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[gerg]

Again, I guess Monster Hunter, Mario, and Metroid apparently aren't very important to him.

Those games (and I presume you're referring to SMG2 as "Mario") won't push the Wii, at all.

Not that I think that his general point has a lot of merit, but there's greater mistakes to highlight, such as using Wii Play, a title over three years old now, and Wii Fit, a game superseded by a replacement product, as metrics for demand for the Wii.

 

[Doorman]

Those don't count as exciting exclusives because Ubisoft is predicting 500k sales for Red Steel 2 worldwide and Monster Hunter Tri has been extensively advertised for its last two installments and hasn't broken 200k.

OR BECUZ PATCHUR IS BIAST!!

Out of curiosity, anybody happen to know what sales expectations were for Heavy Rain? Obviously more than the likes of RS2, considering they actually seemed to want to successfully market it, but I wonder if they were gunning for "mega hit" or just "decent success." Tri interests me a lot, with the demo release and supposed marketing help from Nintendo itself, it sounds like both Capcom and Nintendo have a vested interest in making the game a hit. Will it pay off with big sales? I have no idea, but I think it's a situation worth keeping an eye on. Moreso than the Baseball game that Pachter is using as evidence for a strong PS3 spring.

Edit: regarding gerg's point, I assumed that by "wii fit" he meant combined sales of it and Wii Fit Plus. If he's really using sales of the original product and not its intended replacement as a gauge...well...I'm not even sure what to say to that.

 

[gerg]

Edit: regarding gerg's point, I assumed that by "wii fit" he meant combined sales of it and Wii Fit Plus. If he's really using sales of the original product and not its intended replacement as a gauge...well...I'm not even sure what to say to that.

It's vague.

In any case, Pachter's convinced that low software sales are indicative of low demand, whereas Nintendo states that low supply is causing low sales. We'll just have to wait until April to find out what's up... Oh, the excitement!

 

[plagiarize]

well, according to 1up, "...darkwatch has enough unique aspects to avoid the dreaded Halo "rip-off" label.."

If search ripoff darkwatch halo, you'll find many comments saying that darkwatch was a halo rip off.

i can find quotes from reviewers saying the same thing about Dante's Inferno.

the most interesting quote with regards to it though is from God of War dev Stig Asmussen who had this to say

We've been intrigued about Dante's Inferno. This is my favourite genre, and the more people that are making these games the better.

if you know of any comments from the God of War team complaining about the similarities, i'd be happy to read them.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

The rumor is "Not before May"...Actually it's more like definitely not before May and probably not before June either.

Fucks sake.
I finally want to buy a PS3 in time for my birthday and Sony shits the bed.

 

[Loudninja]

Fucks sake.
I finally want to buy a PS3 in time for my birthday and Sony shits the bed.

You can still get one ,but you have to be quick about it.

 

[speculawyer]

The expectation was 5 million which they don't have a shot at ever crossing.

There was no 'expectation' or 'projection' for 5 million. Some exec once said that he 'hoped' it would sell 5 million and that morphed into a GAF legend. Well I 'hope' to win the lottery too . . . but I don't have an expectation of that.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

Fucks sake.
I finally want to buy a PS3 in time for my birthday and Sony shits the bed.

360,000 other people managed it last month.

 

[AgentOtaku]

Actually happy to see Dante's Inferno did so well ....I think I'm one of the few out there that actually prefer it over the GoW series (though haven't played III yet)

 

[FrankT]

There was no 'expectation' or 'projection' for 5 million. Some exec once said that he 'hoped' it would sell 5 million and that morphed into a GAF legend. Well I 'hope' to win the lottery too . . . but I don't have an expectation of that.

Oh I'm sure there was no expecation for it then. Hoping, whatever that is supposed to mean.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

You can still get one ,but you have to be quick about it.

Too late for that. Every store in my town is sold out and it doesn't look like things will change anytime soon.
So I can either get reamed by Amazon or play Russian Roulette on ebay.

The Blu-ray cases are pretty sexy at least.

360,000 other people managed it last month.

Yeah if only I wanted a PS3 last month.

 

[Talon]

Too late for that. Every store in my town is sold out and it doesn't look like things will change anytime soon.
So I can either get reamed by Amazon or play Russian Roulette on ebay.

The Blu-ray cases are pretty sexy at least.

What exactly do you mean by "reamed?" They charge $299.99 without tax (unless you live in those 3 or so states) and Free Shipping.

They just happen to be out of stock right now, so the only models they have for sale are from 3rd parties.

 

[FrankT]

What exactly do you mean by "reamed?" They charge $299.99 without tax (unless you live in those 3 or so states) and Free Shipping.

They just happen to be out of stock right now, so the only models they have for sale are from 3rd parties.

Meaning he doesn't want to pay $370 which I don't blame em. Of course that isn't Amazon doing it either.

 

[Talon]

Meaning he doesn't want to pay $370 which I don't blame em. Of course that isn't Amazon doing it either.

I think I addressed that.

 

[FrankT]

I think I addressed that.

Well then you would understand that $370 would be reaming which is the current price on Amazon right now.

 

[dolemite]

Too late for that. Every store in my town is sold out and it doesn't look like things will change anytime soon.
So I can either get reamed by Amazon or play Russian Roulette on ebay.
.

You may need to travel to a Walmart store far from a major city area to get one. The units are there but they move really fast.

 

[Katana_Strikes]

Any leaks or facts on how some of the missing games did in Feb like AvP, Sega Racing, WHite Knight etc did?

 

[dolemite]

Well then you would understand that $370 would be reaming which is the current price on Amazon right now.

Don't forget to add 12.95$ for shipping:lol

 

[Talon]

Well then you would understand that $370 would be reaming which is the current price on Amazon right now.

...but it's a third party.

I don't think we're actually arguing here.

-Bezos out.

 

[FrankT]

Don't forget to add 12.95$ for shipping:lol

Now that's a reaming. Anyone know what the current price is for 60GBs on EBAY right now? :lol

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

You may need to travel to a Walmart store far from a major city area to get one. The units are there but they move really fast.

Whoa now let's not go crazy here.
I'm not sure if I'm desperate enough to set foot inside a Wal-mart.

 

[speculawyer]

Oh I'm sure there was no expecation for it then. Hoping, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Actually, it was a game of 'telephone' . . . Zelnick said Bioshock 1 (the original) sold 3 million and he hoped it would sell 5 million. That got morphed into hoping Bioshock 2 would sell 5 million. And that got moprhed into TTWO's "projection" of 5 million.

VB: What does it take to have enough legs to stand on during the non-GTA years?

SZ: We have enough hits. We have an unmatched hit ratio. BioShock is a great example. It won 50 game of the year awards in 2007. We announced it sold around 3 million units. I’d like to see a title like that sell 5 million units. That would make the difference for us. If you have four or five titles that are significantly successful, that will meaningfully change our profitability.

VB: It’s funny how the business is changing. I used to hear that a million units sold was incredible. Now it’s sometimes the breakeven number, or it’s considered a dud.

SZ: Thank god we don’t have that problem. We have control on our overhead. We are seeing pressure on development spending like everyone else. We have 1,600 full-time developers in 15 studios. We don’t have the breakeven problem that you described. That would be pretty risky. That means everyone has to have a hit or you don’t break even. We don’t have that problem.

VB: How is BioShock 2 coming along? Are you doubling down?

SZ: Doubling down suggests it’s a gamble where you don’t know the result. We are investing heavily in making it bigger and better. We want it to be different enough that people will want to own it. BioShock got a lot of attention. It’s brand is huge. It won lots of awards. But it wasn’t as huge a seller. I’m hopeful that BioShock 2 will benefit from the brand awareness, where people will play it even if they didn’t play the original. It will have multiplayer capability, where the approach is interesting. The single-player game is a sequel in time to the original story. The multiplayer version is a prequel in terms of its setting. We think it’s innovative.

http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/0...ck-talks-about-games-beyond-grand-theft-auto/

And here is how it got misinterpreted:

Take-Two Hoping Bioshock 2 will Hit The 5 Million Mark (Spec: Wat? No support for that.)

The original Bioshock has sold around 3 million copies to date, but chairman of Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick, is hoping that Bioshock 2 will go above and beyond that sales point to a full 5 million sold.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Zelnick opened up about his aspirations for the project and its subsequent sales.

We are investing heavily in making it bigger and better. We want it to be different enough that people will want to own it. BioShock got a lot of attention. It’s brand is huge. It won lots of awards,” Zelnick states, adding that Bioshock 2 “will have multiplayer capability, where the approach is interesting. The single-player game is a sequel in time to the original story. The multiplayer version is a prequel in terms of its setting. We think it’s innovative.”

He’s also hoping that brand awareness will help boost the sales, by people who have heard of Bioshock but just never got around to the first one.

The way the game is shaping up so far, it looks like it might have the right stuff to draw in enough people to sell 5 million copies as long as they use the hype machine.

http://www.gossipgamers.com/take-two-hoping-bioshock-2-will-hit-the-5-million-mark/

And then messageboards turned that into a 'projection'.

 

[FrankT]

Make that 12 for Bioshock 2 PS3 then;

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ens_vs_Predator_Jump_Into_February_Top_20.php

 

[Penguin]

I know this probably isn't true, but is it possible that the low sales of Wii Play could be related to Nintendo finally releasing different color variations of the Wii-mote? I mean V-Day saw the release of the blue/pink Wii-motes, and with the black one, you have 4 different colors, one for each player.

Probably a stretch though.

 

[dolemite]

Make that 12 for Bioshock 2 PS3 then;

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ens_vs_Predator_Jump_Into_February_Top_20.php

Next question: "where's AvP PS3?":lol

 

[Digital-Hero]

Whoa now let's not go crazy here.
I'm not sure if I'm desperate enough to set foot inside a Wal-mart.

Are you afraid of the "People of Walmart"? :lol

 

[Averon]

I'm surprised MAG is still even in the top 20. Ditto for the GoW: Collection.

 

[dolemite]

The poster says 'bundle" but I don't see any game on the list.

 

[Mafro]

AvP PS3 bomba :|

 

[Katana_Strikes]

GoW Collection keeps on trucking!

And people think GoWIII won't do "that well"?

 

[OldJadedGamer]

Make that 12 for Bioshock 2 PS3 then;

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ens_vs_Predator_Jump_Into_February_Top_20.php

MAG at 15... since it came out at the tail end of last month, where was it's placement in January?

GoW Collection keeps on trucking!

And people think GoWIII won't do "that well"?

GoW collection is selling for half the price that GoW3 is going to be. It's a budget title and I think it's the cheapest first party title that's not a greatest hit.

 

[FrankT]

MAG at 15... since it came out at the tail end of last month, where was it's placement in January?

11 iirc. No maybe 13.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/NPD_January_2010

 

[Lagspike_exe]

Wait, NBA 2k10 did OVER 100k and God of War Collection sold more?

 

[Ninja-Matic]

Kudos to 360 for moving over the Wii (that was unexpected).
Kudos to PS3 for good numbers, in general.
Kudos to Mass Effect and Heavy Rain - both games are EPIC.

 

[Loudninja]

GoW Collection keeps on trucking!

And people think GoWIII won't do "that well"?

So that's 3 months the collection been in the top 20?This is very good news,makes me hopeful for more collections.

 

[Katana_Strikes]

GoW collection is selling for half the price that GoW3 is going to be. It's a budget title and I think it's the cheapest first party title that's not a greatest hit.

Of course, but it still shows there's a nice demand for GoW (over 100k after several months on the market) and it'll bring even more people into the franchise.

 

[Agent Icebeezy]

Eh. As much as I love God of War series (currently trying to get past Atropos in GoW 2 HD, Titan mode), I highly doubt GoW3 can sell more than GT5...Prologue alone sold more than 4.5m. GT5 is a craze in Europe and Japan. But now, NASCAR heads can join in on the fun too.

I'm not a NASCAR head, but I've been enjoying the game since NASCAR Thunder. That's why I have GT5 paid off already.

 

[bigtroyjon]

Whoa now let's not go crazy here.
I'm not sure if I'm desperate enough to set foot inside a Wal-mart.

They are available at Sears.com with what looked like about 8 dollars shipping. (Said available to ship but no guarantees that won't change when you actually go to pay.)

 

[Katana_Strikes]

You know, after the great (continued) success of GoW Collection the US, I'm even more dumbfounded why SCEE haven't bothered to release the game in PAL territories. And I'm talking before, not after. Europe is hardly GoWs strongest market yet they've missed a massive opportunity here to get more people buying into the franchise and making it more popular.

*facepalm.gif*

 

[Replicant]

This revamped QTE devilry, and -- God forbid -- the games that follow it, represent as much of a dead end as those "interactive" FMV games we dabbled with in the mid-90s (e.g. The Daedalus Encounter, starring Tia Carrere!), and I pray it (or they!) come to be recognized as such. I can't decide which is more disappointing -- that a game where the, y'know, game elements are completely perfunctory couldn't sham out even the semblance of a half-decent movie in compensation, or that journalists and gamers across the Internet bought the Kool-Aid and praised it for its intelligence and maturity.

And I was willing to let it pass. It'll be gone soon enough. But meanwhile, we have to tolerate the "faithful" who refuse to hear criticism. Well, too bad. I have news for you: the hard facts of its sales performance indicates that the "few" haters are significantly more than a few, and the people who are indifferent are a vast majority of us out there. Enjoy your niche piece of bad art.

Happy now?

"The hard facts of its sales performance?" You're talking about the fact that it charted onto the top 10 US NPD after only 4-5 days OR the fact that it charted into No.1 in most European chart list on its first week?

The amusing thing is that the above commenters are also the same people who already praise "Alan in the Dark".....oops, "Wake" even though there's nothing special about the game and the gameplay sure looks a lot like well, "Alone in the Dark".

 

[Taker666]

Since he is mentioning WiiFit I will assume he is not talking about WiiFit plus. I thought production for WiiFit ended back in November.

Pachter fails to mention that WiiPlay and WiiFit plus were also in low supply for most of last month. Last time I checked both were still hard to find.

A quick look at Amazon shows that Wii Fit Plus (with balance board), Wii Play and standalone white Wii remotes...are all out of stock from Amazon themselves. Wii Fit Plus + Balance board is currently a minimum of $129.95 from 3rd party sellers.

Wii Fit Plus (with balance board) and Wii Play are also both out of stock at ebgames.com. Wii Fit Plus (with balance board) is also out of stock at Walmart.com.

 

[Loudninja]

You know, after the great (continued) success of GoW Collection the US, I'm even more dumbfounded why SCEE haven't bothered to release the game in PAL territories. And I'm talking before, not after. Europe is hardly GoWs strongest market yet they've missed a massive opportunity here to get more people buying into the franchise and making it more popular.

*facepalm.gif*

I think they will but after the release of the GOW 3 Ultimate edition.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Out of curiosity, anybody happen to know what sales expectations were for Heavy Rain? Obviously more than the likes of RS2, considering they actually seemed to want to successfully market it, but I wonder if they were gunning for "mega hit" or just "decent success."

My personal perspective is that what Heavy Rain loses from being on one platform (as opposed to Fahrenheit's three platforms) it should make up by virtue of having Sony rather than Atari as a publisher.

So my inclination would be that somewhere between 500k and 1.5 million worldwide would be a pretty reasonable range for HR.

Now, whether or not those expectations would result in a profitable product or not, who knows.

 

[donny2112]

Bit surprised at the Wii SW attach rate declining.

No Player's Choice line. Nintendo is shooting themselves in the foot (tie ratio-wise) by refusing to put one out. Even the "Everyone's Recommendation" line in Japan isn't near enough. GameCube's "big" hitters mostly got there significantly on the backs of PC pricing. Withholding that for Wii is just an incredibly stupid move by Nintendo.

 

[Subitai]

Make that 12 for Bioshock 2 PS3 then;

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ens_vs_Predator_Jump_Into_February_Top_20.php

Thanks man.

Looks like AvP and MAG did ok, just not as great as predicted.

 

[Loudninja]

I just notice that the PS3, 360 and the Wii each have 6 games in the top 20.

 

[Tiktaalik]

Dante's Inferno did about exactly what I figured it would do in the case of ho hum reviews. In the case of surprisingly good reviews (let's call this "The Bioshock Scenario") I figured it would do better and then would follow up the next month with good sales as well. Since it only got good but not great reviews, I don't think this will happen it'll follow a much more standard path. In the end it'll do ok but not great and there will probably be pressure on EA to create some sort of sequel in order to recoup on their technology + branding investment. It'll be interesting to see how they'll tackle that problem.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

No Player's Choice line. Nintendo is shooting themselves in the foot (tie ratio-wise) by refusing to put one out. Even the "Everyone's Recommendation" line in Japan isn't near enough. GameCube's "big" hitters mostly got there significantly on the backs of PC pricing. Withholding that for Wii is just an incredibly stupid move by Nintendo.

I believe it was a GAFer who said tie-ratios are for fanboy soldier's justifications and matter for little else.

Or something like that.

 

[RSTEIN]

I just notice that the PS3, 360 and the Wii each have 6 games in the top 20.

That's an excellent result for Sony.

 

[Magnus]

Wait what, people buy gifts for each other for Easter? When did this happen. My family colors eggs and eats chocolate. :lol