I have no idea. I'm just saying if Nioh is appealing enough to sell 2M then a game similar enough but with much better graphics with Sony marketing can do even better.
Ghost of Tsushima Lacks Broad Commercial Appeal - Michael Patcher
- Thread starter Wise
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I have no idea. I'm just saying if Nioh is appealing enough to sell 2M then a game similar enough but with much better graphics with Sony marketing can do even better.
That will definitely be a huge factor, I agree. Sucker Punch does not have Naughty Dog's pedigree.
I fucking hate this trend where calling something, "too japanese" is seen as valid criticism. fuck outta here with that bullshit. I mean did he see Nioh and how well that game did? How about Nier Automata?
"Too Japanese" seems like a "not enough white people" complaint.
"Too Japanese" seems like a "not enough white people" complaint.
Yeah, is this an imaginary meeting where the head of Sony sales is like "We project these three titles to sell in the 3~5 million range" and an executive is screaming "But are any of them SYSTEM SELLERS?! 120 million is not enough!!"
TV, Film, Comics, etc influence sales of games. Again, it's not a vacuum, which is why it's called "broad appeal."
The Last of Us was also, as a game, fairly unique. Historical open world acruon adventure games, and just open world action adventure games in general, are really common on the other hand.
Personally, I just don't see it. I'd love to be wrong, and hopefully I am, the game looks good.
Don't think Patcher is wrong but its like with anything especially new IP how well something sells isnt in the product itself a lot of it is marketing. Apple for example to an amazing job of making you feel "included" and "exclusive" which is one the biggest reasons they're products sell well. With the right marketing Ghost of Tsushima will do just fine, without it Pachter is probably right.
It's already been shown that outside of Nintendo, multiplats are what drive console sales (and a select few at that). Exclusives enrich the software lineup, but they aren't the primary reason for console sales anymore. Sure when a console is in its infancy, a great exclusive can be the deciding factor for someone to jump in. But year #5? Not really.
There is plenty of potential for this to be unique as well. How many high-budget AAA games based in feudal Japan and with an action hero that is a samurai-become-ninja out for blood do we have?
Sure. There are plenty stealth-action open world games. But there were also plenty of linear survival horrors.
It all depends on quality and marketing, in the end. But I do not think Ghost of Tsushima starts with any intrinsic disadvantage compared to any new IP like TLOU or Horizon.
Teams always hire new people, but they were hiring for a lot of important positions as of September 2017. They hired like 7 senior people in September of 2017 and it seems like they were staffing up for the maybe two more years of development.
I don't think this game even has what one would typically consider, for lack of a better word, 'Japenese-ness'. That's just the setting. Persona 5 has the 'Japenese-ness', not this.
This right here feels like the equivalent of saying San Andreas lacks broad appeal because of the game's innate 'black-ness'.
This right here feels like the equivalent of saying San Andreas lacks broad appeal because of the game's innate 'black-ness'.
I believe 1 and 3 (Second Son) were close to 3 million and 2 was about 2 million.
I would also argue that a Samurai theme will have a much broader appeal than what was in inFamous. In context of what he said, it is obvious, Sony knows this, and they have no issue investing in games that are not based on the 'mass appeal' shifts to complement a myriad of gamer types/tastes/appeals/etc..
I mean I'd argue that we've already seen how diversity and niche games can help a platform outperform it's competition even if those games aren't necessarily lighting the charts on fire themselves. I think while it's certainly not the only factor, a big part of why the PS4 has been continuing to outperform and pull ahead of the Xbone is that it's been getting a lot of Japanese exclusives that Xbone has not, which means for people who want that there's a meaningful difference there. For people who want the super mainstream games, well, there's more than enough of either on both consoles so it's not actually a meaningful difference. Most of the super huge mainstream games aren't exclusives, so both consoles will be getting a huge share of those
This comparison don't make any sense. Ghost of Tsushima is a game made by Westerns for Westerns, it doesn't have any appeal for the japanese market and doesn't focus on it. At the same time, it doesn't need to make huge numbers, it's a complementary title for a year. It's not like Infamous or Sly Cooper were big sellers before like the Nuahgty Dog titles.
Tell that to Nintendo, Bandai Namco and Square Enix in Japan and the world...
Tell that to Nintendo, Bandai Namco and Square Enix in Japan and the world...
Which is another large weakness of Pachter's reasoning. He has stated many times that Japanse games are irrelevant, but Japanese games as a whole do wonders for improving the diversity of the PS4's offering, which I would argue has a quite positive effect on console sales. There's a reason why Phil Spencer goes to Japan to try to convince Japanese publishers to put games on Xbox One, and that's not because he's a weeb.
What a bizarre statement, if there's a single non western aesthetic that's guaranteed to go down well in the US, it's Japanese.
Here's another game that he thought wouldn't be appealing to people due to where/when it took place. He also lists other titles that he didn't think would do well due to the same "problem"
RDR would go on to sell 15 million units.
RDR would go on to sell 15 million units.
He seems to be addressing how mainstream western consumers spend their money. He is not necessarily making racist comments as much as he is commenting on race attributes to how people spend their money.
Yes, anime games such as Persona 5 can be successful, but Anime is a culture that has a strong and dedicated fan-base in western culture. This game is not an anime game.
Yes, anime games such as Persona 5 can be successful, but Anime is a culture that has a strong and dedicated fan-base in western culture. This game is not an anime game.
That's not true if you consider games based in anime or games with anime visuals since various franchises and games comes every year with. And of course, most of japanese games are "anime" since it's inception with a few of them not being in comparison.
How do you know? Dude could be a closeted weeb? Have you checked his cupboards for waifu pillows?
Silliness aside though I think Pachter's problem is the same problem at lot of business types have. They're focused on numbers and sales charts which means they miss the big picture. They don't care about niche products because the numbers are low. He doesn't realise that people such as myself actually base our purchases on where these niche games go.
I, for example, do not own an Xbox One and have no desire to. That's because the games that I like which happen to be more niche are not on there.
Of course I am just one person and the others like me are only a small fraction of the overall consumer base but 1 million peeps isn't something to laugh at just because you got 8 million other peeps. It's still money.
Yep. For Console manufacturers mainstream games are important for selling consoles early in the cycle and for making money that can be used to offset the risk of more niche titles. But when growing a base late in the lifespan, having more of the same won't help you. The things that drive console sales later in the lifespan is diversity to bring in people not interested in the games that were already being offered, and reduced prices. A lot of people bought horizon with a new PS4 over the holidays, but I think if it hadn't been Horizon it could just have easily have been any countless number of other game. They bought the Ps4 because it was cheap, and Horizon just happened to be a popular choice because it was also heavily discounted over the holidays and was the most recent of that sort of game in people's minds, but if Horizon hadn't existed I don't think sales would've changed much, people would've just bought another similar game to go with their ps4, because their driving reason to purchase now and not earlier wasn't Horizon, it was the low price
It's not even a 'Japanese' game.
It's a Japanese setting made by a western company so it's not going to have any of that special sauce.
It's a Japanese setting made by a western company so it's not going to have any of that special sauce.
Bayonetta and Devil May Cry are too Japanese, and they feature almost nothing but white people.
"Japanese" is often considered to be a particularly idiosyncratic tone and aesthetic....it doesn't really refer to the racial makeup of the cast.
All im saying is currently games with an anime aesthetic don't do incredibly well. You'll get a couple here and there that sell over a million but thats about it. You have to be Dragonball or some other massively popular franchise like Zelda to make a bang. This game will do well because its a AAA game by an AAA studio that has a history of making great games by a publisher with a massive install base with their console. It being based in Japan won't effect how well it does, at least not negatively. Games with anime aesthetics have much higher hurdles to jump over, thats fact.
Didn't Nioh do pretty well..?
Sounds like a load of nonsense. Sucker Punch, Samurai, kick ass concept, I think it'll do well.
Sounds like a load of nonsense. Sucker Punch, Samurai, kick ass concept, I think it'll do well.
He is talking about sales, not award lists. Additionally, Zelda and Persona are well established franchises. He is specifically discussing a brand new property. Brand new big budget projects are always a huge risk, and that likely has something to do with his commentary.
There's also a movie in the works for Yasuke, the first historical Black Samurai.
So that's going to be a lot of fun to see unraveled.
If GoT sells like Nioh, Persona 5, or Nier, it will lose Sony a huge amount of money.
There should be a forum bot that automatically makes the first post reply to any Patcher thread be "Well I guess that means {exact opposite} will happen."
Being focused on numbers isn't the problem, it's that he's focused on the wrong numbers because he isn't understanding the difference in context between a first party like Sony and a third party like activision. Sony's main source of money in their gaming division is not their own games, and it's not their hardware. It's royalties. So for them, the best way to make money off their games isn't for them to sell a lot, it's to create an environment where people are going to buy the system for that game and then start buying a bunch of other content that may or may not have been created by Sony themselves on their platform. Getting people onto the platform is far more important for a 1st party than getting a ton of people to buy a single game for their platform and nothing else
Yeah, that too. Many of the examples that are being thrown around in this thread are not very good examples.
I do not believe Nioh has crossed a million on the PS4 yet, though it may have due to the holidays and sales. Combined with PC it is probably over a million.
I do agree that this game will do well if it is a good game, based on Sony marketing, known developer to core fans, etc.. Especially if a trend develops and we phase out of the zombie craze and back into the Samurai/Ninja themes of the 80's/90's.