don't worry it'll be under 10k next week because Nintendo has nothing to keep the sales going until Hyrule warriors
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Media Create Sales: Week 25, 2014 (Jun 16 - Jun 22)
- Thread starter Chris1964
- Start date
don't worry it'll be under 10k next week because Nintendo has nothing to keep the sales going until Hyrule warriors
shinra-bansho
Member
I really don't think elderly men and women, nor middle-aged women, or even women in their early thirties at that, constituted any major part of the console market as the primary users of the systems in question, or at least not the early phase of any adoption cycle. Outside of the Wii.
Tweens and younger perhaps, someone is presumably still buying Skylanders and Disney's Infinity. And I don't think it's unfathomable that boys under 16 are playing annualised Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed though.
The Maverick
Member
Consoles in Japan are basically dead. Next to bat, handheld devices.
I think another factor playing a role in this, or that will play a role in the long term, is the online paywall: mobile / PC doesn't have anything like that. And Pacther's theory about online paywall making much more difficult that one buys both consoles is one of the last things I've heard from him which has a point and isn't insane XD
KillerMan91
Member
I think it might be too early to say that. It's not like PS2 or X360 were blue ocean consoles during their early years. They chased the same teen - young adult male market that especially PS4 is targeting currently. Then during later period of their lifecycle when both consoles had gone trough various price drops to get price more affordable to masses there was Kinect for X360 that gave it new life and Singstar/Guitar Hero etc for PS2. Wii has pretty much been only console that has targeted those demographics from day one. Sure maybe those demographics are mostly gone this time but they have never been really the first target for Sony and Microsoft.
And_Gignac
Member
Development costs and longer cycles it is the main problem, I think. I
mean, during the fourth generation, gaming was doing fine when the overall console install base was 80m~.
The HD obsession promoted by the west developers is what killed the Japanese console market and is slowing affecting the west too, sans the dead of the "not
Indie neither AAA" games.
mean, during the fourth generation, gaming was doing fine when the overall console install base was 80m~.
The HD obsession promoted by the west developers is what killed the Japanese console market and is slowing affecting the west too, sans the dead of the "not
Indie neither AAA" games.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
I don't think there's enough Japanese a centric games announced to even fill the chalkboard.
The situation is more dire than even that of the Wii U.
This kind of 'possibly' is just the Japanese way of politely saying no.
For the most part I feel the people who came in with the Wii were the ones who went out the door, which is a very sizable audience certainly, but they're not the enthusiast core pushing GTA V up to 33 million copies or making Watch Dogs the fastest selling new IP of all time.
It's like movie theaters as well. There's less and less people going, but the amount they pay is going up and it's centralizing around teenagers and young adults with a secondary yet still very large market for children's movies.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Non-Nintendo dedicated gaming handheld devices are almost as dead as consoles.
man the pessimism in here is kinda crazy. bookmark this post if you want but by end of next year i am positive a lot of you will be singing a different tune regarding ps4 being dead. a lot of big announced japanese games will most likely be out by then and there will be a lot of new big games announced as well for 2016 and beyond. mgs 5, ffxv, kh3, bloodborne, next tales, next yakuza, deep down, resident evil, plus niche games from marvelous, falcom, nippon ichi, gung ho, from. arc systems, persona 5 port etc... this is not even counting sceja that could have gravity rush 2, last guardian at some point and other games/collaborations. western third party games like cod, gta, uncharted(first party) do decent numbers as well.
not saying they are all multi million sellers and any one game is going to significantly push ps4 sales but they all add up and ps4/xbone(lol) are the only consoles they will be available to play on. you guys just need to give it some damn time.
not saying they are all multi million sellers and any one game is going to significantly push ps4 sales but they all add up and ps4/xbone(lol) are the only consoles they will be available to play on. you guys just need to give it some damn time.
Yeah, might be true. It is one of the clear reasons why I am not buying a xbone or a PS4. Also one of many reason why a WiiU will be a present to my self when I finish my PhD.
Smiles and Cries
Member
If we don't have titles a chalkboard would be empty so western games would have to fill it.
I doubt that Sony is going to ignore PS4 as much as they ignored Vita so I still want tp see some interesting Japanese games on it
that is the main reseason I pre-ordered a white one
So this is my greatest fear...
You know how the PS Vita is doing OK in Japan but not so good every where else? And all we're getting now is Japanese games? ( which I'm fine with )
If the PS4 does good everywhere else BUT Japan, are we not going to get Japanese games? ( please say no )
You know how the PS Vita is doing OK in Japan but not so good every where else? And all we're getting now is Japanese games? ( which I'm fine with )
If the PS4 does good everywhere else BUT Japan, are we not going to get Japanese games? ( please say no )
Right, consoles grabbed them last generation, and they proved a fast growing, highly profitable market segment. Unfortunately, iOS and Android outcompeted them for this very significant new market, and consoles quickly lost them. This is why consoles are contracting.
Absolutely, they are. Just less of them proportionately than there were in 2004. Every 14 year old playing games at that point as playing on consoles.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Your post basically read 'these games will save the PS4:
MGS
FFXV
KH3
Secret PS4 Game 1
Secret PS4 Game 2
Secret PS4 Game 3
Secret PS4 Game 4
Secret PS4 Game 5
Wow, just look at that lineup
Well, we are 17 weeks after launch, aren't we? Wii U had nothing, zero games at all, for months, plus very few games announced coming. I think that, if we accept to compare the different launch periods, other factors are very similar
Japan is a very mobile society and the types of games they like don't need the horsepower of a console to work perfectly fine.
Like there's an obvious huge benefit to a game like GTA with using a controller and having a ton of horsepower, so people who like that type of game are highly incentivized to go invest a bunch of money in a system to play it. Similarly first person shooters benefit notably from precision controls, higher framerates, and more detail.
In Japan however, much of the gaming audience - even among enthusiasts - is perfectly fine with things that can be done with ~PS2 level hardware. This is why after the PS2 faded we saw developers move to the DS and PSP, and then primarily to PSP, and then primarily to 3DS, as they're all on target for the needs of what's popular without raising costs beyond what's necessary (both in terms of hardware for consumers and development for publishers) as well as embracing Japan's mobile lifestyle.
Nowadays phones are also easily capable of PS2 level games (but lack precision controls), and very capable of DS level games while maintaining a small download size and a fairly equivalent control scheme. Given that almost everyone already owns a smartphone in Japan, this way you can target just about the entire potential market for notably low development costs while also fitting most of what consumers want in terms of taste and portability.
Or, tl;dr, phones are capable of offering what most of the audience for games in Japan (including a lot of enthusiasts) wants in a way that they aren't in the West, so they can eat much harder into the hardware market. The 3DS pretty much fits every need that a phone can't, so there isn't a reason to get a console (or even a Vita) unless you're dying for a particular game on one.
Nintendo's games have the greatest legs of all japanese gaming.
It's also how markets tend to collapse, Nirolak. Unless it's a catastrophic instantaneous collapse, most markets contract slowly this way, and either die or are consumed. The less invested consumers go first, causing contraction, which causes revenue stagnation, which causes production process changes, which causes further contraction.
I don't think most would point to the movie industry as particularly healthy right now, but even if we use it as our examples, films have massive secondary means of revenue generation. If console manufacturers can milk consumers as effectively as the movie industry milks someone going to see Transformer Wars of Extinction Explosion 7, then stabilization is certainly possible, but the gaming industry is still pretty far from that and even then, I still wouldn't describe the market as "healthy."
Dude shut up, it's happening!
Oh I'm not disagreeing. I think we actually have seen the blockbusters cannibalize all the smaller games already, and honestly I feel f2p on PC is eating into a number of games as well.
The people who sit around all day playing Dota, LoL, or Hearthstone are often the same target audience for console games.
A lot of publishers are sitting around thinking about how to get their content out in more formats and turn them into services for this reason, so they can pick up consumers wherever they go.
I don't think that Take-Two sits around porting GTA, Max Payne, and XCOM to iOS because they think these are going to be astronomical money makers as much as practice for a potential future in which "consoles" are phones, tablets, and set top boxes that are hooked to a TV.
However, I don't think this is a short term or even medium term shift as much as a long term one, whereas the casual shift has long since happened.
Your post basically read 'these games will save the PS4:
MGS
FFXV
KH3
Secret PS4 Game 1
Secret PS4 Game 2
Secret PS4 Game 3
Secret PS4 Game 4
Secret PS4 Game 5
Wow, just look at that lineup
lol w.e if you don't think the next tales, yakuza, resident evil isn't going to happen or not going to be on ps4 you will most likely be in for a shock.
Sakura
Member
Is it?
He is right tho, those games will come to PS4 eventually, just like they did for PS3.Your post basically read 'these games will save the PS4:
MGS
FFXV
KH3
Secret PS4 Game 1
Secret PS4 Game 2
Secret PS4 Game 3
Secret PS4 Game 4
Secret PS4 Game 5
Wow, just look at that lineup
rockman zx
Member
What's the deal with NIS games, they don't sell that good anymore.
shinra-bansho
Member
Have contracted... and have begun trending positively again, at least in terms of hardware unit sales, on a trailing twelve-month basis, assuming we're not just talking about the Japanese market right now. I'm sure we've had these discussions before, and the reality is what it is. The systems as they are now aren't competing for the elderly or the middle aged woman and they really can't. But I don't really know yet if they need to be competing for the middle aged woman right now. The historical MO has been to compete for alternative audiences later in the cycle, which may or may not work going forward.
I think it's a good analogy, and I think you've posed it before. The number of wide releases from the major studios has reduced dramatically; they're just making bigger bets. And the revenue in the film industry is roughly flat but being distributed across these fewer releases, from memory. Apparently this blockbuster strategy approach is ultimately more successful. Which is presumably why, in the same way as other forms of media, video game publishers are following a suit - consolidating on fewer brands, bigger name talent/franchises and investing heavily in those, rather than dividing their resources evenly between many projects.
I think the problem is the "also-rans" are still needed, in both the film and game industry to maintain that strategy - test cases for future success.
The closest we have these days I feel are basically things like premium cable/streaming services like Netflix, where they make higher end boutique content for audiences that would have once went to the theater for it instead, and digital distribution games and f2p titles in gaming, where they fit audiences that are no longer filled at retail.
Stump once noted to me that late in his career, Roger Ebert noted that he would switch to being a television critic if he wasn't so near retirement as the movie market had largely become mainstream mulch as an example of this.
Basically direct-to-consumer is what seems to be working versus having to go through the barriers of retail with all the risk and dead weight costs involved.
Eolz
Member
I don't think anybody is saying those games aren't coming to PS4. Just that they won't do that much of an impact.
They are still contracting, as best as I can tell. YoY sales are up, however. The important thing to distinguish is short term trends vs. long term ones.
It's not necessarily more successful, just far easier to control. A market with lower end production may actually be more profitable, but it also lowers the barriers to entry and allows competitors to come in. Once you've whittled the market down to 4 or 5 big players, those 4 or 5 big players have a vested interest in preventing anyone else from becoming competing with them. In short: the big players may trade profitability for stability.
Diversity is also needed. If we are looking from the perspective of someone who loves GTA and Uncharted and Madden on consoles, having people who also like Nintendogs or Singstar or Wii Fit around and in large numbers is actually important. In the short term, these audiences may seem like they're a distraction, or an annoyance -- in reality, though, markets tend to be most stable when they appeal to a wide variety of audiences with a wide variety of interests. It's not impossible to set up a market which only interests a single demographic, but it's less easy and less stable long term. When markets contract, they tend to start by losing everything but their core demographic; at that point, the market is vulnerable both to disruption and consumption by outside forces.
Look at what PS3 was during the same time and look at what it is now, it's not that hard to figure out that the PS4 will be 'successful'.
Umm...why not? The PS4 is in dire straits now because there's nothing really worth playing for Japanese people. Once those games and any other games come, there will be more reasons to buy a PS4, and you should see the baseline increase. See: every system ever.
Sakura
Member
...Wouldn't that be a contraction?
Assuming whatever happened last gen will happen again this gen seems like a really bad bet.
Whether the PS4 catches up to PS3 or not debatable, but you're going to see the baseline increase once there are more games, revisions, and price cuts. It's just logical.
The problem is that consoles are built on a growth model. Cost of development keeps relentlessly increasing. The market was expected to expand with it. Compare it to movies again here: the film industry has been increasing, mostly through expanded interest in territories like China and other developing nations. If Hollywood movies were still only appealing to US and Western European audiences (markets they mostly maxed out decades ago), they'd be in serious trouble. Even now, they're only treading water.
Yes but not in the same doomed sense since an audience entered and exited the stage that was never there to begin with.
Things went back to normal basically.
so we should just take for granted that the PS4 will eventually be successful because of what the PS3 did? there's nothing different between then and now that could possibly change that?
I'm not saying the PS4 is guaranteed to fail, or anything of the sort, but it's certainly not guaranteed to succeed either.
Sakura
Member
What is "normal"?
And let's be real here, the Wii U is not doing Pre Wii numbers. It's below the Gamecube even is it not? And I'm personally not confident the Xbox One will match 360 numbers, and I don't see the PS4 picking up the slack from both. So I think there is more of a contraction than just the Wii casual audience leaving.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
The question is what sort of increase look at the Vita a platform far "healthier" than the PS4 and likely to sell more than it overall due to it's portable nature and look at precisely what it's currently selling. If the future baseline is 13k in it's third year then whoopity do... PS3 never really sold great but I don't see in this current market outlook even the ps4 selling "that" good plus the PS3 benefitted from an exceptionally long generation.
PS4's going to have more major titles so we'll see.
Vita was doing 20k+ not too long ago though.
That makes sense but at the time the consoles seem to be staying their normal course (not really growing but at the same time not really contracting) even in the face of the mobile and facebook etc. gaming explosion. So its not like they are there and just not growing but they are doing so with stronger competition from other things.
The big budgets are getting out of hand though, that's true.
Normal as in pre-Wii. There was a graph posted in the last NPD thread showing that things aren't much different now if the Wii was removed from the equation when comparing to previous generations.
And really, is it the market becoming weaker or do people just not want a WiiU? That product had failure written all over it from day one imo.
Tales of can be on any system, there is no guarantee the next major one will be for PS4, if I were Bandai I'd target PS3/smartphone. Biohazard interest in Japan has been in decline since Capcom turned it into western bro shooter. Ryu ga Gotoku could probably sell a couple PS4s, but the next one will likely be cross generational again. FFXV is vaporware, and IF it ever comes out, it will be so late that it won't help the PS4 much. FF games generally don't. It can bump up the numbers a bit, but they are so front heavy, that if there isn't the stock, it can't move them.
Yeah, I don't see them having much of an impact. If MK8 can't improve Wii U sales by much, why would people think less relevant games will for the PS4?
There is a shelf life. If the PS4 takes too long to become valuable enough to purchase, it won't ever. Every day it waits, handhelds get more powerful and the PS4 looks more expensive. They will probably have to do a price cut even before there is anything worth buying at this rate.
I honestly believe its success is guaranteed, third parties need it.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
For a short period of time it was hardly the baseline and that was the PSV a product expected to perform better in Japan.
The same third parties that needed the Vita I'm sure.
Which third party are you thinking of who hasn't transitioned to smartphone, or isn't content with 3DS/PS3?