn't new to Monster Hunter. Their GaaS title is Frontier.


The thing is previous installments already did dlc as full price G expansions. It's not like MH4 as a project moved just 4.1m copies, it really moved 8.2m copies.

I'm really curious how World will approach the traditional G release model.
Maybe as $40 downloadable expansions?
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
Since conversation is so heavy on MH ... What's the best game to get into the series? Portable or home console is fine. Wont be playing much omline or with others.

4U on 3ds? Was there also a wiiu game?
 

Eolz

Member
Since conversation is so heavy on MH ... What's the best game to get into the series? Portable or home console is fine. Wont be playing much omline or with others.

4U on 3ds? Was there also a wiiu game?

A bit off-topic, but before World, I'd say it's easily 4U. They did an excellent job in making it more accessible and having a nice progression.
3U on WiiU is still a nice choice if you want a console version and not an handheld one, but obviously older and not as refined.
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
A bit off-topic, but before World, I'd say it's easily 4U. They did an excellent job in making it more accessible and having a nice progression.
3U on WiiU is still a nice choice if you want a console version and not an handheld one, but obviously older and not as refined.

Thanks and bought.
 
If not, they really screwed up.

But we'll see. Maybe it sells ridiculously well in the west. It's something to watch. Maybe closer to launch it looks better or worse for Japan.
I could see it doing well at launch if Capcom can successfully market it to a more casual audience as a co-op RPG or something. I can see that resulting in the used market being flooded with copies once that audience figures out what Monster Hunter really is though. I don't think it's going to be accessible enough to really resonate with mainstream audiences in the west.
 

Malakai

Member
I don't understand how Monster Hunter was "limited" sales in the West due to solely being on the 3DS when Capcom never fully supported the 3DS Western releases. Either when the 3DS's Western releases was late or never came out (i.e. Monster Hunter 4 and Monster Hunter X) and Capcom never bother to do the marketing for the 3DS games in the West. But, yet, when it comes to the X-box One and PS4, Monster Hunter World can get a simultaneous release worldwide? I mean they never put their best foot forward when it came to the 3DS in the West yet they are going to go all out for the Xbox One and PS4? Why didn't Capcom ever do that with any of their 3DS releases?
 
I don't understand how Monster Hunter was "limited" sales in the West due to solely being on the 3DS when Capcom never fully supported the 3DS Western releases. Either when the 3DS's Western releases was late or never came out (i.e. Monster Hunter 4 and Monster Hunter X) and Capcom never bother to do the marketing for the 3DS games in the West. But, yet, when it comes to the X-box One and PS4, Monster Hunter World can get a simultaneous release worldwide? I mean they never put their best foot forward when it came to the 3DS in the West yet they are going to go all out for the Xbox One and PS4? Why didn't Capcom ever do that with any of their 3DS releases?

Does it matter now? The Switch took the fuck off and will slaughter and decapitate the entire gaming industry and make certain publishers and developers (Capcom) look the chumps and expose them as the frauds that they truly are like the Wii and DS did.
 

MoonFrog

Member
Does it matter now? The Switch took the fuck off and will slaughter and decapitate the entire gaming industry and make certain publishers and developers (Capcom) look the chumps and expose them as the frauds that they truly are like the Wii and DS did.
?

I don't think Switches are sharp enough to decapitate people? And even if they don't always get the best support, I'm pretty sure Nintendo still wants these companies alive and supporting them?

IDK. I don't think Switch will be weaponized.
 
I don't understand how Monster Hunter was "limited" sales in the West due to solely being on the 3DS when Capcom never fully supported the 3DS Western releases. Either when the 3DS's Western releases was late or never came out (i.e. Monster Hunter 4 and Monster Hunter X) and Capcom never bother to do the marketing for the 3DS games in the West. But, yet, when it comes to the X-box One and PS4, Monster Hunter World can get a simultaneous release worldwide? I mean they never put their best foot forward when it came to the 3DS in the West yet they are going to go all out for the Xbox One and PS4? Why didn't Capcom ever do that with any of their 3DS releases?

This time there focus is on cracking the western market and that's where PS4, xbone and PC are strongest. PS4 and xbone have already easily surpassed what the 3DS sold outside of Japan and their userbases are growin rapidly (that's before you add on PC). They're also all selling a lot more SW than the 3DS ever did.

Maybe Capcom have just finally decided that if they're going to have to invest ever increasing amounts to make MH games (especially with the move to HD) that they need to expand the franchise worldwide if they want to see similar profit margins.
 

Aters

Member
?

I don't think Switch's are sharp enough to decapitate people? And even if they don't always get the best support, I'm pretty sure Nintendo still wants these companies alive and supporting them?

IDK. I don't think Switch will be weaponized.

It's killing some people in this thread, or at least driving them insame.
 

Malakai

Member
?

I don't think Switches are sharp enough to decapitate people? And even if they don't always get the best support, I'm pretty sure Nintendo still wants these companies alive and supporting them?

IDK. I don't think Switch will be weaponized.

Jawbreaker is making reference to my tag to when I was bugging out about a certain Mass Effect game not coming to the Switch. Long story.
 
?

I don't think Switches are sharp enough to decapitate people? And even if they don't always get the best support, I'm pretty sure Nintendo still wants these companies alive and supporting them?

IDK. I don't think Switch will be weaponized.

Check that person's tag. : p

I was just poking fun.
 
Top Bottom