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[Dhx]

Forget online multiplayer...first they need to get the N64 emulation up-to-snuff. Mario Kart 64 is pretty poor.

We've put in about 100-200 hours of the VC version and while the timing is a bit different, it's completely made up for with the ability to use GC controllers. All my N64 sticks (about 10 of them) are completely shot to hell.

The only real issue I've noticed is that Moo Moo Farm runs at supersonic speed, and honestly after being the weakest level, I welcome the spiced up speed there.

 

[justchris]

I just realized this thread is a trap. I hadn't purchased MK64 on VC yet (I still have the original cart, dammit, but my nephews took my n64 to California with them), and now I'm thinking of buying it and inviting some friends over to play this weekend.

CURSE YOU NINTENDO, AND THE KART YOU RODE IN ON!

 

[Dhx]

I just realized this thread is a trap. I hadn't purchased MK64 on VC yet...

CURSE YOU NINTENDO, AND THE KART YOU RODE IN ON!

But it's a good trap.

 

[Fafalada]

For all you guys trying to spin it's sales as if it's a bad thing

It IS a bad thing because it shows people are happy to pay for overpriced crap.
If the downloads were @300k, it'd be good news, because it'd maybe send a signal to microtransaction happy companies to think about their pricing strategies.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

It IS a bad thing because it shows people are happy to pay for overpriced crap.
If the downloads were @300k, it'd be good news, because it'd maybe send a signal to microtransaction happy companies to think about their pricing strategies.

I'm pretty happy with my purchases, actually. A little cheaper would be nice, it always would be, but I by no means feel ripped off.

 

[Dragona Akehi]

It IS a bad thing because it shows people are happy to pay for overpriced crap.
If the downloads were @300k, it'd be good news, because it'd maybe send a signal to microtransaction happy companies to think about their pricing strategies.

See that's something I'm not so sure about at least with VC prices. The games I've purchased are all worth far more than their point value (Military Madness, R-Type, etc.). I simply couldn't purchase them on the free market for the equivalent of 6$-8$ USD.

 

[Deku]

VC has introduced me to the lost RPG library of the Megadrive. Thanks for the tireless recommendations here. Some I didn't like (Sword of Vermillion) others like Beyond Oasis are brilliant.

I can't put a monetary value on that.

 

[Deleted member 1235]

vc >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>psn and xbox live games bar none

I don't own an xbox yet and I went to a friends place and played his texas holdem poker, that he got for free with voice chat over live.

XBLA has a lot of promise and it's very polished. Geometry wars rocks as well.

 

[TwoForFlinching]

3.3 Million....good to see I'm not the only sucker.

 

[Particle Physicist]

It IS a bad thing because it shows people are happy to pay for overpriced crap.

microsoft proved that a while ago.

Obviously the fanboys on both sides are going to pick and choose.

But please notice:



The article in question was posted on March 10, 2006, things may have will changed, especially where TV/Movies on Live are concerned.

i know, but i doubt the number changed significantly. and we really should only compare the game downloads.

 

[Jammy]

I don't own an xbox yet and I went to a friends place and played his texas holdem poker, that he got for free with voice chat over live.

XBLA has a lot of promise and it's very polished. Geometry wars rocks as well.

Yeah, but you're comparing poker to Zelda: LttP...

 

[Narag]

I'm pleased with all of my VC purchases thus far. If I feel something is priced too high, I vote with my wallet and don't buy it. Also, space for me is a premium and I've enjoyed the TG-16 library I never had a chance to play as well as old classics for the SNES and N64 I don't have anymore. All this in one tiny little package is just great for me as I never really enjoyed the clutter having multiple systems presents.


That said I'm still waiting for Actraiser and Nintendo is getting no more of my money until they cough it up.

 

[namor7]

all i know is i want rumble support through the GC controller for N64 games.

 

[dyls]

Wow, are people thinking about this all wrong. The bottom line is what's important to Nintendo and third parties, so let's just see if their happy. Looking at a liberal and conservative estimate:

Liberal:

3,300,000 downloads, at an average of
$8 US per game, totalling
$26,400,000, divided by
100 unique games throughout all territories.

That would mean an average revenue of $264,000 US per game.

Conservative:  

3,300,000 downloads, at an average of
$6 US per game, totalling
$19,800,000, divided by
120 unique games throughout all territories.

That would mean an average revenue of $165,000 US per game.


What about third-parties? Obviously, Nintendo is going to be taking a huge chunk of the total revenues between their own games, as well as royalties and fees charged for third-party games.

Liberal: 

$26,400,000 total revenue, of which Nintendo gets
75%, leaving
$6,600,000, divided by
50 unique thrid-party games.

That would mean an average revenue of $132,000 per third-party game.

Conservative:

$19,800,000 total revenue, of which Nintendo gets
85%, leaving
$2,970,000, divided by
60 unique third-party games.

That would mean an average revenue of $49,500 per third-party game.

I have to think that everyone involved is making a good profit from the VC as I can't imagine - even considering the worst case scenario - that many of the games cost more than $49,500 to get on the store, although it's hard to know what expenses are involved.

 

[ethelred]

VC has introduced me to the lost RPG library of the Megadrive. Thanks for the tireless recommendations here. Some I didn't like (Sword of Vermillion) others like Beyond Oasis are brilliant.

I can't put a monetary value on that.

Isn't it, though? When I put that Sega RPG thread together, I hoped it'd help convince some people to give some of the fantastic Genesis/Megadrive games a try (whether on the Genesis PSP/PS2 Collection, on VC, whatever). Beyond Oasis is one of my favorites -- glad you like it. Make sure you grab Wonder Boy in Monster World, too... talk about brilliant.

I haven't felt ripped off with any of my VC purchases... even Bonk, which I ultimately didn't care for. It was 6 bucks. Wonder Boy, Oasis, Gunstar Heroes, Zelda, CV4... all extremely worthwhile purchases.

It IS a bad thing because it shows people are happy to pay for overpriced crap.
If the downloads were @300k, it'd be good news, because it'd maybe send a signal to microtransaction happy companies to think about their pricing strategies.

The Virtual Console isn't microtransactions, though. You spend money to buy an actual game. Paying a little bit of money to get new armor for your horse? That's bad. Spending money to buy an awesome game? That's not.

 

[.dmc]

Biggest entry barriers for the VC :

- you need to be connected wirelessly to the internet.
- you need to buy extra controllers (classic or GC) for 70% of the catalogue.

Those two things considered, the sell through rate so far is pretty decent.

Also to Kobun : the declining purchase rate could be explained by all the earliest adopters being the 'hardcore' (supported by insane Zelda attach) crowd who were interested in jupming into the back catalogue. Now that the userbase is diversifying & the early adopters have satiated their curiousity in the VC the purchase rate is dropping. Makes sense right?

 

[EphemeralDream]

The Virtual Console isn't microtransactions, though. You spend money to buy an actual game. Paying a little bit of money to get new armor for your horse? That's bad. Spending money to buy an awesome game? That's not.

I feel the same way and I don't believe I'm furthering price rape by buying more games. In fact I'd say I'm helping to keep the service going strong and providing more hope for rare titles.

In regards to the price, it could be lower but even with small charges like this, you have to be an educated consumer to the end. Now that the service is putting out a consistent amount of games per week, it becomes even more important to pick and choose, have some patience. No one is forcing you to pay $5 for NES Tennis, but do I feel SMB is a deal for $5? Definitely.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

- you need to buy extra controllers (classic or GC) for 70% of the catalogue.

Now that's just false. You only need them for SNES and N64 games, and they certainly aren't twice as numerous as the combined NES/Genesis/TG16 library.

Taking a look at the current list, for North America it's currently 16 of 81 games, 20% of the library, that requires a Classic or GameCube controller. Admittedly that 20% probably accounts for some of the most popular games.

 

[Tyrannical]

BOTTOM LINE: Wii games are selling at the same rate as Xbox Live Arcade games (i.e. about 1 game for ever 2 consoles).

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?: For all you guys trying to spin it's sales as if it's a bad thing, what are you basing this on? The Virtual Console is doing just as good as Microsoft's download service, and that's pretty impressive considering that the 360 is geared much more so towards downloadable online content.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13010

Xbox Live Arcade service has now surpassed 25 million

That's about 2.5 games per console for 360 vs 0.5 for the Wii VC.
So, that's 5 times the attach rate as the Wii.

 

[TJ Spyke]

You are forgetting that that 25 million number includes the trial downloads and free downloads, it's not like 25 miliion XBLA games have been paid for.

 

[Tyrannical]

You are forgetting that that 25 million number includes the trial downloads and free downloads, it's not like 25 miliion XBLA games have been paid for.

Finally, the Xbox Live Arcade service has now surpassed 25 million downloads, and Microsoft released a list of the top XBLA titles by amount of full downloads, as follows:

1. Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting
2. Bankshot Billiards 2
3. Marble Blast Ultra
4. UNO
5. DOOM

Well, we know that Uno is over 1 million paid downloads, and it's only number four on the list of top full (ie, paid) downloads. MS is also claiming that 70% of the 6 million live members have downloaded some type of content.
Maybe it does include demos too, but I'd think the number would be higher then 25mil if it did.

 

[tanasten]

GAF VC sales are the 0,13% of the total sales. How disappointing GAF!

Really, I'm not impressed with the VC sales. I expected far more.

I guess that Nintendo's online system is paying off. The Wifi thing isn't as accessible and not everyone with internet connection has WIFI.

Also, I know that some people doesn't download games because they don't know about them. More info, possibility of downloading demos, videos or something more should be of help selling classic games to normal people.

And the last, I think prices are a bit too high. NES should be 300 points, TurboGrafx 500 points, Super NES and MD 600, 800 points NEO GEO and N64.

 

[loosus]

Wow, Faf sounds bitter. I guess all the Sony news has him scared for his job security.

 

[Vitet]

A lot of numbers

Don't forget here in Europe WC games are priced from 5€ to 10€ so that would add a few milions to the math

 

[ziran]

I don't see these as bad sales, or unusual, and Iwata didn't say or infer anything which would indicate disappointment. Ultimately, I think this is a problem of a relatively limited amount of people going online with Wii, and even less bothered with VC.

I agree with what's already been said, a big barrier to entry is going online. I think most people want the using of a console to be as simple an experience as possible, so if they don't already have a wi-fi router set up which is compatible with Wii, they're not going to bother.

Iwata said Wii has had approximately a 40% network connection ratio, which is ~2.3 million consoles, so an average of ~1.4 games per console, which isn't bad, and it's up from ~1 per console just after launch (1.5 million games sold, 1.4 million connections). Realistically it's probably closer to 2 per console, just because you go online doesn't mean you're going to buy a VC game. Revenue wise @ $7.5 per game, it's ~$25 million, which is decent.

 

[Haunted]

GAF VC sales are the 0,13% of the total sales. How disappointing GAF!

Nice. That's probably the overall importance we should appoint to GAF when talking about Sales-Age from now on. :lol

 

[milanbaros]

GAF VC sales are the 0,13% of the total sales. How disappointing GAF!

Does no one else think thats quite high?

 

[andthebeatgoeson]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13010



That's about 2.5 games per console for 360 vs 0.5 for the Wii VC.
So, that's 5 times the attach rate as the Wii.

Scotch didn't put it in big bold letters, so I'll do it for him.

As of March 6. This number also includes trial downloads though, not just purchases. Now, the most recent article with mention of the conversion rate (from trial download to purchase) I can find is this one (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8474) from last year, with the conversion rate at 20%. That would put the current Live Arcade purchase number around 5 million, so about 1 game per 2 consoles, the same as Wii.

From that article:

The company's Xbox Live Arcade service and pay-for-download services has also done well thus far, with one in five of all connected consumers using Microsoft Points to buy items or games, and conversion rates (from trial download to purchase) running at an average of 20% - and as high as 36%.

Bottom line: We don't know what it means. Those numbers may have changed but the 25 million isn't paid purchases. I'll tell you what, if the Wii had demos (which is should), I would have bought more. I got hosed on Space Harrier 2 (which sucked), so I'm less likely to try anything else I don't remember as God.

 

[donny2112]

Does no one else think thats quite high?

1/800th of all games bought on the VC around the world have been bought by GAF members. Yeah, I'd say that's pretty high.

 

[Oblivion]

Ya know, I'm pretty sure if Nintendo considered this a bad number, they wouldn't have tossed it out there in a meet n' greet with the press.

I would think so, but I dunno. Nintendo's strange sometimes. I thought they would be shouting from the rooftops since Zelda: TP is over 4.5 million sold in the course of 5 months (it took WW a whole year to reach 3 million), but they've been pretty quiet about that.

 

[Yixian]

Retro gaming is all the rage these days, Sony better get it's ass in gear and get a serious number of PSX games onto the PSN - it's one area M$ can't hope to compete.

 

[Dalthien]

Not sure if it has already been posted in this thread or not, but Bozon (IGN) gave the revenue figure for the VC downloads. It works out to just over $8 per download. Link

"3.3 million downloads have happened since the service's release, for an estimated $27 million dollars. "

 

[Community Forum]

Retro gaming is all the rage these days, Sony better get it's ass in gear and get a serious number of PSX games onto the PSN - it's one area M$ can't hope to compete.

Oh brother...

 

[donny2112]

"3.3 million downloads have happened since the service's release, for an estimated $27 million dollars. "

I believe he's just referencing the podcast where they really do just guess at the average price of a VC Wii game. > $8 doesn't make much sense, because that would mean that the majority of the downloads are from the four N64 games.

 

[kkg1701]

I think we're also forgetting the unsued Wii points, I mean that's money spent from the consumer even if they haven't used them for games yet.


KK

 

[Dalthien]

I believe he's just referencing the podcast where they really do just guess at the average price of a VC Wii game. > $8 doesn't make much sense, because that would mean that the majority of the downloads are from the four N64 games.

Yeah, he is referencing the podcast, and I didn't listen to all of it. So if that $27 million number was just a guess by them, then ignore my post. It wouldn't be impossible, but I agree that it would be unlikely. It wouldn't necessarily mean that the 4 N64 games outsold everything else - the $8 games would basically be the average selling price, so there could have been a great deal of $8 games sold. But the $27 million number would mean that the four N64 games had outsold all of the $5 and $6 games combined. I suppose it may be possible given the high profile of the N64 games released, but not very likely.

I think we're also forgetting the unsued Wii points, I mean that's money spent from the consumer even if they haven't used them for games yet.

This is a good point, which would also drive up the average selling price, and would help to validate the $27 million number.

Anyway, if it was just a guess by the IGN podcast team, then this is all moot anyway. Thanks for the correction.

 

[Tyrannical]

I think we're also forgetting the unsued Wii points, I mean that's money spent from the consumer even if they haven't used them for games yet.

Yes, but due to accounting rules, it can't be claimed as income until after the points are spent. Same when you buy a gift card from a store, not income until spent.