US April Hardware Sales, NPD

[Sean]

Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Eternal Sonata, The Last Remnant, ect are all targeted to the X360 audience for a good reason. It's going to be a much more expansive audience than the Xbox1 was and a place that US PS2 RPG players are jumping ship to.

Here's a nifty little tidbit for you - the US PS2 RPGs end and the X360 RPGs begin with a nice convenient shift. If you're an avid RPG purchaser you notice this perfect timeline for it. It's almost too good to be true.

Now, when the US PS2 RPGs stop - we need something new to play. The only offerings for our tastes? The X360. It has such fantastic timing.

It's one of the main reasons for the shift to world-wide releases for RPGs. It's no coincidence that the upcoming titles have been dual-localized in their development - with the exception of Blue Dragon which has been pushed back to release shortly after the last PS2 RPGs.

Now note that the US audience for RPGs is rather huge - usually equaling and occasionally surpassing Japanese sales. This is important - one of the key reasons for the world-wide localization and release push. They need something to play. The X360 offers it.

Note that these people likely buy a lot more than RPGs too - and the X360 has quite an offering for them.

But you don't play RPGs. You don't watch releases or trends on them. You don't know what all is coming out and when - you don't see the see the setup that's coming.

[RiskyChris]

It doesn't make sense to me that RPGs like Blue Dragon wouldn't "fit" on Wii. Seems like there's an audience for it between the Japanese/American Wii audience.

[simeon]

My question is how much of the Wii player-base actually maintains their gaming habits on the system? A lot (read: 6) of people that I personally know that own a Wii stated that they bought a few games like zelda and trauma center, but now only find themselves playing it when other people are around. They played the Zeldas and the paper marios, and very much got bored of the system altogether.

Now if that's the case that most of the player-base doesn't maintain their gaming experience on this system as much as a 360 owner would, then it would only make sense to make a decision not to release on a Wii.

[RiskyChris]

Originally Posted by simeon

Now if that's the case that most of the player-base doesn't maintain their gaming experience on this system as much as a 360 owner would, then it would only make sense to make a decision not to release on a Wii.

It ignores the Japanese audience, where Wii is the only system worth supporting.

[Sean]

Well for one - Mistwalker publishes directly under Microsoft. Mistwalker is also home to one of the developers who likes shiny, sparkly, high-end graphics.

And they're not the only ones who have come out and said that the X360 provides them with the tools and power they need to create the games they envision.

tri-Ace, who will also be publishing under Microsoft has said exactly that.

Take into account who is publishing them, their goals for what kind of games they wish to create, ect. There's a whole lot of factors in play.

[RiskyChris]

Originally Posted by Sean

Well for one - Mistwalker publishes directly under Microsoft. Mistwalker is also home to one of the developers who likes shiny, sparkly, high-end graphics.

And they're not the only ones who have come out and said that the X360 provides them with the tools and power they need to create the games they envision.

tri-Ace, who will also be publishing under Microsoft has said exactly that.

Take into account who is publishing them, their goals for what kind of games they wish to create, ect. There's a whole lot of factors in play.

Well, these are devs (Mistwalker at least, dont' know about T-A) who are being courted by MS. As a general rule though, I'm talking about games like Blue Dragon (i.e. RPGs) being completely suitable to a Wii audience. Not every developer has the blessed funds to be able to afford making 360 games.

[The Dauntless One]

You are such a Nintendo fan boy and this proves it. There are so many people (even on this board) are all saying their Wii is just sitting in their living room not being played much. There just aren't that many games to play on the Wii. Then why is it selling out? For games like Wii sports. Games that you can fire up and play for 10-15 minutes before moving on to other activities. People who buy the Wii are not looking for games with indepth game play and thats a fact. Also, someone who owns an Xbox 360 more than likely own a Wii as well (if they can find one) but for someone who owns a Wii it is a whole different story. With the majority of Wii owners not being "hardcore" gamers why would anyone develope games like Blue Dragon on the Wii? While historically Xbox is not associated with JRPGs, it doesn't mean the playerbase isn't interested in them. Because the playerbase is on average more "hardcore" than the Wii, they are more than likely to try out games that have a 60-70 dollar pricetag if it gets good reviews.

[RiskyChris]

Originally Posted by The Dauntless One

You are such a Nintendo fan boy and this proves it.

Here we go again. *throws arms up in the air*

Fact: Wii is selling like gangbusters all over the world.

Fact: Wii is the only system of significance in the Japanese marketplace. Edit: Barring a quaint system called DS.

Fact: Development costs are cheaper on the Wii.

Am I saying no RPGs should be made for the 360/PS3? No, absolutely not. I don't find anything unreasonable about saying that RPGs can succeed on Wii. At all.

Stop pulling these ridiculous claims like "no one plays Wii anymore." The system is fresh off launch -- give it a few months.

Edit: Why call me a fanboy when I try to say that there's no reason RPGs can't succeed on Wii. How does that prove anything? Jesus Christ, people.

[The Dauntless One]

Give it a few months. I wish people said the same thing for the Xbox 360. All I heard when the Xbox 360 launched was it's a piece of turd with no games on it. GfuckingG

[RiskyChris]

Originally Posted by The Dauntless One

Give it a few months. I wish people said the same thing for the Xbox 360. All I heard when the Xbox 360 launched was it's a piece of turd with no games on it. GfuckingG

The 360 had a shit library for a year. That's why I didn't buy mine until January. Contrast with Wii which has a lot of great games, and a bunch of great rentals.

[Sean]

Well, since you don't know what RPGs are actually coming out or being made since you're not a player of them - I'll help you out.

Mistwalker - currently Microsoft's new pet made up of the some of the biggest names from Squaresoft. From them you've got Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey.

tri-Ace - previously did development exclusively for Square-Enix and now is being published by Microsoft. Infinite Undiscovery is their new baby.

So those two have quite some backing and are quite big.

Oh, and let's not forget Cavia, they're co-developing a game with Mistwalker - Cry-on.

Square-Enix - you don't get bigger in RPG land and they can do what they want as you've seen. They're making "hardcore" RPGs for the X360/PS3 and "light" games for the Wii much to your dismay. There's of course FF13/FFVS13 - PS3 , Star Ocean 4 - X360/PS3 , The Last Remnant - X360/PS3, Chocobo's Dungeon - Wii, DQ Swords - Wii, and Crystal Chronicles - Wii.

They also carry with them GameArts - I'll bet that they get thrown Star Ocean 4. Since tri-Ace is working on their own series. GA are the people who brought you Grandia.

Level 5 - Sony's pet, much like Mistwalker, who is making a rather large game for them (White Knight Story - PS3). Previously they've done some work for Square in between firsty-party Sony projects. Again, rather large backing.

XSeed - Sony's new Wild Arms team. WA5 (PS2) came out earlier in Japan this year and will be headed to the US in just a couple months.

Atlus - currently working on a PS3 project. More people with big money. Persona 3 and Growlanser 5 games are out in the US very soon, by the way. Those two are both PS2 games.

They carry with them Gust and Vanillaware - what are they working on?

Actually, Gust just started development on yet another PS2 game - Atelier Iris 4 (3 is out in the US at the end of this month). Vanillaware? They're still making PS2 games as well - after the upcoming Odin Sphere we've got GrimGrimoire headed our way.

Oh, and Nippon Ichi? Yeah, they're still developing PS2 games too. Soul Nomad in particular will be out here soon.

Huh, funny that, the niche 2D RPG crew is still pumping out PS2 games with no sign of making games for other systems yet. Fancy!


Namco-Bandai's crew?

We'll they're publishing the newly formed tri-Crescendo (you can guess where some of the devs are from) who is doing a world-wide release of Eternal Sonata for the X360.

NB's Cyber-Connect team? Those are the dot hack guys - that's the only work they do. Chances are they'll start up another series of it, but no details currently.

NB's Omiya Soft? They're doing Culdcept Saga on the X360.

NB's Monolith Soft of course was sold to Nintendo after some of their main Xeno talent left. Likely they're making a Baten Kaitos game for the Wii.

Moving on.

Konami's RPG team? No word on them since Suikoden 5.

I think that's just about everything.

Does that help you get some of the picture?

[RiskyChris]

Ok, people are developing games for 360. This is known. There are a bunch of people still working on/finishing up on PS2, yes.

Atlas has been very quiet on their next-gen front, yeah? How many other RPG devs are still silent?

How many devs not bound to a company through publishing deals (MS) have made development decisions before Wii started stomping around hard?

I don't know how a ton of RPGs in development for systems other than Wii is any argument that Wii isn't suited to RPGs.

[brekk]

Sean saying the vast majority of Wii owners are casuals that are new to video games is retarded. At the price point of the system I'm sure any serious gamer who has one of the HD systems will also own a Wii.

As for Wii Sports knocking out other games, and people's Wii's collecting dust. My brother's is getting dust right now. He got Zelda, he got Super Paper Mario, he's waiting for another game worth getting to come out.

You compare the Wii and Xbox userbases like they are polar opposites. Does the xbox audience have more hardcore people. Unquestionably, but justl ike hardcore people in MMO's they are still the vast minority.

Developers are going to develop for whichever system has a shit ton of units already sold and a larger buying audience. This is the lull before the storm of 3rd party Wii support, similarly there will be a huge influx of games that were planned for the PS3, but are now either going cross platform or if early enough in dev switching completely to the Xbox.

[Sharmai]

Ok which has the largest RPG userbase? US or Japan? (Historically speaking)

Japan

Which system is currently successful in japan?
Wii & DS

So if you are making an RPG to target the largest potential installed base of console users what system do you make it for?

PS3 - base is to small in NA and Japan
DS - base is large everywhere but the system has its extreme limitations
X360 - NA base is large but JA base is craptastic. Expected RPG sales will suffer severly without JA unless you dont care about JA sales (laugh)
Wii - NA base is large and gaining, Users are of new crowd and old, JA base is large and increasing and the only non handheld system of any significane in JA, Users are of new crowd and old



The only developers making RPG's exclusively for the 360 are either already commited before knowing of the Wii's success, complete idiots and not able to understand where the majority of their RPG money could come from, or graphically bleeding edge RPG designers whose goals are absolute top of the line grpahics > possible RPG sales of JA.


IF the RPGs coming help the x360 to gain serious momentum in JA then more will be created. IF they do not significantly boost sales there then RPG development will shift more and more to the Wii & DS.


Economics 101 here....

[wild_whiskey]

Is anyone playing ANY system rabidly right now? Which system has games right now that you can pick up and play that aren't niche games (Tekken 5R is somewhat of a niche game, for example). I don't understand the argument of "my friend this system is collecting dust right now, therefore it's obviously failing and has no good games."