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PS4 Japan Launch Livestream 2/21 - guest creator appearances confirmed

big_z

Member
Monster Hunter is a handheld franchise and Capcom has shown to be unwilling to work on a HD level MH game (Monster Hunter PS3 was announced before PS3's launch, but cancelled later on in favor of the much more successful handheld titles). They'd rather squeeze as much out of the IP as possible, so much like Pokemon games still look worse than PS1 games, the games won't advance past their PS2-level graphics for a while still, not until they absolutely have to (because that would mean more money to development and thus less profits).

While I agree mh is a handheld series at this point Sony could have ported monster hunter online.

Would be a smart move for Microsoft to make. There's a lot of korean/chinese pc content that could be ported to these consoles that might be of interest in the Japanese market.
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
Even with no outside queues seems like it sold good if it is sold out... can you give us how much units your store received? It can be a rounded number or just close too.
Well, it's not bad, but compared to MH4 which sold out in (I think) 10 minutes and was basically impossible to get without a preorder - things could've been better. :p

No idea about the number of units, I don't think think this is a type of information they share and I didn't occur to me to ask.
 

Alej

Banned
So I guess, 350k for the launch days, 200k for the rest of the month.

550k for the first month in retail minimum. Could be significantly more accounting the preorders with digital stores.

Could be a little less than 1M in 4 weeks, accounting everything. Excellent launch if true. 700k is more realistic though (and great too).
 

ethomaz

Banned
Well, it's not bad, but compared to MH4 which sold out in (I think) 10 minutes and was basically impossible to get without a preorder - things could've been better. :p

No idea about the number of units, I don't think think this is a type of information they share and I didn't occur to me to ask.
MH sell millions in day one... how many sold MH4 day one? To be fair I never expected PS4 to sell like MH4.
 

Shengar

Member
Monster Hunter is a handheld franchise and Capcom has shown to be unwilling to work on a HD level MH game (Monster Hunter PS3 was announced before PS3's launch, but cancelled later on in favor of the much more successful handheld titles). They'd rather squeeze as much out of the IP as possible, so much like Pokemon games still look worse than PS1 games, the games won't advance past their PS2-level graphics for a while still, not until they absolutely have to (because that would mean more money to development and thus less profits).

What? MH3 wasn't moved to handheld, it was moved to Wii. And the reasoning its not because the Wii was more popular either, but rather it have cheaper production since they don't have to remade their assets to fit with PS3 HD graphic and reuse PS2+PSP assets instead. And it was the reason why MH moved to 3DS too despite its lacking hadware to be a proper hunting action game machine: to reuse 10 years old asset and moved the money to mobile development.
 

FiggyCal

Banned
You don't want to wait until we've seen a sales number first? The amount of freaking out in the thread, when we have literally no data at all, is really incredible.

Even after numbers come out people will freak out. People just like freaking out on here.
 

RexNovis

Banned
I know this is a bit off topic guys but I could really use some help here and it's kinda related to the Japanese PS4 release.

I got the free digital copy if Knack with my Japanese PS4 and I was trying to figure out if it supports English voices or subtitles. Can anyone tell me? And if it does how do I change the VoiceOver/activate the subtitles? Thanks in advance everyone!
 
From someone who is desperate for a JRPG console era similar to the PS2 era I'm hoping that there was at least 200,000 Pre orders for Sony to fill plus they shipped a minimum of 400,000 for in store day one buys/online orders.
 

Kuro

Member
From someone who is desperate for a JRPG console era similar to the PS2 era I'm hoping that there was at least 200,000 Pre orders for Sony to fill plus they shipped a minimum of 400,000 for in store day one buys/online orders.

PS3's JRPG output isn't really that bad in retrospect. Especially with Persona 5 and Dark Souls 2 coming out this year.
 

Tratorn

Member
PS3's JRPG output isn't really that bad in retrospect. Especially with Persona 5 and Dark Souls 2 coming out this year.

Well the "problem" is the good ones are mostly sequels and PS4 will probably get most of them anyways, even if it doesn't sell that good. But with strong sales the chances for bigger new IPs would be way higher than in the PS3-generation and that's probably what many are hoping for.
 
Let me share the current PS4 situation at my local store.
First, no queue outside at around 10:06AM on Saturday (the store opens at 10AM, MH4 had a queue outside):

There was a short queue inside and 2 people in front of me bought PS4s.

As for the games/hardware situation today, the only things in stock were:
Assassin's Creed
Nobunaga
CoD
NFS
BF4
Dynasty Warriors
Blue, Black DS4

All the other games, accessories and both models of the PS4 were sold out.

Interesting. Thanks for the report. With sold out online stores and at least decent retail performance, I'll stick with my 400-600K opening weekend guess.
 

web01

Member
Interesting MGSV TPP is the top selling PS4 game on Amazon sales charts at the moment. Yakuza is second but selling behind PS3 version. Also I was surprised North American PSN cards are on the chart.
 
Interesting MGSV TPP is the top selling PS4 game on Amazon sales charts at the moment. Yakuza is second but selling behind PS3 version. Also I was surprised North American PSN cards are on the chart.

I assume people have already bought the existing games so now people are pre-ordering that in anticipation. The pre-ordered games would have charted when they were pre-ordered.
 

Copenap

Member
I know this is a bit off topic guys but I could really use some help here and it's kinda related to the Japanese PS4 release.

I got the free digital copy if Knack with my Japanese PS4 and I was trying to figure out if it supports English voices or subtitles. Can anyone tell me? And if it does how do I change the VoiceOver/activate the subtitles? Thanks in advance everyone!
Set your system language to english, if it's still not in english I'm afraid the japanese psn doesn't have english va and subs for Knack. Alternatively, try to redownload after setting the system language to english.
 

TyrantII

Member
1 Million in Japan?!

eEg2XhR.jpg


Let's be serious. They didn't sell that much. My prediction is at 200k at the most. I don't think Japan is that Home Console friendly anymore especially if home hitters like MGS, KH and FF aren't on the scene yet. Maybe when MGSGZ comes out, there would be a slight boost in sales.


So only matching the 59,800 Yen PS3 release. Just sheer differences in price / performance means they'll do better than a $600 console bluray player with no games.

having little homegrown stuff is a problem, but hardcore gamers over there play everything just as the hardcore over here like to import and play Japanese dev'd games as well.

They'll be relying on them until they get Japanese devs in full swing.
 

S¡mon

Banned
S¡mon;101941607 said:
Calling it now, 1 million sold.

Worldwide

that would make Knack the most widely "bought" PS4 game ever

Knack just killing the competition

GOTY

I doubt they even shipped more than ~400-500k to Japan, let alone sell 1 million.

That's a pretty bold and overconfident prediction. I doubt it.



Those reports are anecdotal. Although that doesn't mean the accumulated sales will be good.

I think realistically one retailer sell-out was to be expected, especially during the launch period.

If Sony was a little bit prepared.. they could have done well in Japan. It is too late now.

- Should have launched GT6 on PS4 as a bundled game. Would have easily pushed PS4 ahead of PS2
- Worked with Capcom on Monster Hunter 4 on PS4
- Atleast tried to work with Square to get HD ports of FF-X or FF-7 on PS4

Knack as a bundled game is not enough to move 1M consoles.

PS4 by itself is a great console. Just that there is nothing to play right now. It is just a tech demo toy.

You're too smart to believe something like that.

1 Million in Japan?!

eEg2XhR.jpg


Let's be serious. They didn't sell that much. My prediction is at 200k at the most. I don't think Japan is that Home Console friendly anymore especially if home hitters like MGS, KH and FF aren't on the scene yet. Maybe when MGSGZ comes out, there would be a slight boost in sales.
My original estimate was 250K (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=101596319&postcount=177), but after carefully considering all reports coming from Japan I had to up my estimate to 1 million.

Especially units sold through digital stores have been phenomenal. Sales and hype are much harder to track for digital stores (for example, you can't see people 'lining-up' online) and that gives a false idea of reduced sales.

1 million is maybe a bit on the high-end, but they'll have sold at least nearly as many units as they did in Europe at launch (e.g. around 700K). So where do the additional sales come from? Orders that have been placed 'last-minute', as well as from the additional stock Sony managed to ship to physical retailers.

As I said, earlier I predicted 250K... but sometimes we've got to revisit our estimates.
 

Kyoufu

Member
S¡mon;101966546 said:
My original estimate was 250K (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=101596319&postcount=177), but after carefully considering all reports coming from Japan I had to up my estimate to 1 million.

Especially units sold through digital stores have been phenomenal. Sales and hype are much harder to track for digital stores (for example, you can't see people 'lining-up' online) and that gives a false idea of reduced sales.

1 million is maybe a bit on the high-end, but they'll have sold at least nearly as many units as they did in Europe at launch (e.g. around 700K). So where do the additional sales come from? Orders that have been placed 'last-minute', as well as from the additional stock Sony managed to ship to physical retailers.

As I said, earlier I predicted 250K... but sometimes we've got to revisit our estimates.

I can't tell if you're serious or if this is a meme of some sort.
 
PS3's JRPG output isn't really that bad in retrospect. Especially with Persona 5 and Dark Souls 2 coming out this year.

I completely agree that the PS3 had and are getting some good ones and that's the problem.

For the PS2 I had 40 JRPG games. 40 really good ones with good stories, gameplay, and all received really good review s scores. That was just scratching the surface of the total JRPG that came out that Gen.

The PS3 just had some good ones. I'm not expecting that same output from Japan at all, I just want a decent combination of WRPG and JRPG to be published on the PS4.
 

MogCakes

Member
The PS4 RPG scene won't come into it's own until FFXV releases IMO. For now we're going to get a lot of them coming out on PS3 because it's hit its stride.
 

UberTag

Member
Well the "problem" is the good ones are mostly sequels and PS4 will probably get most of them anyways, even if it doesn't sell that good. But with strong sales the chances for bigger new IPs would be way higher than in the PS3-generation and that's probably what many are hoping for.
Why are we assuming that upcoming PS3 JRPG sequel installments hitting the console later this year will "probably end up on" PS4?

How many late PS2 JRPGs found their way to PS3?

Final Fantasy XIII (October 2006) didn't get ported anywhere.
Neither did Valkyrie Profile 2 (September 2006).
Or Xenosaga Episode III (August 2006).
Or Rogue Galaxy (January 2007).
Or Wild Arms 5 (August 2007).
Or the two Devil Summoner games Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army (October 2006) and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (May 2009).

Tales of the Abyss (October 2006) wound up getting ported to the 3DS... NOT the PS3.
Persona 3 (August 2007) wound up getting ported to the PSP... NOT the PS3.
Persona 4 (December 2008) wound up getting ported to the Vita... NOT the PS3.

Odin Sphere (May 2007) wasn't ported to the PS3 - but was, essentially, converted via emulator to be digitally released over PSN and made playable for that system. Ditto for Persona 3 FES (April 2008). So there's that. It's nice to see the initiative by Atlus but that may have been an easier feat to replicate then as PS2 emulation was part of the original PS3 launch hardware than it is now.

I'm still not seeing this "PS4 will probably get most of them" logic as it pertains to upcoming PS3 games like Persona 5, Tales of Zestiria... or even Dark Souls II.
 
Why are we assuming that upcoming PS3 JRPG sequel installments hitting the console later this year will "probably end up on" PS4?

How many late PS2 JRPGs found their way to PS3?

Final Fantasy XIII (October 2006) didn't get ported anywhere.
Neither did Valkyrie Profile 2 (September 2006).
Or Xenosaga Episode III (August 2006).
Or Rogue Galaxy (January 2007).
Or Wild Arms 5 (August 2007).
Or the two Devil Summoner games Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army (October 2006) or Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (May 2009).

Tales of the Abyss (October 2006) wound up getting ported to the 3DS... NOT the PS3.
Persona 3 (August 2007) wound up getting ported to the PSP... NOT the PS3.
Persona 4 (December 2008) wound up getting ported to the Vita... NOT the PS3.

Odin Sphere (May 2007) wasn't ported to the PS3 - but was, essentially, converted via emulator to be digitally released over PSN and made playable for that system. Ditto for Persona 3 FES (April 2008). So there's that. It's nice to see the initiative by Atlus but that may have been an easier feat to replicate then as PS2 emulation was part of the original PS3 launch hardware than it is now.

I'm still not seeing this "PS4 will probably get most of them" logic as it pertains to upcoming PS3 games like Persona 5, Tales of Zestiria... or even Dark Souls II.

Thats because the PS3 was doing horribly and the PS2 was still going strong.

The uptake of PS4 has been leagues ahead of PS3 and in general people are adopting next far quicker.

I don't see Tales coming since its mainly a Japanese franchise but Persona has a notable Western fanbase and since PS4 lacks jrpgs I would not be surprised if we saw a port.
 

Hypereides

Gold Member
S¡mon;101966546 said:
My original estimate was 250K (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=101596319&postcount=177), but after carefully considering all reports coming from Japan I had to up my estimate to 1 million.

Especially units sold through digital stores have been phenomenal. Sales and hype are much harder to track for digital stores (for example, you can't see people 'lining-up' online) and that gives a false idea of reduced sales.

1 million is maybe a bit on the high-end, but they'll have sold at least nearly as many units as they did in Europe at launch (e.g. around 700K). So where do the additional sales come from? Orders that have been placed 'last-minute', as well as from the additional stock Sony managed to ship to physical retailers.

As I said, earlier I predicted 250K... but sometimes we've got to revisit our estimates.

Maybe a bit on the high-end? That's generous. You're likely in a for a rude awakening.

The accumulated sales will most likely be a lesser fraction of your 1million sales esitimate.

Also you're probably giving a little too much credit and faith into the digital sales.
 

JPHJ

Neo Member
As i said earlier in the thread someone on youtube apparently has a source that said there were 'a couple million' in a warehouse for japan as they missed out with their home console and so they don't run out after days like the rest of the world did. Whether true or not the couple million seems a bit too much but it seems to me that a large amount was available there.

I guessed at a million sold by the end of the month, may have been a bit optimistic who knows.

But haven't we had 5 lots of pre orders all sold out? Japan has watched the world largely not preorder it and then have to try and find it, so it makes sense there would be loads of pre orders given the time they had to wait. This would affect day 1 sales somewhat and you would see less crowds

How many preorders each time? 50k 75k? Could easily have be 300k+ preorders and then with online sales and day 1 and 2 sales it could be another 2-300k. Would be great for 48 hours. All guesswork of course so far but based of those previous articles, sort of goes along with these impressions.

Also, from that article, one shop say they got like 300 consoles for launch day, that seems a lot and who knows could be more sat in wait for when they sell out.

Not long to wait until we know for sure. Will we find out monday Japan time? If so not too long.
 

Tratorn

Member
Why are we assuming that upcoming PS3 JRPG sequel installments hitting the console later this year will "probably end up on" PS4?

How many late PS2 JRPGs found their way to PS3?

Final Fantasy XIII (October 2006) didn't get ported anywhere.
Neither did Valkyrie Profile 2 (September 2006).
Or Xenosaga Episode III (August 2006).
Or Rogue Galaxy (January 2007).
Or Wild Arms 5 (August 2007).
Or the two Devil Summoner games Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army (October 2006) and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (May 2009).

Tales of the Abyss (October 2006) wound up getting ported to the 3DS... NOT the PS3.
Persona 3 (August 2007) wound up getting ported to the PSP... NOT the PS3.
Persona 4 (December 2008) wound up getting ported to the Vita... NOT the PS3.

Odin Sphere (May 2007) wasn't ported to the PS3 - but was, essentially, converted via emulator to be digitally released over PSN and made playable for that system. Ditto for Persona 3 FES (April 2008). So there's that. It's nice to see the initiative by Atlus but that may have been an easier feat to replicate then as PS2 emulation was part of the original PS3 launch hardware than it is now.

I'm still not seeing this "PS4 will probably get most of them" logic as it pertains to upcoming PS3 games like Persona 5, Tales of Zestiria... or even Dark Souls II.

Uhm, I wasn't talking about particular games but just the series. The most of the bigger/common IPs will probably get at least one successor on the PS4. So while Tales of Zestiria will be a PS3 game, the PS4 will still get one successor even with slow sales.
The only way this won't happen is if it really bombs so hard that it'd even be crazy to consider making a game for it.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Set your system language to english, if it's still not in english I'm afraid the japanese psn doesn't have english va and subs for Knack. Alternatively, try to redownload after setting the system language to english.

Tried to no avail. I guess there's no option in the JP version. I actually don't mind the voice-over. JP voice-over sounds way better than the little bit of the English voice-over I have happened to hear but it would be nice to have some English subtitles to understand what they are saying. My Japanese is still pretty rough.
 

RexNovis

Banned
S¡mon;101966546 said:
My original estimate was 250K (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=101596319&postcount=177), but after carefully considering all reports coming from Japan I had to up my estimate to 1 million.

Especially units sold through digital stores have been phenomenal. Sales and hype are much harder to track for digital stores (for example, you can't see people 'lining-up' online) and that gives a false idea of reduced sales.

1 million is maybe a bit on the high-end, but they'll have sold at least nearly as many units as they did in Europe at launch (e.g. around 700K). So where do the additional sales come from? Orders that have been placed 'last-minute', as well as from the additional stock Sony managed to ship to physical retailers.

As I said, earlier I predicted 250K... but sometimes we've got to revisit our estimates.

I'm sticking to my initial estimate of 450k.

I'm thinking about 450k for day one and an additional 50k for the remainder of the month.

I imagine they likely shipped out 700k for release day in Japan and sold somewhere around 450k hence the available stock on the shelves. Either way, we will likely find out on Monday or Tuesday as that is when Japan reports sales figures for the previous week.
 
Tsutaya's charts for the week ending 23th february. As expected, only Yakuza Ishin seems high on the PS4 line-up (PS3 version is first of course). Killzone, BF4 and Dynasty Warriors 8 XL are in the top 10. Koei's game being behind Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, we can imagine how week the numbers should be.

PS4 early life in Japan is gonna be fucking depressing, bring on the games, japanese studios :(

http://www.tsutaya.co.jp/rank/game.html?r=W090
 

Kolgar

Member
Hm, no PR yet? Isn't it Monday afternoon in Japan?

I was hoping for maybe 350K sold out of nearly 500K shipped, but it looks like we will have to wait and see.
 
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