ChrisDeku

They released a roadmap before release highlighting the first year of Content in seasonal updates with seasonal DLCs and pre-sold the season pass and exclusive cosmetics in expensive editions.

They attracted a lot of people from games like Helldivers 2 with this set-up. So to now move away from the live service framing feels almost like a case of them wanting to have their cake and eat it too(which is a dumb expression btw)

@HonestHick What in the world does Sea of Thieves have to do with Astro Bot? Using your method of comparing things to the most popular games in its genre then 1m(and 1m at launch on steam) is pretty pathetic compared to Helldivers 2 selling 12m at launch on the same formats.

Surely Hi-fi Rush is closer to Astro Bot. How much did that sell? 76 units?

Metaphor: Refantazio, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Persona 3 Remake were all big Single Player games released last year. They all sold 1m at launch(and very likely have not hit 2m even yet) and were available on PS, Xbox and PC. Indiana Jones sold around 300k on Steam, Hellblade 2 around 100k.

Comparing Astro Bot to Mario is like comparing an open world game to GTA.

@HonestHick It sold incredibly well. It sold 1.5m over September and October and since then it has never left the top 20 selling games on PSN in Europe or North America. In December(biggest month of the year) it was the 8th top selling game in USA, and then in January it was 12th(February data is not released yet).

Not only did it sell well at launch it also has incredible legs and continues to sell at a high rate. Ratchet and Clank sold 3.97m in 2 years and Astro Bot is tracking ahead of it and has much stronger legs. Astro Bot will probably break 5m in 2 years easily, and 10m lifetime.

Platformer games don’t typically open with 5m sales at launch. They sell at a sustained rate over time. You need to adjust your expectations.

If the game is that popular then where are the memes for it

I don’t know about anything else but this is surely the single greatest line ever published on PushSquare.

@Max_the_German

Number of GoTY wins:

Death Stranding: 118
Mario Odyssey: 37
Doom Eternal:14

“Early Access”

Not liking this nonsense at all.

@nomither6

honestly , wasn’t the PS2/3/4 (can’t really speak about PS1) carried mostly by third party support?

Sony were basically a mid tier developer to start with, during the PS1 era, and then transition to a second tier developer when they’d made some God of War games and then the Uncharted games(at this point they made some quality games but not often enough to be tier 1). It was only in the second half of the PS4 where they truly become a top tier developer when they released Horizon: ZD, God of War(2018) and Spider-man within 18 months. A new IP, a major reboot and a massive licensed game that were all rated highly and sold incredibly well.

@OldGamer999

It’s tried PC release and GAAS hasn’t done that great at all from a money and expansion point of few.

Sony had 2 games in the Steam Platinum games for 2024(the 12 highest grossing games on the platform). Helldivers 2 and Destiny 2, so both of those things(PC games and Live Service) are actually doing pretty well financially. It’s likely Marathon releases this year and that game is basically a sure fire Steam Platinum game, even a failing Destiny 2(a game that was a late port to Steam, so communities were elsewhere) was able to make the list, which shows how much power Bungie has in this market.

Probably a summer game with Yotei coming in the fall, and hopefully the Venom game didn’t get cancelled and is revealed at the May/June event.

@EDNoresult Days Gone sold 7.46m copies by 2022 according to the Insomniac leak.

Fobidden West sold 8.4m units in 14 months, that doesn’t include the PC port or anything. It also sold these units at a high average price.

The reasons Days Gone didn’t get a sequel are complex and various. It’s not simply a case of it not selling enough, its sales are quite strong(with some caveats).

@Nem it wasn't switch exusive for 2 years, it launched on PC after 10 months, a similar time frame to World. That's the key point as it sold consisderably worse on PC than World, and the only reason appears to be the fact it was a Switch game primarily, rather than a PS4/xbox one game.

@Solid_Python FF games still sell 2-3m units at launch week on PS4/PS5, that's still pretty considerable sales. So saying it doesn't work is nonsense, it doesn't reach the type of sales they're hoping for but that's very different.

Is the answer to increasing sales to start targeting switch users busy playing Mario Kart and Animal crossing? Targeting the20m+ people that play things like God of War, the witcher or Elden Ring seems a much better idea. The reality for FF is that there probably is just no easy solution.

@Solid_Python

Expect the likes of Atlus, Sega and Square to be building their big games with Switch 2 in mind moving forward

For big budget games like Final Fantasy? Not a chance.

You only have to look at a title like Monster Hunter to see how the market reacts to Switch lead games. Monster Hunter World has sold 28.1m units, while Rise has sold 16.7m. Wilds sold 8m in its first 3 days(world was 5m, Rise 4m) and is on course for even more than World.

Rise sold very well on the switch, and very well in Japan. Its non-Japanese sales and non-switch sales were extremely poor though. On PC it sold about 1/4 of the copies of World. This is likely due to how people perceive a Switch game vs. A PS5/Series X lead game. Bear in mind that Monster Hunter is a particularly Japanese Skewed game, with a history on Nintendo consoles and handhelds.

Now, for a game like Final Fantasy that is now firmly established as a big budget game that pushes modern consoles it would make no sense to scale it back to target the Switch primarily and risk the perception of the title being hurt like Rise. Monster hunter could take a 40% sales reduction because of its Popularity, FF could not. A 40% sales reduction would kill the game.

The big budget games rely more and more on the western market and PC market. They’re not going to upset the apple cart without strong incentive.

I would still expect a lot of late ports unless your game really fits in with the Switch demographics. I.e. games like Dragon Quest as opposed to Yakuza and Final Fantasy games.

@Solid_Python The 3DS sold 25m units in Japan and was the 4th biggest hardware of all time there. It sold around 2.5x as many units as the PS4. Given that, the relative increase for the PS4 was much greater.

If it was the Switch it would have been largely the same? Anyway, it’s the Switch 2 and you have no idea how well that will take off yet.

@Solid_Python Dragon Quest XI launched on PS4 and 3ds and it sold 950k copies on PS4 in its first week and 93,945 PS4s were sold.

35 Series X sounds like stock issues. Are MS actually quietly discontinuing the Series X? Or did they somehow run out of stock when they were selling record low numbers?

@LavenderShroud the first problem is way too many existed, the market just isn’t big enough to support as many studios as existed. It’s not like the video game market has massively shrunk, it’s still bigger than pre-pandemic.

It’s nice that they’re really supporting the game. Weekly event quests, a roadmap for the seasonal title updates and a major expansion coming, along with a wide selection of cosmetic DLCs from day one.

It’s really nice just to have a good old fashioned game when other companies are trying to stuff Live Service garbage down our throats. Here’s to you, capcom, for keeping the dream alive.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare

Unless you see the monthly sales trajectory

Yes, this was literally in the leak, they had it on a sales graph with monthly sales data and the point it enters PS Plus is highlighted. The sales were tracking at a normal rate and then flatlined the month before it entered PS Plus. If you search for it you can probably find it but it looks like a lot of these graphics have been scrubbed from a lot of sites.

I’d actually be more interested in a Monster Hunter Style game than the third Horizon game. I think it could be brilliant.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare

have a look at the number of sales of HFW compared to HZD

It officially sold 8.4m copies in 14 months. That’s a massive number, regardless of it doing slightly worse than Zero Dawn(in units, not revenue). 8.4m is more than any of the Greek God of War Games, it’s more than the first 3 Uncharted games. It’s more than every game in some series, that people still clamour for on the internet, ever managed: Resistance, Killzone, Twisted Metal, Socom, Gravity Rush(probably every Japan Studio Game ever), Jak and Daxter(it’s more than the entire trilogy combined actually), Infamous, Ratchet and Clank etc. etc.

Oh, yeah, it’s more than Bloodborne(7.6m in 7 years, having been available for $10 for years) and Days Gone too.

@Herculean Hahaha, wait until you see the GoTY awards from every Japanese publications for any year since the beginning of video games…

Let’s see now, Famitsu GoTy awards. Oh, yes, 32 titles have been awarded Game of the Year or Co-Goty and 31 of them were Japanese. One was not Japanese, it was Ghost of Tsushima.

@djlard It’s an 80 on OpenCritic, that’s probably the fairest representation of it’s quality form an objective standpoint, don’t be a clown quoting Metacritic User Scores as if anyone in the world takes that seriously.

@Matroska

Inquisition was controversial amongst fans and criticised in a multitude of ways but still sold 12 million and became Bioware's best selling game

Inquisition only sold around 2m in its first year though, launch was in line with Dragon Age II. It’s been available in sales for under $5 for like 7+ years. I think people don’t really understand how to compare that 12m number to new releases. Dragon Age is really not that big a brand.

Ah good, another opportunity for certain people to tell us how much they hate Dragon Age: The Veilguard and that they can't stop thinking about it. Maybe they'll even refer to it as the FailGuard which is definitely still hilarious and not tired and unimaginative at all.

I liked it quite a bit. Pacing/structure/cinematics are quite close to a Sony Open World or Open Area game.

It has a couple of set-pieces but they’re not particularly impressive. I really liked the “Dungeons” though. The light immersive sim elements with platforming and puzzle solving gave it a feeling similar to something like Legend of Grimrock(without the tedious combat).

If you play Sony first party games on higher difficulties you should also play this the same.

@Max_the_German The sales numbers won’t be comparable because it’s physical only and also PC is launching on day one this time and that will take sales from PS5 but won’t show up on the sales chart.

The best metric is week one shipment + digital sales. World was 5m and Rise was 4m. Wilds will likely be close to 10m I’d guess.

@Absymbel @naruball The PS4 number is wrong because the PS4 Pro is no longer tracked(discontinued for years)

@heavyartillery56

What was the point you attempted to make?

Let's try firstly that the vast majority of software sales are still made in the West, that's even before we talk about things like CoD, Fifa etc.

Secondly that western devs tend to be more ambitious, and they tend to pay their staff more than McDonald's employees. Both of those things are positive.

@heavyartillery56 That was after the payrise, and FromSoft is lower than Capcom.

Either way the west is lagging behind the East. And that would have never happened if western studios didn't drop the ball hard in recent years. Now we are looking at a future where the Asian gaming industry is booming and soaking up most of the time and money of consumers

Thats not really true, GTA VI will probably alone sell more copies than every PS5 Japanese game released this generation. Not to mention games like GoW:Ragnarok sell 15m in a year, Spider-man 2 selling 11m in 6 months etc. There's very very few Japanese games doing those numbers on PS5. The reality is that when making these big games with expensive staff(that gets expensive benefits etc.) it's riskier. Is the solution really just to dial everything back, pay staff really low wages and makes medium size games primarily? You'll find very few eastern games push the boundaries of gaming and most are just the new version of a game that already exists with only medium scope and ambition.

@heavyartillery56 The reason why less people get let go in Japan is primarily because Japanese employees in the games industry get paid much less than western devs. A new graduate employee at Capcom gets paid less than a McDonald's worker in the UK. Therefore games cost way less to make.

Sony charge $50-60 for their PC ports, so it seems reasonable. If it’s too much then just wait, it will be 50% off within a fairly quick timeframe I’d imagine.

100% of cancelled games were actually great

I think it looks pretty impressive, production quality much higher than Avowed, and since Sony don’t make full RPG’s you don’t get many RPGs with high end AAA production quality.

Only Japan, Korea and China can save gaming at this rate

Isn’t the entire output of Korea and China like 2 major games so far this generation?(unless you’re counting F2P games). 2 games puts them in the same tier as Finland.

I quite enjoyed Rise but, yes, that game was ludicrously easy

@CupidStunt 17.5m copies were sold in China. In china almost everyone plays on a PC or phone, PlayStation is less than 1% of the games market. Consoles aren’t popular because the storefronts are heavily controlled by the Chinese government, most games are unavailable.

I saw the DF video, Performance mode looks awful and the Series S version is a joke

yeah cause people go to jail in Washington. A presidents son that stole money from foreign countries, caught on tape doing drugs and under age prostitution was pardoned by Biden on his way out. Never knew innocent people needed pardoned. But where i will agree with you is, what they have been doing is a jail sentence offense. Hence we have heard people talk about others gong to jail. Won’t that be nice.

I'm not going to argue anymore but I need to say one last thing(BTW I'm not American, I have no real horse in this race, I'm not a Democrat, I think Biden was a bit of a clown), you really need to broaden your media intake. I'm not sure where you are getting your info from but a lot of these things you are saying sounds like conspiracy theory stuff and that's a bad place to go. I believe you're probably an honest and decent person. Just try to keep an open mind and read a broader range of opinions and ideas.

@HonestHick

Remember under trump the first time the USA had its best economy in 44 years

Wow, lad, put down the koolaid. The economy is always growing and getting better, that's how it works. Unless there's a recession it's probably going to be the best economy in decades. Under Biden the stock market hit the highest levels in their history. Does that mean Biden is some kind of economic genius? In 2021 the USA GDP grew by 5.8%,more than double any year under trump. Omg it's the best economy ever. I think I recall Biden saying "Bestest economy I ever seen, people would come up to me and congratulate on how good the economy was, no one had ever seen an economy like this before. They said it might be the best economy anyone had ever seen. It was beautiful."

@HonestHick If there was a single piece of evidence that any of those employees were committing fraud they'd be in jail! Stop watching Fox news buddy.

It's funny that people are so happy with shrinking the size of the federal government but at the same time so obsessed with job creation. Those are literally all jobs, they get paid wages and then they used those wages to buy things in the American economy and pay for property in America. They're active members of the economy the same way as anyone working from a private company. If they get a job somewhere else then they're just taking jobs from other people. The job supply in America is literly being decreased, the active members of the economy is decreasing, the number of people claiming benefits is increasing. It's OK though, I heard they were all committing fraud though, like that sounds like a reasonable adult thing to say in the real world.

@HonestHick and the 30,000 jobs Elon Musk has cut from the federal government already? That's 30,000 Americans now unemployed. How do you feel about those ones?

@MrPeanutbutterz I believe there will be big tax cuts. Corporate tax cuts that is. Businesses need to make more money, trickle down economics eh.

@Strafio

More stores results in a small retail discount, i’ve literally said this multiple times. Never once said it resulted in zero saving. The point is that both the physical and Digital games have the same RRP, this is the price determined by wider market conditions.

Physical games on day one is only a small discount though. You might get the game for $10 off but on digital you can also get the game for about 14% of buying credit from third party sellers. 14% of $70 is almost $10 btw. Of course people ignore this discount while they scour the entire internet for the very cheapest physical price possible to make the point.

The main point about this type of discount is that it doesn’t actually interact with the underlying conditions of the market. IF Publishers all increased their prices to $100 a game next gen then retail discount will have no effect on this, you’ll still get the exact same discount. 10-15% off $100 instead of 10-15% off $70. Instead of affecting a small post market discount by a standard amount you can actually have legislation which fundamentally changes how the market works and how consumers are protected. This is big picture vs. Small picture.

@HonestHick BTW I think Apple makes those kinds of commitments with every administration.

Here’s there $430b commitment form 2021:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-commits-430-billion-in-us-investments-over-five-years/

I’m sure next administration will get $580b

BTW by Apples own count they support 3m jobs across the USA so this 20k job commitment is actually tiny for them. Don’t get taken in by the spin.

@HonestHick China will comply with what? The tariffs on China never ended. What exactly did they comply with? Are they going to suddenly open up their entire economy to US companies and no longer be a state run economy? What exactly are the conditions for consoles not to be taxed?

There is zero percent chance any consoles will ever be produced in the USA, they’ll just move to Vietnam or something.

@Gryzor So how do you know Steam asked people to put the prices up? That’s something you can’t just observe. The prices went up during this generation on PS5 but it happened one publisher at a time, not through some central mandate. ABK, Take-Two and Sony were the first 3 publisher to announce $70 games before the PS5 release, and many others followed, but some didn’t.

What you’re observing is just normal inflation in a market. Prices get higher over time when all other things remain equal.

@HonestHick Video Game hardware is produced in China, not Japan. Any agreement with Japan will have no effect on this.