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[BuzzJive]

fail like a big boy

Worth quoting.

 

[Kilrogg]

Are people surprised that Blur bombed?

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

It doesn't differ from the Wii when it comes to software, which is the most important part.

I agree, it doesn't - yet. We'll see some more games before the launch, Milo & Kate at the very least, but the first wave is what it is.

Still, the no controller required thing could attract new gamers regardless of the launch line-up.

 

[charlequin]

And that was on the back of the hugely successful PS2. The PS3 isn't the PS2.

As Pureauthor has wisely distilled in the past, any time you want to say "Title X's sales are successful once you take into account X, Y, and Z," it's more accurate to rather say "Title X's sales are a failure and the reasons are X, Y, and Z."

It may only be feasible for GT5 to sell noticeably less than its predecessors, but that doesn't mean that accomplishing what is feasible is necessarily enough for "success."

Kind of finding it hard to figure out why people think GT5 will have a decrease in sales compared to previous GT mainline games.

Yeah, I'm not sure it'll actually do less than 10 million, myself. But if it does I think it's only right and proper to hold that against it.

 

[Vinci]

It has nothing to do with the fact that it's Kinect, new tech or even that it's coming from Microsoft.

It's that absolutely NO ONE else in the console space is positioning ANY product to capture a new audience at an affordable price point for the remainder of this year apart from Kinect. The existing hardcore audience & even the entrenched casuals are clearly being more selective with their consumer dollars that will only flock to the established standouts thus leading to many quality developers getting thrown to the wolves after sales disasters like Blur and Split/Second. This is pure economic "law of diminishing returns".

I don't see how Kinect is doing anything that would capture a new audience outside of the one the Wii already has. At best, that's what it's shooting for based on the software announced for it.

If the Wii already has that audience, then the only thing causing problems is that 3rd parties are not going after it. What makes you think this will change with Kinect?

I agree, it doesn't - yet. We'll see some more games before the launch, Milo & Kate at the very least, but the first wave is what it is.

Still, the no controller required thing could attract new gamers regardless of the launch line-up.

Why? If there's no software there to show it off or do anything particularly distinctive with it, then what value is the technology? That's my entire problem with Kinect. It's the same shit. We've been there, done that. They're four years late.

 

[Coxswain]

I haven't played LP2 aside from the demo, but from reading the reviews I'm not seeing how the mushy middle is what's killing the game. If anything from what I've read it seems like the game was criticized for being too much of a coop necessary Monster Hunterlike. Monster Hunter seems spared the same obvious criticism because, well, it's Monster Hunter. Perhaps someone whose played the game quite a bit can fill me in on what went wrong with the title.

There's a pretty wide range of things you can point to that probably reduced sales/consensus opinion on the game, but what they all boil down to is that it's a game that expects the player to conform to its expectations, rather than the other way around. Some of that could be a west vs east thing, but mostly I think it was just deliberate Capcom design. If anything, it mostly came down to the fact that it brought Arcade/Coin-op sensibilities to a shooter; a lot of the most commonly cited issues in the game get praised when they show up in something like a Monster Hunter or a Demon's Souls, but put them in a shooter and I guess that's out of most people's comfort zone. I guess you could sort of attribute that to the cultural divide, but I agree that for the most part the reasons are just specific to the way the game was designed.

Personally, I think it kinda sucks hard that it turned out this way. It's far and away my favourite game this year (at least before they semi-neutered the campaign with a patch), and it's spoiled me too much to have fun playing Halo or Left 4 Dead style co-op again, but it's easy to see why it failed to catch on, even if I find it incredibly frustrating that it didn't.

 

[SapientWolf]

Are people surprised that Blur bombed?

No, but I'm surprised that it cratered. Those are Bionic Commando-caliber numbers.

 

[Jokeropia]

Blur, failed to catch on, selling just 31,000 units.

Ha! Can't help but to feel some schadenfreude at this.

 

[B-Rad Lascelle]

If the Wii already has that audience, then the only thing causing problems is that 3rd parties are not going after it. What makes you think this will change with Kinect?

You're acting as if that audience is loyal.

Or that controller-free gaming won't bring in another level of gamers that were turned off by the WiiMote/Nunchuk interface.

Nintendo isn't offering those folks anything right now. Whereas they could flock to Kinect as offering the next evolution of fitness/dance titles/family titles.

If you want to break it down to brass tacks, Kinect is after the "trendy" demographic. The audience that buys the new fun thing because it's all over their television sets and talk shows. Wii was initially a trendy purchase that evolved over time to transition some of these new gamers into regular customers. Kinect aims to offer the same kind of appeal.

Trendy people aren't known for being exclusively loyal. Hence there is opportunity for spillover from an apathetic Wii-owning audience that clearly isn't buying much apart from Just Dance and Nintendo's tentpole releases at the present time.

 

[charlequin]

Maybe with LP2 Capcom is hitting the mushy middle but Capcom has also made another mushy middle Japanese/western title in Dead Rising and that was a critical and commercial success.

duckroll can explain the whole thing better than I can, but the basic idea is that first Capcom had the idea of generating new IPs internally to take advantage of the HD generation, which might have some superficially Western-friendly elements but were still pretty clearly weird Japanese games (and this worked extremely well for them, with LR and DR) and then they decided to expand that strategy by either handing IPs to terrible Z-list Western developers (Dark Void, DR2, Bionic Commando) or shoehorning in superficially "Western" ideas like central multiplayer (LP2) which has worked out consistently terribly for them in every case.

Basically, every idea that Capcom has about implementing this Western-market strategy is bad. :lol All their success in terms of crossover hits* has been in designing games that were actually good games foremost and used relatively "universal" narrative themes (dude fighting zombies, dude with guns fighting robots, etc.), they have had literally zero success in trying to wrap their minds around what the "Western market" wants and predictively give it to them.

*And this goes for everyone else too, really.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

Why? If there's no software there to show it off or do anything particularly distinctive with it, then what value is the technology? That's my entire problem with Kinect. It's the same shit. We've been there, done that. They're four years late.

It's all about the control method. Wii became as successful as it is today primarily because of it's novel approach to game controls (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the same applies to the DS). We've had games like Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii and so on way before Wii appeared, but they played differently because they controlled differently. It's the same with Kinect, game concepts are old, but the feel is different. Whether it will be different enough remains to be seen, but in theory it definitely stands a better chance of attracting new people to gaming than Move does.

 

[Xeke]

You're acting as if that audience is loyal.

Or that controller-free gaming won't bring in another level of gamers that were turned off by the WiiMote/Nunchuk interface.

Nintendo isn't offering those folks anything right now. Whereas they could flock to Kinect as offering the next evolution of fitness/dance titles/family titles.

If you want to break it down to brass tacks, Kinect is after the "trendy" demographic. The audience that buys the new fun thing because it's all over their television sets and talk shows. Wii was initially a trendy purchase that evolved over time to transition some of these new gamers into regular customers. Kinect aims to offer the same kind of appeal.

Trendy people aren't known for being exclusively loyal. Hence there is opportunity for spillover from an apathetic Wii-owning audience that clearly isn't buying much apart from Just Dance and Nintendo's tentpole releases at the present time.

Nobody is going to flock to a $150 add-on of a 5 year old $300 Xbox. Sorry.

 

[Kifimbo]

Anyone believe DLC is actually hurting the industry, especially new, full-priced games ? Millions are buying map packs for older games instead of buying new games ?

Sad for Blur. A really good arcader racer IMO.

 

[Busaiku]

Oh, I didn't expect Blur to do that poorly.
This year hasn't been too kind on some developers.

 

[A Twisty Fluken]

Blur retroactively becomes Wii exclusive

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Blur will serve as an example of how not to make a television commercial.

We can only hope. Worse part is they aired it like all the time.

 

[Vinci]

You're acting as if that audience is loyal.

No, I'm assuming that audience doesn't want to pay upwards of $299 to have a remarkably similar experience that they can already partake in.

Or that controller-free gaming won't bring in another level of gamers that were turned off by the WiiMote/Nunchuk interface.

Quit listening to Microsoft's PR: The mainstream audience is not intimidated or turned off by the Wii Remote. If they were, this console would not be selling as consistently as it does. It's an imaginary issue.

If you want to break it down to brass tacks, Kinect is after the "trendy" demographic. The audience that buys the new fun thing because it's all over their television sets and talk shows. Wii was initially a trendy purchase that evolved over time to transition some of these new gamers into regular customers. Kinect aims to offer the same kind of appeal.

Trendy people aren't known for being exclusively loyal. Hence there is opportunity for spillover from an apathetic Wii-owning audience that clearly isn't buying much apart from Just Dance and Nintendo's tentpole releases at the present time.

So they can buy other games that are virtually identical? Seriously, the only thing Kinect has that's different from the Wii, at this point in time, is that it doesn't have a controller at all. This is a technical difference, not the sort of thing that people jump onto in the mainstream audience. The only people who care about tech are the alleged 'hardcore' gamers on this board and elsewhere.

 

[Mafro]

31,000? What the hell happened there, then?

 

[AniHawk]

Blur retroactively becomes Wii exclusive

:lol

 

[GarthVaderUK]

Really worried about Bizarre now, Blur deserved many more sales than that.

In other UK dev news, Realtime Worlds' APB will probably be a bomb too - very quiet release with pretty negative reviews so far (55% from PC Gamer). That combined with charging for additional game time is going to turn a lot of people off.

 

[Vinci]

Really worried about Bizarre now, Blur deserved many more sales than that.

In other UK dev news, Realtime Worlds' APB will probably be a bomb too - very quiet release with pretty negative reviews so far (55% from PC Gamer). That combined with charging for additional game time is going to turn a lot of people off.

Based on all the shenanigans surrounding that title, I wouldn't be surprised if it died. Honestly, in one of my darker moments, I'd say they deserve it.

 

[clashfan]

No need to worry, Kinect will save the industry.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Blur retroactively becomes Wii exclusive

Obviously, this indicates that HD platforms cannot support mature third-party

Spoiler

racing

games.

 

[Ecotic]

Blur had a funny commercial, but the game wasn't on my radar and the commercials didn't even state what platform it was for. I came away seeing it for the first time and thinking it was an online PC game or something. Or maybe even a teaser for something big coming along months from now.

 

[Oxymoron]

Blur had a funny commercial, but the game wasn't on my radar and the commercials didn't even state what platform it was for. I came away seeing it for the first time and thinking it was an online PC game or something. Or maybe even a teaser for something big coming along months from now.

Ya, Blur's attack ad on Mario Kart kinda missed the pointed: you don't want to give people a reason to not buy MK, you want to give them a reason to buy Blur.

 

[DMeisterJ]

As Pureauthor has wisely distilled in the past, any time you want to say "Title X's sales are successful once you take into account X, Y, and Z," it's more accurate to rather say "Title X's sales are a failure and the reasons are X, Y, and Z."

It may only be feasible for GT5 to sell noticeably less than its predecessors, but that doesn't mean that accomplishing what is feasible is necessarily enough for "success."

So it's okay to compare games across generations, but it's not okay to understand the differences between their sales and why they happened unless it counts as a failure? mmmkay

 

[LQX]

Blur should have had a non-multiplayer demo.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

Quit listening to Microsoft's PR: The mainstream audience is not intimidated or turned off by the Wii Remote. If they were, this console would not be selling as consistently as it does. It's an imaginary issue.

Actually, we're talking precisely about people who are intimidated even by Wii Remotes, they do exist. Or maybe you think there's no more room for growth in that regard? This is it?

And of course, it doesn't have to be about intimidation per se, some people just might be attracted to the concept of controlling games by using their body and their body alone.

But enough of this Kinect talk, this is an NPD thread...

 

[Vinci]

So it's okay to compare games across generations, but it's not okay to understand the differences between their sales and why they happened unless it counts as a failure? mmmkay

If it sells less, it sells less. Sure, you can explain why it happened, but it's never an 'okay' thing.

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

At least we now know that Wii Sports Resort (non bundled) sold over 31,000 copies :lol

 

[Tiktaalik]

duckroll can explain the whole thing better than I can, but the basic idea is that first Capcom had the idea of generating new IPs internally to take advantage of the HD generation, which might have some superficially Western-friendly elements but were still pretty clearly weird Japanese games (and this worked extremely well for them, with LR and DR) and then they decided to expand that strategy by either handing IPs to terrible Z-list Western developers (Dark Void, DR2, Bionic Commando) or shoehorning in superficially "Western" ideas like central multiplayer (LP2) which has worked out consistently terribly for them in every case.

Basically, every idea that Capcom has about implementing this Western-market strategy is bad. :lol All their success in terms of crossover hits* has been in designing games that were actually good games foremost and used relatively "universal" narrative themes (dude fighting zombies, dude with guns fighting robots, etc.), they have had literally zero success in trying to wrap their minds around what the "Western market" wants and predictively give it to them.

*And this goes for everyone else too, really.

I generally agree with what your saying, but not on LP2. The full coop approach strikes me as shoehorning in a Japanese style Monster Hunter system into the game, not any sort of foreign western multiplayer system.

 

[Sean]

“From a business perspective, we are targeting Blur to do for racing what Call of Duty did for shooters,” Activision CEO Michael Griffith stated. “That was the goal when we originally acquired Bizarre Creations to make this game.

So much for that… PGR4 underperformed, The Club bombed, and Blur flopped. I knew Blur would sell poorly but never expected sales to be that low. Wonder what'll happen to Bizarre now.

 

[B-Rad Lascelle]

So much for that… PGR4 underperformed, The Club bombed, and Blur flopped. I knew Blur would sell poorly but never expected sales to be that low. Wonder what'll happen to Bizarre now.

I imagine Bizarre Creations will get sold back to Microsoft for some magic beans.
They will in turn be tasked with the challenge of making controller-less racing games that one has to play standing up actually "fun".

 

[KJ_Wii]

Blur, failed to catch on, selling just 31,000 units.

I have zero way to back this up, but I would wager that Mario Kart Wii increased by more than that amount in May over April.

 

[Vinci]

I have zero way to back this up, but I would wager that Mario Kart Wii increased by more than that amount in May over April.

Well it placed in the Top 20 for the month and Blur didn't, so yeah, you can sort of back it up.

 

[GarthVaderUK]

I imagine Bizarre Creations will get sold back to Microsoft for some magic beans.

I don't think Microsoft ever owned them.

 

[JaxJag]

I think Blur will have a long tail.

It seems a lot of people started buying it because of word of mouth/price drops.

 

[fernoca]

So much for that… PGR4 underperformed, The Club bombed, and Blur flopped. I knew Blur would sell poorly but never expected sales to be that low. Wonder what'll happen to Bizarre now.

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 3 (XBLA)
Geometry Wars Anthology (PSN/PSP/iPhone)
Geometry Wars Galaxies 2 (Wii/DS)
Geometry Wars 3D (3DS)

Heck, they had Geometry Wars running on "Natal" last year..so make that too.

 

[BuzzJive]

I've been skimming the thread - so apologies if this has been posted already:

1. Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego/Take-Two, Xbox 360)
2. Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego/Take-Two, PS3)
3. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo, Wii)
4. UFC 2010: Undisputed (Yuke's/THQ, Xbox 360)
5. UFC 2010: Undisputed (Yuke's/THQ, PS3)
6. Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo, Wii)
7. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Wii)
8. Alan Wake (Remedy/Microsoft, Xbox 360)
9. Pokemon SoulSilver Version (Game Freak/Nintendo, NDS)
10. Skate 3 (EA Canada/Electronic Arts, Xbox 360)
11. Lost Planet 2 (Capcom, Xbox 360)
12. New Super Mario Bros (Nintendo, DS)
13. Pokemon Heartgold (Nintendo, DS)
14. God of War III (Sony Santa Monica, PS3)
15. Just Dance (Ubisoft, Wii)
16. Mario Kart, with wheel (Nintendo, Wii)
17. Super Street Fighter IV (Capcom, PS3)
18. ModNation Racers (United Front/Sony, PS3)
19. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward/Activision, Xbox 360)
20. Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo, Wii)


http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29261/NPD_Top_20_Reveals_Lost_Planet_2_ModNation_Racers.php

 

[VideoMan]

Blur will serve as an example of how not to make a television commercial.

Could have been worse. I hear the original tag line for the ad was "Bizarre Creations will make you their bitch."

 

[WillyFive]

Blur will serve as an example of how not to make a television commercial.

It was a good idea for marketing, but it unintentionally made people want to play Mario Kart.

 

[Vinci]

It was a good idea for marketing, but it unintentionally made people want to play Mario Kart.

The game sold 31,000. So no, it wasn't.

 

[BuzzJive]

Its on this last page just scroll up.

Unless you're one of THOSE people who don't have 100 posts per page/

I am a 50 per page kind of dude. I must have gotten distracted by the Blur sales on the last page and missed the top 20. Oh well. Apologies indeed.

 

[speculawyer]

Damn . . . . perhaps these numbers reflect the overall dismal state of the economy in general. Unemployed people and people worried about losing their jobs don't buy many games. :-(

 

[ThatObviousUser]

SuperiorSilver three months in a row. ^_^

 

[speculawyer]

I imagine Bizarre Creations will get sold back to Microsoft for some magic beans.
They will in turn be tasked with the challenge of making controller-less racing games that one has to play standing up actually "fun".

I'm still pretty dumbfounded by this whole concept. If controller-less driving control made any sense, they would put that technology in real cars. It doesn't make sense. It is just stupid. I don't get it.

 

[Owzers]

I'm in the camp that was interested in Blur being from Bizarre Creations and cart racing oriented and completely turned off by it looking like a Need for Speed reject.

vs.

 

[Vinci]

I'm still pretty dumbfounded by this whole concept. If controller-less driving control made any sense, they would put that technology in real cars. It doesn't make sense. It is just stupid. I don't get it.

You know! For those people! The ones who are afraid of inanimate objects, even simple ones. That are even intimidated by remote controls for their television sets.

 

[GitarooMan]

Lol at the people still bitter over the commercial. It was a fucking commercial guys, not an insult to your way of life.

 

[B-Rad Lascelle]

I'm still pretty dumbfounded by this whole concept. If controller-less driving control made any sense, they would put that technology in real cars. It doesn't make sense. It is just stupid. I don't get it.

I don't think anyone gets it. Even Kinect apologists consider the Burnout/Forza tech demos and Joy Ride to be a fundamental mistake in game design.