158 réponses à ce sujet

[OneBadAssMother]

The thing is I've noticed only Bioware fans know about Dragon:Age at the moment, other times it's some underage kids saying "its not like Oblivion" etc. And Final Fantasy seems to getting a lot of fans though. Maybe it's about time Bioware makes a movie, like the FF folk, even if it sucks, everyone will know about Bioware!

[spernus]

I don't think Bioware could attain the popularity of Square-Enix without significantly altering their approach toward game design.There's no way you can get over in the east with that generic western artstyle(sorry fan of western games ).

You need strong stylization to sell million of copies in the east,so it's no surprise that only Blizzard is currently very popular in China/Korea.Even then,there are not popular in Japan which is the apex of eastern artstyle.

Outside of that,even jrpg will sell at most 2-3 million copies in the west.Let's not forget that FF(and moreso Dragonquest) is more popular in Asia than the west,so it's to the credit of Bioware or even Bethesda to be able to survive.Not long ago,the console gamers didn't care about computer or western developers.If not for the Xbox,I think the console market would still be ruled by japanese games.

Dragon age should be able to sell 1.5 million copies on console,which isn't bad if you understand that it's a PC game first and foremost.I think it can easily sell over a million on PC as well,so 2.5-3 million copies sold is not out of the question afterall.

Of course,Mass effect 2 will easily sell 2 million copies on the 360 if not more.EA predicted that Dragon age would be the better selling game,but I think Mass effect 2 will go above 3 million copies sold becase of the stellar reviews and hype(could be the best rated rpg yet if it's such an improvement over the first one). 

Modifié par spernus, 08 décembre 2009 - 07:42 .

[Thiefy]

Final Fantasy has a ton of fans because of how long it's been around. You don't think that the majority of the first final fantasy fans were female, do you? But in this day and age female gaming is a large semi-untapped market.



What they might consider doing is putting advertisements in Shoujo monthly magazines. Most anime fans are also gamers, if casual ones. They'd be able to market to another consumer type, and since they also tend to be younger (teens to twenties) they could potentially become long term, loyal customers. That's assuming they would allow an ad for a mature game. Honestly though I don't see why since some of the shoujo manga titles are mature.

[OneBadAssMother]

You don't think that the majority of the first final fantasy fans were female, do you? But in this day and age female gaming is a large semi-untapped market.

Perhaps us "hubbies" should stop trying to keep the "wifeys" happy by buying them boring virtual dollhouse-games likes Sims 3. My wife started playing and even finished DA:0 b4 me...



A lot of these male/female taste stereotypes do seem to be completely full of sh--t nowadays.

[Thiefy]

OneBadAssMother wrote...

You don't think that the majority of the first final fantasy fans were female, do you? But in this day and age female gaming is a large semi-untapped market.

Perhaps us "hubbies" should stop trying to keep the "wifeys" happy by buying them boring virtual dollhouse-games likes Sims 3. My wife started playing and even finished DA:0 b4 me...

A lot of these male/female taste stereotypes do seem to be completely full of sh--t nowadays.

 They are stereo types for a reason. In the 80's and  early 90's most of the FF fans were male, and I could count the number of girl gamers I knew on a single hand. Yes there are plenty of females players out there, but let's keep it real - most of the time they play party games or casually play a shooter/rpg/some other game like guitar hero. You are much more likely to find more 'hard core' gamers, or loyal fans are male. Sure, there are girls out there like me that play more than casually, but compared to males?

If a guy says he likes to play video games as a hobby the answer you get is "Oh cool", no big deal. If a girl says she likes to play video games as a hobby the typical answer you get is "Wow really?" or some other astounded reply.

I'm not trying to extend any stereotypes in my posts, I'm just trying to share some ideas about how Bioware may be able to turn some of those casual (female) gamers into loyal fans.

Why do you think the Wii did much better than initially expected? Because it reached out to a completely different market base. Maybe I am wrong, I don't work for them so there's no way for sure for me to know, but, if you have any ideas of your own about how they could improve their market so we can see more of the content we like, please share them with us.

[Magister Lajciak]

An analyst in this article estimated Dragon Age sales for November 2009 at 400,000: http://www.gamespot....ws/6242572.html



These would be U.S. retail figures only and they are only estimates. According to the article, the actual NPD figures for November 2009 will be released this Thursday afternoon/evening.



That estimate seems far too low to me, as this would be across all platforms. Of course, I am not sure if ordering it through, say Amazon, counts as retail - I would say yes, but if it doesn't than that could skew the figures substantially.

[Zenon]

@spernus



I sure hope Bioware won't gear their design entirely towards expected sales or another successful productline like FF. I'd like to keep in mind, that many FF games are extremely popular in Asian countries, where players tend to have different expectations than in most Western countries. Most of the popular games in Asia are rather easy and casual with more cinematics. I once played FF VII on my PC and while quite entertaining I found it rather too shallow.



Besides if all design only according to the current bestsellers, innovation will stagnate and probably at a certain point a new concept will become a stronger blockbuster than the rest. In fact this is already happening to a certain degree. I just need to remember how the RTS genre started to become a huge boom with Warcraft II and C&C hitting the shelves. Then all the sudden every big publisher created their own RTS. Some better, most worst.



Anyway, I hope Bioware keep up their vision. I don't need an extremely open world, if it causes the story-feeling to dilute too much. Besides many recent Bioware games contain a toolset, which allows the community to create much extra content. I hope they keep this and the multilanguage versions up.

[LunSei Sleidee]

Let the kiddies keep their Final Fantasy games. Frankly, I think they're just HORRIBLE. And this coming from someone who finished Final Fantasy 7 twice and knew many of its dialogues by memory. But nowadays? Nowadays, the FF saga is just horrible cheap stereotyped meaningless and repetitive stuff for little kiddies.



As Zenon said, I really do hope that Bioware will hold true to their vision. My respect for this gaming company increased a zillion times as I got to play Dragon Age. I always envisioned Bioware as "those guys who work for Microsoft and who make fake rpgs for modern american teenagers, which are all about gore and sex and superficial plots". And I was so very, very wrong!! And let's just hope the day will never come when Bioware becomes like that.

[Magister Lajciak]

It seems that the UBS presentation did not mention Dragon Age. I didn't have the time to listen to it in its entirety, but the article I read on it had no mention of the game.

[fanman72]

Very well I imagine. This game is getting a lot of attention on forums unrelated to gaming at all that I usually frequent. It's getting a fair amount of publicity. Only game I think doing better right now that has come out recently is probably Modern Warfare 2.  They sold about $1 million for Warden's Keep alone, which I imagine the casual person did not purchase.  Extrapolate that how you will as to what that translates to for sales for DA as a whole

Modifié par fanman72, 10 décembre 2009 - 10:58 .

[spernus]

LunSei Sleidee wrote...

Let the kiddies keep their Final Fantasy games. Frankly, I think they're just HORRIBLE. And this coming from someone who finished Final Fantasy 7 twice and knew many of its dialogues by memory. But nowadays? Nowadays, the FF saga is just horrible cheap stereotyped meaningless and repetitive stuff for little kiddies.

As Zenon said, I really do hope that Bioware will hold true to their vision. My respect for this gaming company increased a zillion times as I got to play Dragon Age. I always envisioned Bioware as "those guys who work for Microsoft and who make fake rpgs for modern american teenagers, which are all about gore and sex and superficial plots". And I was so very, very wrong!! And let's just hope the day will never come when Bioware becomes like that.

You win some and you lose some.

Bioware would definitively benefit from having a bigger budget to make a new game.From a production value standpoint,western rpg are still a notch or two under the biggest jrpg and it show.

Final fantasy XIII is aimed at teens and Square-Enix know their audience well,but the production value are once again extraordinary.I would like to see a Bioware game which a similar budget,but it's impossible when you need to be assured of selling 5+ million copies to make a profit.

[weism]

Square-Enix like games are more geared toward younger gamers. Which accounted for a very big portion of gamers 10 years ago. Bioware game are more adult oriented games. Now, alot of gamers are getting older, so the scale should tip toward Bioware, if Bioware stay the course.

[MerinTB]

spernus wrote...

From a production value standpoint,western rpg are still a notch or two under the biggest jrpg and it show.

This is ultimately sad because, like animation, the Japanese copied it from America.

It was Snow White and other early Disney films that influenced Japanse anime.

And it was D&D and the CRPG's from the Ultima/Phantasie/Bard's Tale/Wizardry days that influence Record of Lodoss books and all the JRPGs.

And like with cars, tvs, stereoes, game consoles and other electronics - the Japanese took our good ideas, improved on them, and basically became THE place to get quality products of these types.

Modifié par MerinTB, 10 décembre 2009 - 04:19 .

[Magister Lajciak]

The NPD numbers are out. Apparently, there have been 360 thousand retail sales of Dragon Age for the XBOX 360 (how numerically appropriate: 360K sales for 360, he, he), making the XBOX version of Dragon Age take spot 9 in retail sales: http://news.vgchartz...ews.php?id=6161

I would really love to see some figures for digital downloads. The EA CEO has stated a few days back that digital downloads are more than making up for the losses in retail sales this year.

Modifié par Magister Lajciak, 11 décembre 2009 - 03:46 .

[spernus]

MerinTB wrote...

spernus wrote...

From a production value standpoint,western rpg are still a notch or two under the biggest jrpg and it show.

This is ultimately sad because, like animation, the Japanese copied it from America.

It was Snow White and other early Disney films that influenced Japanse anime.

And it was D&D and the CRPG's from the Ultima/Phantasie/Bard's Tale/Wizardry days that influence Record of Lodoss books and all the JRPGs.

And like with cars, tvs, stereoes, game consoles and other electronics - the Japanese took our good ideas, improved on them, and basically became THE place to get quality products of these types.

I'm on a streak of collecting old disney movies. Snow white and Pinnochio are timeless classics,so bring on fantasia.

The problem with japanese rpg is not that they copy d&d or crpg,it's that japanese actually prefer them to most genre(especially dragon quest and FF).They love dragonquest just as much as we do love shooters and Modern warfare/Halo/Half life.

Western shooter dispose of huge budget while western rpg are mostly low/mid budget affair.Just look at how bland and generic the upcoming game from Obsidian look.Even if Alpha protocol end up great,it will suffer at retail because of the mediocre production values.

Dragon age:origins is decent just as Fallout 3/Oblivion were,but it's a couple of nothc below Dragonquest or Final fantasy.I suspect FF XIII will cost 60-80 million while Dragon age costed 15-20 million max(and XIII should sell at least 6-7 million copies versus 2-3 for Dragon age).

[darkblueglass]

spernus wrote...

MerinTB wrote...

spernus wrote...

From a production value standpoint,western rpg are still a notch or two under the biggest jrpg and it show.

This is ultimately sad because, like animation, the Japanese copied it from America.

It was Snow White and other early Disney films that influenced Japanse anime.

And it was D&D and the CRPG's from the Ultima/Phantasie/Bard's Tale/Wizardry days that influence Record of Lodoss books and all the JRPGs.

And like with cars, tvs, stereoes, game consoles and other electronics - the Japanese took our good ideas, improved on them, and basically became THE place to get quality products of these types.

I'm on a streak of collecting old disney movies. Snow white and Pinnochio are timeless classics,so bring on fantasia.

The problem with japanese rpg is not that they copy d&d or crpg,it's that japanese actually prefer them to most genre(especially dragon quest and FF).They love dragonquest just as much as we do love shooters and Modern warfare/Halo/Half life.

Western shooter dispose of huge budget while western rpg are mostly low/mid budget affair.Just look at how bland and generic the upcoming game from Obsidian look.Even if Alpha protocol end up great,it will suffer at retail because of the mediocre production values.

Dragon age:origins is decent just as Fallout 3/Oblivion were,but it's a couple of nothc below Dragonquest or Final fantasy.I suspect FF XIII will cost 60-80 million while Dragon age costed 15-20 million max(and XIII should sell at least 6-7 million copies versus 2-3 for Dragon age).

I disagree that the Dragon age is notch below FF or DQ, and I don't think that total linear game like FF costs more than the dragon age. Most of the voice acting in the FF or DQ is from cut scenes and those games are linear so the dialogue options and voice acting is so limited. 

Personally, I much prefer Dragon age to FF or DQ. Final Fantasy is good but it is too linear for me.

[GreenSoda]

darkblueglass wrote...

I disagree that the Dragon age is notch below FF or DQ, and I don't think that total linear game like FF costs more than the dragon age. Most of the voice acting in the FF or DQ is from cut scenes and those games are linear so the dialogue options and voice acting is so limited. 

Personally, I much prefer Dragon age to FF or DQ. Final Fantasy is good but it is too linear for me.

While I agree with your last paragraph, your estimation on FF vs DA productions costs are way off.

Even FF12, which was released on a last gen system -the PS2- cost ~35 million $ to make. FF13 will probably end up being 3-4 times more expensive than DA was.

[spernus]

darkblueglass wrote...

I disagree that the Dragon age is notch below FF or DQ, and I don't think that total linear game like FF costs more than the dragon age. Most of the voice acting in the FF or DQ is from cut scenes and those games are linear so the dialogue options and voice acting is so limited. 

Personally, I much prefer Dragon age to FF or DQ. Final Fantasy is good but it is too linear for me.

Square-Enix has better animators working for them.They probably have better artists in general,but that's a moot point if you do not like FF or DQ anyway. Dunno what the salary are for japanese,but it must be similar to canadian or american working in the videogame industry.If they are famous,they must be paid more and Square-Enix still has legendary artists working for them.

You can be assured that Final fantasy XIII will cost more to make,since it's got a massive staff and they have been working on it for years.Include the massive amount of CGI+ voice over and you have a costly game.Square-Enix invest more in Q&A since Final fantasies are more polished than any western rpg ever made.

Unlike Dragon age,Final fantasy XIII will have an overworld map so there's definitively going to be more world mass and content created(along with plenty of dungeons and grinding ).This is what happen when you have a franchise that sold well over 70+ million copies.You can invest 60-80 million and be assured to generate plenty of profit with the newest title in the franchise.

GTA is a massive franchise now and IV costed over 100 million to make,so FF XIII being within the range of 70-80 million make sense.XIII should easily be able to sell 6 million copies,but probably much more if it can sell really well in the west.

Modifié par spernus, 12 décembre 2009 - 06:16 .

[Adria Teksuni]

Considering how hard Bioware has fought to produce their own intellectual property, I doubt that they'll cheapen their standards just for sales. Additionally, they were most certainly around with the FFVII phenom, and they didn't go for it then. Just the opposite, as JE was rattling around in the writer dungeons.

[GreenSoda]

Adria Teksuni wrote...

Considering how hard Bioware has fought to produce their own intellectual property, I doubt that they'll cheapen their standards just for sales. Additionally, they were most certainly around with the FFVII phenom, and they didn't go for it then. Just the opposite, as JE was rattling around in the writer dungeons.

Alas, even Bioware games -no matter how idealistic the dev team might be- need to be profitable.

It's funny that you mention JE which suffered from that very problem. A good game -sadly it underperformed on the sales front.

It's that lack in sales numbers that (probably) lead to the cancelation (after being in the work for quite some time) of the sequel not too long ago.

[spernus]

eisberg77 wrote...

Fought hard?  That wasn't my understanding.  I remember when they made Jade Empire, and in an interview they said that when they created Bioware their goal was to learn from making other IPs, and that after 10 years they would start to make their own IP, which they did with Jade Empire.

It will end up paying off big time for Bioware.

Jade empire didn't turn out all that well from a financial standpoint,but it was a nice try.

Mass effect 2 however,seems to confirm that you are better off making your own IP.The improvement from the first game seems immense and Bioware can always alter the lore as they see fit to improve the gameplay.

I am sure Dragon age can be improved leaps and bound as well.

[Adria Teksuni]

Fought hard?  That wasn't my understanding.  I remember when they made Jade Empire, and in an interview they said that when they created Bioware their goal was to learn from making other IPs, and that after 10 years they would start to make their own IP, which they did with Jade Empire.

They were partnered with LucasArts, arguably the most popular pop fiction franchise in history, and were in line to make the sequal to the GOTY KoTOR. They turned it down, referring it to Obsidian Entertainment, in order to solely pursue their own IP.

Around that time, they announced that they would no longer be working on licensed material and only go with their own IP. Sadly, that did not work out for them. The gaming industry is as vicious and temperamental as any other entertainment industry. They took a huge risk going on their own with Jade Empire.

While JE didn't do badly, and ME did better, neither were runaway blockbuster smash hits. I was very, very relieved when I learned this partnership with EA did not mean the end of their IP development. EA is notorious for only seeing the bottom line, and I could easily see them trying to bully the relatively small Bioware into dropping it for more lucrative licensing.

ME2 will have what JE, ME, and JE2 did not/would not have had.  Massive publisher marketing to push sales.  That helps make a huge difference.

Modifié par Adria Teksuni, 12 décembre 2009 - 06:34 .

[Codemanjap]

spernus wrote...

darkblueglass wrote...

I disagree that the Dragon age is notch below FF or DQ, and I don't think that total linear game like FF costs more than the dragon age. Most of the voice acting in the FF or DQ is from cut scenes and those games are linear so the dialogue options and voice acting is so limited. 

Personally, I much prefer Dragon age to FF or DQ. Final Fantasy is good but it is too linear for me.

Square-Enix has better animators working for them.They probably have better artists in general,but that's a moot point if you do not like FF or DQ anyway. Dunno what the salary are for japanese,but it must be similar to canadian or american working in the videogame industry.If they are famous,they must be paid more and Square-Enix still has legendary artists working for them.

You can be assured that Final fantasy XIII will cost more to make,since it's got a massive staff and they have been working on it for years.Include the massive amount of CGI+ voice over and you have a costly game.Square-Enix invest more in Q&A since Final fantasies are more polished than any western rpg ever made.

Unlike Dragon age,Final fantasy XIII will have an overworld map so there's definitively going to be more world mass and content created(along with plenty of dungeons and grinding ).This is what happen when you have a franchise that sold well over 70+ million copies.You can invest 60-80 million and be assured to generate plenty of profit with the newest title in the franchise.

GTA is a massive franchise now and IV costed over 100 million to make,so FF XIII being within the range of 70-80 million make sense.XIII should easily be able to sell 6 million copies,but probably much more if it can sell really well in the west.

No, I doubt there will be a world map for ff13 being that there hasnt been one in the last 2 made. They switched to some new system that is actually VERY similar to the one used in DAO. The only difference is all the points are connected but they did away with the world map system in ff10.

[Silensfurtim]

lol no matter how many FFs are made, they will still be forever shallow RPGs (like super shallow) and made for the kiddies. no thanks.