Seriously. Everytime Niro starts a thread, I have hope that it's a mobile app/games sales thread.
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Media Create Sales: Week 21, 2015 (May 18 - May 24)
- Thread starter hiska-kun
- Start date
Seriously. Everytime Niro starts a thread, I have hope that it's a mobile app/games sales thread.
Probably not much imo. That ship has sailed.
They just need to focus on getting that userbase to actually buy software.
Like Yoshi, Mario Maker, FExSMT, Star Fox.
let us for a moment project that splatoon's success in these first couple of days in japan is demonstrative of the game will perform around the world. this would not only reward Nintendo's aggressive marketing campaign, making them likelier to usher in their other major releases with more pomp and circumstance, but it could very well make them more prone to create new high-profile IPs in the future, knowing they can rely on aggressive marketing to give the games a fighting chance.
really curious as to how this is going to affect the WIU's hardware number this week. what are we all thinking, 25k?
really curious as to how this is going to affect the WIU's hardware number this week. what are we all thinking, 25k?
i'm going to think really positive and assume 9k.
dakkumauji
Member
This reminds me I should get started on this game someday.
Pretty impressive to see it raising so steadily.
theprodigy
Member
frankie_baby
Member
I'd say 14k
Generally we've treated this thread as a catch all for Japanese sales news (often lower profile corporate financial results are posted here, or news about how many people downloaded a game demo, or how many people bought DLC for a game, or free 2 play game announcements) since there isn't enough interest to sustain other threads about various sales topics, and it's all intrinsically linked to the overall market situation.
If there was actually enough interest to float a mobile discussion thread it might be more plausible, but as it stands that would go over like a lead balloon and we'd have no discussion of this type of thing on the forum. I don't think that's actually overly helpful to understanding the situation in the Japanese market, since if we ignore mobile, it would appear that gamers and interest in gaming is just evaporating into thin air. Maybe in ten years we'll have enough posters who grew up with mobile gaming that such a thing could exist in a meaningful way.
Beyond a lack of interest, we actually see the spheres continuing to converge. When games like Puzzle & Dragons or Monster Strike are announced for 3DS, it doesn't really make sense to ignore discussing their mobile counterparts. The same is true for the plethora of mobile ports to Vita. Pokemon Shuffle using a mobile business model is an interesting topic of discussion, but is not facilitated by a thread split. And, of course, the 800 lb gorilla in the room is the massive migration of game series, publishers, and developers who used to work on console showing up on mobile, and how that impacts the traditional market.
then i wonder if we should have a japanese sales community thread, or a japanese sales thread that gets replaced on a monthly basis, which is sort of like how npd threads function.
Not that it is all that relevant, but while I was reading some funny XenoX reviews on ama.jp, I started reading the Splatoon ones... and its turned into a console war in some of them, lol.
I found that rather funny, hadn't seen that in a while or maybe I just hadn't been bothering too look since my reading skills are slow as dirt.
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More on topic, I think its fine to keep the digital discussion for mobile in here. Its, for now, very hard to really track appropriately and we have to play detective to figure much of anything out unless devs outright state their earnings. The reporting of them is a whole different beast and I think a thread separate just for them will die off to quickly due to low traffic.
The six to ten of us that lead any sort of discussion, speculation, or interest aren't going to keep a singular thread afloat indefinitely just as Zhuge and a few others can't keep NPD afloat indefinitely without console banter to keep the threads and questions fueled.
I found that rather funny, hadn't seen that in a while or maybe I just hadn't been bothering too look since my reading skills are slow as dirt.
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More on topic, I think its fine to keep the digital discussion for mobile in here. Its, for now, very hard to really track appropriately and we have to play detective to figure much of anything out unless devs outright state their earnings. The reporting of them is a whole different beast and I think a thread separate just for them will die off to quickly due to low traffic.
The six to ten of us that lead any sort of discussion, speculation, or interest aren't going to keep a singular thread afloat indefinitely just as Zhuge and a few others can't keep NPD afloat indefinitely without console banter to keep the threads and questions fueled.
thestopsign
Member
I still read and find the mobile discussion interesting I just don't have much stake in it and do not have much input. Keep on posting it in here!
If we have a reliable source for mobile game sales, then why shouldn't that be posted in the OP as well given how important the mobile market is to Japan?
EDIT: Ah, I see... It's hard to track. Understood.
I disagree these threads are called mediacreate for a reason - Japan retail sales. If there is real interest for smartphone game charts with little to no information, they should stand on its own in a dedicated thread.
These kind of games and services have reached an important market share in western countries, but you seldomly see anyone posting these kind of charts in the European or American sales threads. At this point I consider them as a forced running joke.
These kind of games and services have reached an important market share in western countries, but you seldomly see anyone posting these kind of charts in the European or American sales threads. At this point I consider them as a forced running joke.
What's wrong with the way it's done right now?
Moor-Angol
Banned
this should be the first time in Sales-Age that I agree, totally agree, with Darius
well, darius kind of covered it. i don't think steam gets brought up regularly in npd threads when it's a fairly important part of the market these days (there is, instead, a dedicated steam sales thread and other steam platform threads).
i can sort of understand if it gets brought up organically, as a response to something or as a reference to back up examples, but the information kind of seems to be plopped in the middle of a thread without context to what the thread's about. there could be an ongoing dedicated hardware platform vs. mobile/digital platform thread (as an example) where the information could be better organized and updated, and that thread itself could be a resource.
if the media-create threads die as a result of a lack of interest, that would be a totally fine and okay thing (not that i would be glad to see that happen, as one of the most tenured sales-agers).
Dash Kappei
Not actually that important
Half that.
frankie_baby
Member
Nah, I reckon it'll have good tentacles
I don't see why Splatoon would be insanely frontloaded, it seems to be well received (based on the completely not anecdotal evidence of amazon reviews) and new IPs tend to have relatively okay legs. .
I guess I can understand that (but then again this thread has been about Japan sales and not particularly retail for some time now... and I don't see how those mobile numbers are less relevant to the discussion than some other stuff). I think people need to mature on the whole mobile thing a little more before we can have an actual interesting discussion in a thread dedicated about it though. Outside of this thread most mobile stuff is met with general stupidity and kneejerk reactions (which is probably why it's posted here in the first place).
I guess I can understand that (but then again this thread has been about Japan sales and not particularly retail for some time now... and I don't see how those mobile numbers are less relevant to the discussion than some other stuff). I think people need to mature on the whole mobile thing a little more before we can have an actual interesting discussion in a thread dedicated about it though. Outside of this thread most mobile stuff is met with general stupidity and kneejerk reactions (which is probably why it's posted here in the first place).
OK, someone needs to find and offer the translations, console wars stuff from Japan is always pretty hilarious, from what I remember.
shinra-bansho
Member
I don't really see how Nirolak providing some wider market context posting about the now larger segment of the Japanese gaming market really detracts from the weekly mundane discussion of which platform Dragon Quest will be on, and what this set of random comgnet pts means or Amazon listings means (hint: nothing.)
Edit: Also this:
Edit: Also this:
michaelius
Banned
At least it will avoid direct collision with P4D.
Well as for this time you can blame earthquake for that..
well i guess i might just be on the receiving end of conflicting messages then. i thought that megathreads and insular community threads were fairly frowned-upon. i can recall at least one instance where the level of discourse found in a thread where people knew what they were talking about was encouraged to be taken to the rest of the board as a whole, so it might improve the board as a whole.
at the time, i suggested renaming the thread to something that might more accurately reflect what that community had become, but that was frowned upon too. so i don't know.
1st Course
Member
Thing is that the mobile posts don't see much attention here as they often tend to get lost within all the dedicated software/hardware talk.
I personaly would love to see a Retro Sales Age Thread style thread for mobile gaming where mobile analytics and market reports are posted from time to time. Would also make it easier to find specfic posts than having to use the search function and going through a number of random posts.
beyond that, if there's concern over the level of discourse being had, i can think of no better way to improve it by confronting people with information like this versus keeping it essentially hidden in a tangentially-related series of topics.
This pretty much mirrors my feelings about the topic.
Here's my take on it. The reason why it feels more natural to have mobile performance discussion as an extension of Japanese sales discussion is because the climate of the industry in Japan is actually reflective of that. While in the western development climate there is still a disconnect between mobile and traditional platforms, and it is reflected by the marketing, the userbase trends, and the opinions of developers, that disconnect simply isn't there in Japan - this is something which I think is very alien and frustrating to some people but it is fact.
When we talk about JRPGs moving forward, how can we ignore the fact that the team which made the trilogy of FFXIII games are now working exclusively on a major mobile FF title? How can we ignore that the "expansion" of the FFXI world moving forward is a mobile spinoff and a mobile port of FFXI? How can we ignore that Mistwalker's biggest success thus far is not their console or handheld RPGs, but a mobile title? How can we ignore that when interviewed about games which inspire them for year end articles, many Japanese developers actually mentioned mobile titles like Puzzle & Dragons, Monster Strike, and Terra Battle?
To be worthwhile, sales discussion must be grounded in actual interest in the market and the trends for content in that market. It seems stupid to completely ignore certain things just because they're not in a Media Create chart. Why do we also talk about Digital Download sales? Why do we speculate about future releases for big franchises and what platforms they could be on? Everything is tied into one eco-system here. Japan is a smaller place than Europe and the US, so the effects are felt in much stronger ways.
When we talk about JRPGs moving forward, how can we ignore the fact that the team which made the trilogy of FFXIII games are now working exclusively on a major mobile FF title? How can we ignore that the "expansion" of the FFXI world moving forward is a mobile spinoff and a mobile port of FFXI? How can we ignore that Mistwalker's biggest success thus far is not their console or handheld RPGs, but a mobile title? How can we ignore that when interviewed about games which inspire them for year end articles, many Japanese developers actually mentioned mobile titles like Puzzle & Dragons, Monster Strike, and Terra Battle?
To be worthwhile, sales discussion must be grounded in actual interest in the market and the trends for content in that market. It seems stupid to completely ignore certain things just because they're not in a Media Create chart. Why do we also talk about Digital Download sales? Why do we speculate about future releases for big franchises and what platforms they could be on? Everything is tied into one eco-system here. Japan is a smaller place than Europe and the US, so the effects are felt in much stronger ways.
Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
You know times have changed when Famitsu itself goes and starts putting smart phone games on the cover of its magazines on occasion.
and i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing to have. i'm just suggesting a bigger catch-all thread, like japanese sales: may 2015 or something, with media-create being dedicated to dedicated hardware and the things related more closely to it on a weekly basis. the us equivalent of mobile is ... well, it's also mobile, but it's also steam, but discussion over that digital platform essentially never comes up in npd threads and i think would probably seem out of place despite its growing influence on the market.
The Media Create threads are the Japanese Sales threads. Just because they're titled "Media Create" does not mean people don't talk about Famitsu numbers, or Dengeki numbers, or COMG pre-orders, or Famitsu Digital Download numbers, etc. Shrug. There's no need to fix something that isn't broken.
well i think some good could come out of a monthly sales thread too. the people who know what 'media-create' means are already in the know. a broader topic title would have the potential to have information reach more people. ideally, it would change minds or at least get some people used to the idea of what's happening in the marketplace. it was no surprise to me that konami and sega are taking the directions they're taking, but maybe there would be fewer 'rip in peace' drivebys and intense backlash in threads where publishers announce such shifts if people have time to understand where these companies are coming from.
edit: honestly if there's concern over how people might react to mobile sales elsewhere on the forum and that they should be hidden away, i think that's a sign that something actually could be broken.
Well, I'm certainly not opposed to -someone- putting in more effort to have a sort of monthly overview on Japanese mobile performance. But if no one wants to put in the effort to present the data in easy to understand formats which allows for informed discussion, then talking about the performance of selected titles in here seems perfectly fine. I mean honestly, are you telling me that -no one- in this thread would be interested to know how well Mobius Final Fantasy will do in the next few months? That seems like a vital data point in any discussion about what direction S-E might take next with their big RPG teams.
DR2K
Banned
I just don't understand the rhetoric here with ailing console sales in Japan. There's literally nothing funny about Bravely Second trailing its debut. There is nothing endearing about losing traditional Japanese games in their entirety to an industry that leeches off of the mentally disabled or fiscally irresponsible.
Console games are dying and mobile games are raking in billions of yen. Lol
The only issue I have with mobile talk is the lack of hard data, but that's the nature of the beast. It can make worthwhile discussion difficult especially for titles that don't hit the upper echelons.
For instance with Terra Battle I have no idea how successful it actually is.
For instance with Terra Battle I have no idea how successful it actually is.
as a MC lurker, I'd definitely look into and probably post/comment in a mobile dedicated japanese sales thread, if the thread had enough info to discuss and depending on the kind of games that are discussed.
if a thread has sales figures (numbers, not placements) and games start to be worth following (I really don't care for quick cash-ins and candy crush-clones that people for some reason absolutely had to buy like the world ends tomorrow), I can see a separate thread taking off.
I think it's a matter of time.
As mobile gets bigger and more and better games are released, a separate thread will start to make sense. as of now, I think the way info is handled is the right way to do it.
if a thread has sales figures (numbers, not placements) and games start to be worth following (I really don't care for quick cash-ins and candy crush-clones that people for some reason absolutely had to buy like the world ends tomorrow), I can see a separate thread taking off.
I think it's a matter of time.
As mobile gets bigger and more and better games are released, a separate thread will start to make sense. as of now, I think the way info is handled is the right way to do it.
sure. i'm curious to see how that game does. i probably wouldn't be looking for it in a media-create thread though. i probably wouldn't even know what media-create is if i hadn't originally looked up dengeki sales over a decade ago. and i also think it makes sense to use a game like that for a discussion on how it might impact a former dedicated hardware-only supporter like s-e in the dedicated hardware market. what doesn't make sense to me is 'here's this game. it's doing this compared to last week' without any context or relevance to the current discussion.
it sounds more to me that if the community is unwilling to change the topics it wants to discuss (to become more specific), then the title of the topic should change to reflect the broader nature of the topics being discussed. in all seriousness, would there be harm in simply naming these threads 'traditional/mobile japanese sales: week xx (month day - month day)' (or even just dropping the traditional/mobile part)?
unapersson
Member
I guess the difference is that those actually have numbers. The mobile stuff seems closer to analytics.
Moor-Angol
Banned
and other 20 games released on the same day
On the one hand I agree that the mobile data we have isn't amazing, which is why I try to be very selective when pulling things in here to keep them in the domain of things we have some information about. For example, we know spot 3 is basically always in the $1+ million dollars a day range.
CyGames is a company that has struggled to reach the same success they had (or at least relevance) as in the Rage of Bahamut days, so this is a big deal for them.
This is also a company that hired Minaba (the art director on the game) and Yoshida to work, so they're sucking up very famous dedicated game staff.
Further more they're making a PS4 game, which is often cited in here, and this tells you more about their cash flow or even an IP the game might be based on.
They're also a major, long time mobile vendor still so their success reflects on the ability of large vendors to retain relevance and figure out the mobile market, something that is often debated in here as a reason why people should stick to traditional because it's "predictable".
I feel this is all relevant to the dedicated game industry at large, even if it's not a dedicated game itself.
Beyond this, the Media Create figures themselves are definitely not the full picture for dedicated games. Consider the following:
- Unlike film, we do not know the budgets or advertising costs, so we have no way to assess actual financial success outside of people posting educated guesses, which given thread, are frequently not agreed upon.
- We don't know the average selling price of a game to stores, making it even more difficult to get a sense of how much money a game is making. There's a huge difference between selling games at 3000 yen and 5500 yen.
- Fewer and fewer publishers are reporting on their happiness with individual dedicated titles in financial reports, and the opposite is true of mobile. Square Enix and Sega listed almost no examples of retail games they were happy with this fiscal year, but told us way more about whichobile ones they were happy with.
- Obviously the thread doesn't touch upon worldwide sales which are critical to understanding the financial health of many series, since they wouldn't exist without them.
If we seem okay with discussing out of context sales numbers for dedicated games, I don't see the issue with trying to discuss mobile under similar constraints.
I agree that the titles of the sales threads often aren't helpful to casual observers. I wouldn't expect your average person to know what an "NPD", "PAL", or "Media Create" is on first glance.
CyGames is a company that has struggled to reach the same success they had (or at least relevance) as in the Rage of Bahamut days, so this is a big deal for them.
This is also a company that hired Minaba (the art director on the game) and Yoshida to work, so they're sucking up very famous dedicated game staff.
Further more they're making a PS4 game, which is often cited in here, and this tells you more about their cash flow or even an IP the game might be based on.
They're also a major, long time mobile vendor still so their success reflects on the ability of large vendors to retain relevance and figure out the mobile market, something that is often debated in here as a reason why people should stick to traditional because it's "predictable".
I feel this is all relevant to the dedicated game industry at large, even if it's not a dedicated game itself.
Beyond this, the Media Create figures themselves are definitely not the full picture for dedicated games. Consider the following:
- Unlike film, we do not know the budgets or advertising costs, so we have no way to assess actual financial success outside of people posting educated guesses, which given thread, are frequently not agreed upon.
- We don't know the average selling price of a game to stores, making it even more difficult to get a sense of how much money a game is making. There's a huge difference between selling games at 3000 yen and 5500 yen.
- Fewer and fewer publishers are reporting on their happiness with individual dedicated titles in financial reports, and the opposite is true of mobile. Square Enix and Sega listed almost no examples of retail games they were happy with this fiscal year, but told us way more about whichobile ones they were happy with.
- Obviously the thread doesn't touch upon worldwide sales which are critical to understanding the financial health of many series, since they wouldn't exist without them.
If we seem okay with discussing out of context sales numbers for dedicated games, I don't see the issue with trying to discuss mobile under similar constraints.
I agree that the titles of the sales threads often aren't helpful to casual observers. I wouldn't expect your average person to know what an "NPD", "PAL", or "Media Create" is on first glance.
Sounds more like a distribution miscommunication to me, or Nintendo expected this shipment to also sell out and means that any future shipments will be delayed. The other option is that retailers requested more copies as future proofing and Nintendo is fresh out.
As you say, we have some general idea of the top 3rd pulling in somewhere around and over 1$ million a day, what I'm interested in is, what is the fall off after the fact? I've always been curious, is the mobile market incredibly "top heavy" in its successes? How well is a game in the middle of the charts, like TerraBattle, doing on a day to day basis? Is it a comfortable income? Is it actually living day-to-day?
Since mobile games, after their initial development costs, become more about service platforms, they work on different budgets than long-standing console/handheld series. This changes, further, the answer to my questions of where we can really define a success or 'good profits; and where we can't, since in the long-term they need only produce a singular base package once, and then make minor additions to it over months and years.
test_account
XP-39C²
We also hardly get info regarding digital sales for retail games (or digital only games). We do get the Famitsu estimates, but as far as i know, there is no info regarding how reliable those are. They might be accurate or they might be way off, for all that we know. I still enjoy reading them though, so please dont stop posting them 
There is also sometimes a noticeably difference in the numbers between the trackers, making it uncertain which one that is most accurate.
There is also sometimes a noticeably difference in the numbers between the trackers, making it uncertain which one that is most accurate.
To help illustrate what I said above, let's actually repeat this scenario with Media Create numbers.
So, this is a new title that clearly didn't hit the upper echelons:
08./00. [PSV] Abunai: Koi no Sousa Shitsu - Eternal Happiness # <ADV> (Asgard) (¥7.344) - 4.266 / NEW
Can you tell me the following:
1.) So the game sold 4266 units at a list price of 7344 yen. How much of this money did Asgard see? Obviously they sell to the retailer for less than 7344 yen, and then they also had to pay a licensing fee to Sony along with shipping and manufacturing costs.
2.) What were the development and marketing costs of the game? Once we figure out question #1, it's still not helpful until we actually know what the game cost to make.
3.) Looking at Japan LTD Rank, their previous games had debuts of 5096 (2980 yen) and 9743 (4800 yen) respectively, and were on the PSP. They never charted again, so we don't know their LTDs. Were these games profitable? How has the Vita impacted their cost structure?
4.) We know they're still in business, so they haven't run out of money. However, I can't find any website for the company in English, so I can't tell if they're a public company, and I also can't tell if they're in debt or not. They're only had game releases (at least on Japan LTD Rank) since 2013, so it's possible they're still living off an initial investment loan. What can you tell us about the health of this company and how this release contributes to it?
5.) Based on all of the above, how do you think this release will impact the company? Was it a success? Will it lead the company to grow, contract, or stay the same? Will this change their strategy surrounding game releases?
If simply having numbers is illuminating, then we should be able to derive greater meaning from them.
That's not to say numbers aren't important, they're clearly a good source of information, but if we can't derive this type of information from them, they're obviously not enough to get a very informative picture.
Yes, this is a similar problem as to what I detailed above. We must rely on publisher statements to infer things about the market. For example, this Sega chart is one of the most helpful.
Similarly, how I determined whether Bravely Second was successful was based on relativism as opposed to the actual numbers. We have no idea what the development budget or promotional budget was, but knew the game had debuted a lot lower than Bravely Default, which was bad. We also knew that handheld games with similar sales volumes rarely ever saw sequels at Square Enix.
However, this wasn't a guarantee of meaning, and simply an educated guess based upon trends. The thing that ultimately solidified its lack of success was Asano saying he was immediately going to submit the plan for Bravely Third if the game was successful enough, and then shortly after release, saying they were trying to decide if it made more sense to try another sequel or to try an entirely new game instead.
Without this type of commentary, we could simply analyze the situation and makes predictions, and then wonder for years if we were right. Right now we still don't even know if the game was profitable, and this decision was made simply upon it not being profitable enough, or if it actively lost money, which would help inform future discussions much more. We also don't know what types of platforms the team might work on next instead, which would give us some more hints at the implications of not having enough success.
We also hardly get info regarding digital sales for retail games (or digital only games). We do get the Famitsu estimates, but as far as i know, there is no info regarding how reliable those are. They might be accurate or they might be way off, for all that we know. I still enjoy reading them though, so please dont stop posting them
There is also sometimes a noticeably difference in the numbers between the trackers, making it uncertain which one that is most accurate.
And even more importantly, we don't get DLC figures. We found out Fire Emblem had great DLC success from a Nintendo financial presentation, and it obviously had a tremendous impact on the business strategy for Fire Emblem If. However, simply looking at Media Create would have never told us this.
In a market increasingly dominated by microtransactions, with even a non-trivial number of free 2 play games coming to dedicated devices, we're losing out on a lot of revenue information that could notably change the perception of a product's success.
nitekrawlwer
Member
I always look at the Media Create threads regularly though I hardly ever post. Mostly because it would just be more negative comments over how the anemic the Media Create and Famitsu numbers alone make the Japanese market look. I would prefer more information over less personally. It might give me something more positive to say or anything at all to say.
Money is money to the people making the games. I don't see why it should be so different on our end. Well actually I do. That reason is tradition of console gaming superiority around here. I just don't think that's a good reason.
Money is money to the people making the games. I don't see why it should be so different on our end. Well actually I do. That reason is tradition of console gaming superiority around here. I just don't think that's a good reason.
http://jp.jnocnews.jp/news/show.aspx?id=54369
Itagaki gave an interview to People's Daily Overseas Edition Japan Monthly, and said some pretty funny things. To note, this is a Japanese edition of a China newspaper, so keep in mind that his comments are likely intended to be for readers who have an interest in China-centric news.
When asked about the future of Valhalla Studios, he said that they're currently committed to finishing Devil's Third on WiiU, but after it ships, they'll be developing mobile games. He goes on to talk about mobile gaming culture in China, and how it is a huge market which has a strong social culture. He hopes to tie-in with Chinese companies in future to take full advantage of the growing market there.
Itagaki gave an interview to People's Daily Overseas Edition Japan Monthly, and said some pretty funny things. To note, this is a Japanese edition of a China newspaper, so keep in mind that his comments are likely intended to be for readers who have an interest in China-centric news.
When asked about the future of Valhalla Studios, he said that they're currently committed to finishing Devil's Third on WiiU, but after it ships, they'll be developing mobile games. He goes on to talk about mobile gaming culture in China, and how it is a huge market which has a strong social culture. He hopes to tie-in with Chinese companies in future to take full advantage of the growing market there.