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Media Create Sales: Week 49, 2014 (Dec 01 - Dec 07)

horuhe

Member
Was there a Yokai Watch 2.5 Nintendo Direct?
No, there wasn't. If I'm not mistaken, Shin Uchi was announced on CoroCoro. Ganso and Honke did have a Direct. It would have been great, if we had had a Shin Uchi Direct. I'm really interested in that stuff.
 

hiska-kun

Member
Youkai Watch 2: Shin Uchi
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5C917901-96A6-4040-A17D-DD7BA6E8DC19_zpslymwkbcn.jpg

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04268A99-C81E-43B9-93DC-85B52341D6E7_zpsxwk4n7ev.jpg


Meanwhile, in Tsutaya...
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So what is Bic Camera and other stores in Japan like? Have you ever been in Canada or the US to be able to compare stores? I'm curious! :D

I haven't been to America, but there's no comparation with Spanish Game stores.

Video inside Bic Camera Ikebukuro after the rush hour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxsh8jXiL18
 
Japan has the best game stores on the planet.

I've only seen cool mom and pop stores on their level in Germany and Alabama

Zero in bermuda where I am now, but I here there are a few in the Caribbean that are nice.
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
Famitsu will give an early report either way but I hope this time it's really early at Tuesday and not a few hours before official release.

Their schedule has changed from Monday to Tuesday and lately to Wednesday.
 
Atlus sure fell in love with DLC since SMTIV. Before that they didn't show any interest in paid DLC at all. Even the bonus quest stuff for Persona 2 was all free. But since then we've had...

SMTIV: 3650yen worth of DLC
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax: 13800yen worth of game DLC (Whenever available I counted the cheaper complete packages rather than the piecemeal ones)
Persona Q: 3400yen worth of DLC
EO Untold 2: 2950yen worth of DLC announced so far

Can't wait to see what the DLC for Etrian Mystery Dungeon and Persona 5 are like. I bet Dancing All Night will have over 50 bucks worth of DLC at least, if not over 100 bucks, considering what it is.

Persona 5 DLC will probably just be costumes. I'd think they would want to tone it down and keep the content for the inevitable FES version a year later.

http://gamestalk.net/ff-ps4/

Hashimoto says that FF7, Final Fantasy X-X2 HD aren't the only old Final Fantasy games that will be coming to PS4.

That unprecedented SE support!

PS4 is becoming a Final Fantasy machine lol.

Dat FF12 HD ;)
 

L~A

Member
Famitsu will give an early report either way but I hope this time it's really early at Tuesday and not a few hours before official release.

Their schedule has changed from Monday to Tuesday and lately to Wednesday.

Wasn't it because of the national holidays on Mondays? I remember it was the case for Smash, Pokémon and MH4G.
 

hiska-kun

Member
GamesMaya's report

- The title with more pre-orders was finally released today. As it was expected, lines in the morning. Kids were celebrating the launch of this awaited game. All day was full of people (kids).
There's still a little stock left, santaclaus needs to hurry!

----

Top 3 Most pre-ordered games in Bic Camera Ikebukuro:

D7775CD0-27B5-42A3-A411-84FCA192679F_zpsb37vnupq.jpg

1. [3DS] Final Fantasy Explorers {2014.12.18}
2. [PS4] Dragon Quest Heroes {2015.02.26}
3. [PS3] [PSV] Gundam Breaker 2 {2014.12.18}
 

Mr Swine

Banned
GamesMaya's report

- The title with more pre-orders was finally released today. As it was expected, lines in the morning. Kids were celebrating the launch of this awaited game. All day was full of people (kids).
There's still a little stock left, santaclaus needs to hurry!

----

Top 3 Most pre-ordered games in Bic Camera Ikebukuro:

D7775CD0-27B5-42A3-A411-84FCA192679F_zpsb37vnupq.jpg

1. [3DS] Final Fantasy Explorers {2014.12.18}
2. [PS4] Dragon Quest Heroes {2015.02.26}
3. [PS3] [PSV] Gundam Breaker 2 {2014.12.18}

I really hope that FF:E sells well in Japan so that SE start making more games for the 3DS
 
It seems slow on Comgnet, but going strong on Amazon and according to shops reports. 200k should be a lock but they won't be enough for SQEX.
 
I don't know how to feel about FFE, it looks like shit but maybe it's fun.

One think I know for sure, FFE has potential, and if it sells well, the sequel will have a bigger budget.
 

duckroll

Member
Persona 5 DLC will probably just be costumes. I'd think they would want to tone it down and keep the content for the inevitable FES version a year later.

Keep what content though? Aside from costumes, I honestly expect DLC Personas, some quests with rare item rewards, DLC boss fights, and maybe even a remixed bonus dungeon. If they do a FES or a portable re-release they'll still have lots of room for actual bonus story content.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Keep what content though? Aside from costumes, I honestly expect DLC Personas, some quests with rare item rewards, DLC boss fights, and maybe even a remixed bonus dungeon. If they do a FES or a portable re-release they'll still have lots of room for actual bonus story content.

And, after those DLCs, our highly anticipated Digimon Adventure Tri game by Atlus developed by the Persona team.
 

sörine

Banned
I don't know how to feel about FFE, it looks like shit but maybe it's fun.

One think I know for sure, FFE has potential, and if it sells well, the sequel will have a bigger budget.
It's a good concept but totally wasted potential. They needed a more capable studio than Racjin to pull this sort of thing off.

They should've just let Kawazu's team do a new Crystal Chronicles.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Since the strategies of various publishers are often debated here, I thought it might be fun to do a little prediction fest for the possible imminent unveil of Square Enix's new SaGa game.

My main goal here is not for people to just predict the platform(s) the SaGa game will end up on, but rather have an exercise in making a prediction, and then explaining in detail the reasoning behind that prediction related to the series, the market conditions, and the publisher.

Or, put another way, "winning" in this fest would be less about getting the right platform(s), and more about analyzing the evidence at hand, letting it lead you to a conclusion, and then presenting a compelling argument for your conclusion based on your thought process (which should flow pretty naturally from the analyzing the evidence step).

Ideally at least try to use a few sentences even if your thought process can be summed up very quickly, since the fun is in the depth of the logic as opposed to just listing a platform.

If this sounds boring, feel free to ignore me.

I'll start us off by picking an intentionally harder to justify prediction and explaining the logic of how I got there so I have more to write about. I usually try to be a bit more conservative in predictions, but this should serve better as an example.

----

Starting off, let me list out the evidence at hand:

1.) Square Enix is holding a lengthy SaGa anniversary livestream right before Jump Festa, which is a common place to announce games. They have also stated that they have a new SaGa game in development, and trademarked a new SaGa name, so I feel the odds of a SaGa game unveiling at the stream is very high.

2.) The announcement that they were working on a SaGa game was, I believe, in a Dengeki PlayStation interview, and Square Enix's CEO noted they have a console game unveiling in December to Famitsu. So far, Deus Ex doesn't seem like it's actually unveiling this month, and this was an interview with a Japanese magazine.

3.) Square Enix and Kawazu's most recent SaGa game was for mobile and titled Emperors SaGa for GREE.

4.) Square Enix has started widely adopting Unity for development, especially for mobile games. However, Unity does also work in the PlayStation ecosystem (all three of Vita/PS3/PS4), and Square Enix was even hiring for their new console RPG with requests for experience with the engine, so it seems they're willing to use it on projects for dedicated devices as well.

5.) Square Enix has recently been including the Vita as a release platform for their mobile games by porting over a large number of mobile titles to the platform. Most of these are free 2 play, though one (Chaos Rings) was a premium title that released on both Vita and iOS/Android at the same time.

6.) About 1.5 years ago Square Enix's current CEO announced that he greenlit a bunch of console/handheld-like games for iOS/Android, and that we would start seeing them in the year after. He did so because he felt mobile was very important and that this type of game was Square Enix's biggest strength. He noted a lot of these would try new business models to boot since premium titles often don't work well on mobile. We've seen some of these (Agito, Dawn of Mana), and with Final Fantasy Legends it feels like we still have quite a few more coming.

7.) Square Enix noted they're trying some mid-sized budget (~$8 million) games and a bunch of smaller sized budget games ($1.5-$3 million) and only a few AAA titles. SaGa is not exactly a currently successful series, so I can't imagine it would have a major budget. I could see either a smaller sized or possibly mid-sized budget being assigned to it.

8.) Square Enix mostly seems to shoot for high potential returns (or at least high margin returns) on any given title they make. They don't seem especially interested in products that only get a bit above break even, so if they aren't going to sell a zillion units, there needs to be something about them that helps generate a lot of additional digital revenue (be that f2p or heavy DLC plans).

9.) SaGa seems like a pretty Japan focused/Japan sales heavy franchise, so I don't think that Western markets are likely to be notably taken into account when choosing platforms, but rather just development ease and/or local performance.

10.) The Japanese market as a whole has seen a notable shift toward using mobile devices while dedicated device revenue has continued to plummet. However, a dedicated core audience of gamers seem to still buy a non-insignificant amount of software on dedicated devices, currently making that audience still have appeal as well.

11.) SaGa is both a core franchise and an older franchise, so the audience for it plausible could either be on mobile among gamers who used to play the titles when they were younger, or gamers who have stuck fast to dedicated devices as they prefer the experiences they offer.

Following from this, I'm going to guess that the new SaGa title is taking a cue from both Square Enix themselves and Level 5 and launching on both iOS/Android and PSV/PS3/PS4, possibly as either a premium title with lots of microtransaction type items (be they costumes or boosters) or a full on f2p title. It is likely built on Unity to help enable this as well as enabling high productivity among a pretty small team to keep the budget low. I leave out the 3DS as it doesn't run Unity, and neither the Wii U nor either Xbox has much success in the region.

I feel with this combo it matches the CEO's console game statement, the audience of Jump Festa, the most recent release in the series, both Square Enix's lower budget and mobile strategies, the local market conditions of Japan's shift toward mobile coupled with some core users sticking around on dedicated devices, the source of the interview, and Square Enix's tendencies to want better returns on games (through digital itemization in this case) in order to bother greenlighting them.

----

Anyway, feel free to take it away from here either by debating me (I'll be in and out), adding your own evidence to the mix, or presenting your own opinion.

Again, feel free to just ignore me if this is a bad idea.
 

RalchAC

Member
Keep what content though? Aside from costumes, I honestly expect DLC Personas, some quests with rare item rewards, DLC boss fights, and maybe even a remixed bonus dungeon. If they do a FES or a portable re-release they'll still have lots of room for actual bonus story content.

They'll probably follow a DLC model similar to Tales IMO.

For DLCs they can sell costumes (swimsuits, P3&4 school uniforms and those things) and "cameo Personas" (P3&4 party members Personas for the party, for example). They can get a lot of money from their most dedicated (otaku) fanbase that way.

I would like to know how much money Bamco wins with Tales DLCs both in Japan and the West. Especially in Japan, since they've announced stuff like Idolmaster, Evangelion and there may be even more lincensed stuff.

Adding actual contents... I dunno. Catherine and P4G had nothing, but SMT4 had Challenge Quest DLCs, right? .
 

Oregano

Member
I still think it will be on Vita/PS4. I believe Kawazu mentioned multiplatform and he talked about it in Dengeki PlayStation so I am going with what seems to be standard for "multiplatform" in Japan now.

There is an outside chance of 3DS due to the fact that when he first mentioned SaGA last year he talked about how big the 3DS was.

P.S.. I hope it hasn't just been announced in the stream and made me look the fool.
 
New SaGa game announced for PSV. Weird platform choice, unless they will port it eventually to PS4.

PSV gets its first big game for 2015. This is easily a 300-400.000 game.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Vita? Just Vita? That was unexpected!

I mean: not on PS4 too.
 

Eolz

Member
I'm remaining pessimistic about this saga game until there's more details (is it f2p? is it really a rpg? etc) about it.
 
If it was F2P SE would no doubt have made it for mobile as well. I definitely see it being a traditional SaGa game though I'm always an optimist in these situations.
 

Takao

Banned
If Vita SaGa is a F2P game, I imagine Square would just port Imperial or Emperor. No point in having a handful of F2P games in a property that isn't huge.
 

hiska-kun

Member
I don't see stock problems for YW2 in Ikebukuro Bic Camera and Yamada Denki today. So yes, probably we're talking about a big shipment.

I have the Famitsu Best First Week, but I would like to check Media Create too.
Chris1964?
 
New SaGa game announced for PSV. Weird platform choice, unless they will port it eventually to PS4.

PSV gets its first big game for 2015. This is easily a 300-400.000 game.

Hasn't this franchise been dead since the PS2? I wonder how big it's actually going to be these days.

That said, 300k likely wouldn't make it any bigger than God Eater 2: Rage Burst. Possibly not much bigger than Sword Art Online either.
 
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