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2022 VIDEO GAME CATCH ALL THREAD


RIPPA

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1 hour ago, Tabe said:

Yeah, not every title is going to sell 10 million copies.  It's OK to have a critically-acclaimed, well-loved title that sells 5 million units when you're not spending $300m making the game.   

The problem is they spent $100m to make it, and that likely doesn't include advertising. The units sold also don't take into account how many of those were or were not at full price along with however much they share with Sony on download purchases.

We may not like it when they say their Western studios underperformed sales wise, but they are the ones who know how much they actually made on it . They don't really have a reason to bs the numbers to the public. They wanted success and had to sell those studios for less than wanted because the value to others companies was just not there.

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Tomb Raider publisher Square Enix has revealed that its internal sales expectations for the game's first month were nearly double its eventual 3.4 million haul.

The company thought its Lara Croft reboot could sell at least 5-6 million units in four weeks - a huge figure, but a total still designed to be conservative, just "80-90 per cent" of what Square Enix thought was the game's real sales potential.

It's clear that Tomb Raider fell short vastly of what Square Enix wanted, even without that extra 10-20 per cent.

Sales expectations for other Square Enix releases Sleeping Dogs and Hitman Absolution were similarly higher than their final totals.

Sleeping Dogs has sold 1.75 million copies to date. Square Enix had aimed for 2-2.5 million.

Hitman Absolution has sold 3.6 million to date. Square Enix wanted 4.5-5 million.

Again, these expectations are based on Square Enix's lower, more conservative estimate of 80-90 per cent of sales potential.

"We put a considerable amount of effort in polishing and perfecting the game content for these titles, receiving extremely high Metacritic scores," Square Enix said in a new financial statement.

"However, we were very disappointed to see that the high scores did not translate to actual sales performance, which is where we see the substantial variance in operation profit/loss against the forecast."

Square Enix announced last month that it was bracing itself for an "extraordinary loss" at the end of the just-finished financial year. It will now conduct an expensive "fundamental review" of the company. Long-term president Yoichi Wada has also been shown the door.

https://www.eurogamer.net/square-enix-thought-tomb-raider-could-sell-nearly-double-its-3-4-million-first-month-sales

That is from April 2013 and talks first months sales and Square factoring in titles not be sold at full price.

Tomb Raider was the 9th best selling game of the entire year. Pokemon X/Y sold 7.6 million units and was #5 on the list.

Last of Us was the 7th best game and sold 3.69 million units.

I am not going to feel sympathetic towards Square Enix because they thought it should have sold as much a GTA V, Call of Duty or FIFA

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29 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I am not going to feel sympathetic towards Square Enix because they thought it should have sold as much a GTA V, Call of Duty or FIFA

I'm not so much sympathetic as I don't really see the need to be angry at them for saying the games failed to hit expectations when they seemingly did. It also doesn't seem like they were expecting the numbers those games hit and more within line with what they hit for FF, KH, etc. Considering they were likely spending that type of money or more to develop them I'm not sure you can really argue they were being unrealistic. 

 

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I don't think most people are angry at their statements, any anger is at them putting franchises on ice due to "bad sales" when any other publisher would have been at least content with them. Only Square Enix is out here kvetching about having a Top 10 selling game. If a publisher can't make money (or enough money to "justify" the games existing) by selling say 3 million copies of a game on a consistent basis then their issue is somewhere in their own process. Were they paying too much for development? Where was the money going? Were they spending the marketing budget in the right places? Were they releasing the games the right time of year? Were they depending too much on DLC/loot boxes to cover costs? Did they overpay for rights? etc.

I know that the profit calculator is complicated between development, marketing, materials, shipping, splitting revenue with retailers, etc. etc. Generally I am actually sympathetic, but if a publisher has multiple games over the years that sell pretty well and still complain about sales every time then something has to change. Its probably for the best they did sell it for what they could and focus on mobile games and MMOs, which have a different revenue stream that maybe they are better at capitalizing on.

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If you have an IP that has had years of bad games and negative pub like, I dunno, say, Tomb Raider and you manage to sell 3.4 million copies in the first month, you should be happy.  Expecting it to sell 7 million copies its first month was stupid.

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2 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

I don't think most people are angry at their statements, any anger is at them putting franchises on ice due to "bad sales" when any other publisher would have been at least content with them. Only Square Enix is out here kvetching about having a Top 10 selling game. If a publisher can't make money (or enough money to "justify" the games existing) by selling say 3 million copies of a game on a consistent basis then their issue is somewhere in their own process. Were they paying too much for development? Where was the money going? Were they spending the marketing budget in the right places? Were they releasing the games the right time of year? Were they depending too much on DLC/loot boxes to cover costs? Did they overpay for rights? etc.

I know that the profit calculator is complicated between development, marketing, materials, shipping, splitting revenue with retailers, etc. etc. Generally I am actually sympathetic, but if a publisher has multiple games over the years that sell pretty well and still complain about sales every time then something has to change. Its probably for the best they did sell it for what they could and focus on mobile games and MMOs, which have a different revenue stream that maybe they are better at capitalizing on.

TR is the game people have mostly talked about here and elsewhere, and it was also never put on ice. I'd say Tabe's comment above by the way qualifies as anger.

I feel like we can argue they fucked up on profit calculations, but there isn't really enough out there one way or the other to make that argument. 

Was SE actively complaining about underperforming sales? Or did they just mention it at some business function and fans took it personally? Top 10 selling game is great, but still means only so much if they aren't getting their investment back at a decent pace.

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9 hours ago, Tabe said:

You'd be wrong. 

I'm glad you responded because I read your response and thought, "where is there any anger in that?"

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13 hours ago, Eivion said:

TR is the game people have mostly talked about here and elsewhere, and it was also never put on ice. I'd say Tabe's comment above by the way qualifies as anger.

I feel like we can argue they fucked up on profit calculations, but there isn't really enough out there one way or the other to make that argument. 

Was SE actively complaining about underperforming sales? Or did they just mention it at some business function and fans took it personally? Top 10 selling game is great, but still means only so much if they aren't getting their investment back at a decent pace.

I still think you are jumping to things a bit, regarding fans taking things personally or getting angry. I don't think having a critical opinion about Square Enix makes a person angry, and I don't think how they announced it really matters. The fact is if any publisher so commonly complained about the sales of games (off the top of my head they mentioned Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex, Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy individually over the years) that's a lot. Most public companies will give vague references to sales but to call out individual (and usually popular) games at such a high rate is unusual and is going to led to some commentary from a very opinionated fanbase. Some of the complaints from them I have no doubt are legit, they lost a fuckton on the Marvel games but much of that was due to their own mistakes.

That being said, the end result is really just that everyone is happy they sold some of their IPs to another publisher. Square Enix is happy, Embracer is happy, fans of the IPs involved are happy. Its a rare moment in video game history where there are no losers, at least none that are evident right now. So we can all be happy together.

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Square Enix has said they are holding onto the rights to publish the following IPs

  • Life is Strange
  • Just Cause
  • Outriders

It is also holding onto the Square Enix Collective which has published indie games for them like The Turing Test

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Random Question: I paid for Nintendo Online + Expansion over the weekend. Are the N64 games running any better. I've never played past the beginning of Ocarina if I'm being honest and want to give that an honest go.

I played one of the released Mario Kart groupings, and honestly can tell those are from older games because those tracks are short. Was fun revisiting the Wii map though. 

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It’s hard getting a straight answer, since so many people crap on NSO because of the price or it not having the games they want. 
from streams I watch of people playing the N64 games, it seems fine.

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When Majora's Mask came out in February for NSO the whole thing was updated to version 2.0.0 which either fixed or improved a lot of the major issues. Still a work in progress but you mentioned Ocarina and I've seen it said that NSO is the way to go for that game now when before the update it was Wii VC.

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The hits just keep coming from Blizzard/Activision:

This one is by a pension group that owns stock, and the best line of them all is this one

Quote

“Given Kotick’s personal responsibility and liability for Activision’s broken workplace, it should have been clear to the Board that he was unfit to negotiate a sale of the Company, but it wasn’t.”

*insert popcorn.gif here*

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8 minutes ago, JLSigman said:

This one is by a pension group that owns stock, and the best line of them all is this one

To be nit picky - its the NYC Employee's Retirement System

So technically Activision is being sued by New York City

And apparently they aren't the only pension system that invested in Activision as at least a total of 6 different state ones have been pestering Activision to open their books

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I love the original Life Is Strange, and Before the Storm, but holy hell is True Colors really good. A lot of twists that I haven’t seen coming. Only started it yesterday but I’m almost at the end of the game already. I wasn’t going to buy it, but it’s on Gamepass and I thought fuck it, why not? Glad I did.

Speaking of Gamepass - Trek to Yumi is out and I’ve played about 30 minutes of it. Minimalist combat and whatnot, but the aesthetic is second to none for sure. I mean, it’s no Ghost of Tsushima obviously, but it’s pretty damn great so far. Even the cut scenes look awesome, and keep that same aesthetic, like you’re watching an old black and white samurai movie. Good stuff, I could see myself double dipping and getting this one on PS5 eventually.

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To tie into something earlier mentioned

People Can Fly - the studio that did Outriders - reported that the sales of Outriders wasn't enough to receive any royalties from Square Enix (at least by the end of 2021 that is)

They are still planning on releasing the DLC "Worldslayer" this year (but that still seems a little sketchy based on recent news and the fact that it doesn't have anything further than a "this year" tag despite the original game being out for over a year)

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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

To tie into something earlier mentioned

People Can Fly - the studio that did Outriders - reported that the sales of Outriders wasn't enough to receive any royalties from Square Enix (at least by the end of 2021 that is)

They are still planning on releasing the DLC "Worldslayer" this year (but that still seems a little sketchy based on recent news and the fact that it doesn't have anything further than a "this year" tag despite the original game being out for over a year)

And it's another game that uses servers for the entirety of the game, so I better Platinum this quickly.

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Oh speaking of platinums - don't bother trying to get it on The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe

The developers intentionally put it an almost impossible to get achievement to fuck with trophy hunters

The is an achievement called "Super Don't Go Outside" which is to not play the game for 10 years (The original game had one for not playing for 5 years)

Okay - I guess I should clarify - you can get if you fuck with your system clock since as of a couple of days ago 1.5% of Steam users already had it. If you only do things legit - then don't bother.

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Heh, I saw gameplay of that and was getting some Monty Python vibes from it. Might have to give that a try one day. 

Also, if you haven't played Trek to Yomi please get on that ASAP. Doesn't take long to get through it and is deep in the Kurasawa vibe. 

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The all-time "fuck with achievment hunters because they deserve it" game is Tales of Maj'Eyal which has about 300 achievements that each only unlock on a specirfic difficulty so you'd have to 100% the game like 6 times to get them all, it's glorious.

 

Stanley Parable was fine for a couple hours but let's be honest the only really memorable thing in the whole fucking game was the broom closet.

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Guardians of the Galaxy was only thirty bucks at Target (for the PS5 version, no less), so I bought it because I've heard so many people praise it.

It's actually well-made, and I am impressed at how the game handles dialog, especially if you wander off (I had Gamora hanging from a wall, and then I realized that there was a hidden path; no sooner had I went down that path before she complained about me leaving her hanging there). I mean, the dialog GOES places (another wander had Rocket and Gamora talking about my propensity for getting lost in depth). 

The game itself is fun! Since the jet boots make movement an enjoyable experience, combat encounters feel good, and the light tactics and puzzle solving that the game introduces is just perfect for what is ultimately a group of people slowly bonding and clowning on each other like old friends. 

This writing is good for a blockbuster, and I don't just mean AAA games, either. 

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