In Japan, Muramasa managed to sell 47,000 copies, while Arc Rise Fantasia sold 45,000 copies. Little King's Story sold 26,000 copies in Japan and 37,000 in North America, with its best sales performance occurring in Europe where it sold 67,000 copies. Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga has only sold 16,000 copies since its September release in North America. 2007 release Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility was a surprisingly large seller on Wii, with 57,000 copies sold for the year across all regions.
Marvelous noted that their four PSP releases made money thanks to their low cost of development (however, two of these titles were visual novels), with their best-selling title for the year being the 70,000-copy-selling PSP release Half-Minute Hero. In July, the company stated that they may port Wii titles to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, a plan that has resulted in the recent announcement of a Marvelous-published remake of No More Heroes being ported to both of those consoles.
How much did LKS sell for? $40? so if they sold 130k world wide, the made over five million gross.Depends on how much Yen they spent on development. Cing, which devleoped the game, has a good relationship with Nintendo, and their games sell quite well on Nintendo systems. They are not in trouble.
Like I said before, Marvelous will soon go out of business or be bought out.If they think their ports to PS360 will sell better, this will happen sooner or later.
This is terrible news. I am playing Little King's story and I love it. What the hell is wrong with Wii owners that they aren't buying 3rd party offerings? I can understand when Wii owners reject crap, but Marvelous games are not crap. It just doesn't make any sense.This is the fault of third parties.
This is terrible news. I am playing Little King's story and I love it. What the hell is wrong with Wii owners that they aren't buying 3rd party offerings? I can understand when Wii owners reject crap, but Marvelous games are not crap. It just doesn't make any sense.This is the fault of third parties.
Third parties have been treating the Wii like dirt, minus a couple of them, and this will piss of the Nintendo fan. Capcom learned this lesson the hard way in the GCN era. Everyone else is starting to learn it too. Boom Blox and DeBlob didn't bullshit their way around anything, and they sold well.
So in other words, piss us off, we don't buy your games. Palin and simple. (I am not this way, however. Others... I can't speak for)
How much did LKS sell for? $40? so if they sold 130k world wide, the made over five million gross.
Ignition must have picked up NA publishing rights for Muramasa pretty cheap.
Like I said before, Marvelous will soon go out of business or be bought out.
This is terrible news. I am playing Little King's story and I love it. What the hell is wrong with Wii owners that they aren't buying 3rd party offerings? I can understand when Wii owners reject crap, but Marvelous games are not crap. It just doesn't make any sense.
This is terrible news. I am playing Little King's story and I love it. What the hell is wrong with Wii owners that they aren't buying 3rd party offerings? I can understand when Wii owners reject crap, but Marvelous games are not crap. It just doesn't make any sense.
I'll bet Muramasa was the one they didn't lose money on. That one seems to have the best sales out of all of them.
The typical Nintendo fan really doesn't like it when 3rd parties complain about their lack of game sales. Out of the list of games that they developed only one sounded worth while to play.
Can you imagine in music if there was more then one format and the musical artist was bitching about how their songs didn't sell? Good things sell themselves. They have nothing to complain about. The Wii has a 56.69 million user base at 48.6% market share. If their products aren't going to sell on there, they aren't going to sell on another format either.
Every generation there is an acclaim or a midway who does this, they usually make too much product with not enough focus.
I'll bet Muramasa was the one they didn't lose money on. That one seems to have the best sales out of all of them.
It states in the article that LKS sold the best.
The typical Nintendo fan really doesn't like it when 3rd parties complain about their lack of game sales. Out of the list of games that they developed only one sounded worth while to play.
Can you imagine in music if there was more then one format and the musical artist was bitching about how their songs didn't sell? Good things sell themselves. They have nothing to complain about. The Wii has a 56.69 million user base at 48.6% market share. If their products aren't going to sell on there, they aren't going to sell on another format either.
Every generation there is an acclaim or a midway who does this, they usually make too much product with not enough focus.
You obviously haven't played the games mentioned in this article. Save for Valhalla Knights (which was crap) and Arc Rise Fantasia (which hasn't been released in North America), they have released some good to great games on Wii. Muramasa has a fantastic art style and solid gameplay, and I have yet to hear anything bad about Little King's Story. So, the games' overall quality didn't affect sales.
What I will agree, however, is that they are very niche, and it's hard for them to compete for either audience. The hardcore audience is dominated by games like GTA, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Halo and such, while the casual side is head over heels in LOVE with the Wii series and similar third party games. In other words, a game like Muramasa is too obscure for the mainstream audience, and its too weird for its core audience.
Also, guys, while I agree that whining about poor sales and blaming the Wii will not create better sales, you have to remember that even the simplest of games can cost up to millions to produce. If a publisher doesn't see any return them can you blame them for being upset? It doesn't help that the world economy is still in the crapper.
I'll bet Muramasa was the one they didn't lose money on. That one seems to have the best sales out of all of them.
It states in the article that LKS sold the best.
Does it? It says it's best sales were in Europe, but I don't believe it lists the sales of any game other than that across the three main regions. That's part of why I question the validity of this report: The way the numbers are presented are inconsistent and misleading, to the point of being downright confusing.
NPD placed Muramasa at 56k if I recall and so Japanese 46k + NA 56k = 104k.
| Game Title | America | Japan | Europe | Total |
| Muramasa | 36,000 | 47,000 | N/A | 83,000 |
| ARF | N/A | 45,000 | N/A | 45,000 |
| LKS | 37,000 | 26,000 | 67,000 | 130,000 |
| Valhalla Knights | 16,000 | 10,000 | N/A | 26,000 |
Even though Little King Story is a great game and all, who exactly is the audience?
How much did LKS sell for? $40? so if they sold 130k world wide, the made over five million gross.It was $50 but was soon discounted to $30, though I don't know if that was official or a retailer decision. I don't know if it's the one which was profitable because it seems it had a larger budget than the other two.
The typical Nintendo fan really doesn't like it when 3rd parties complain about their lack of game sales. Out of the list of games that they developed only one sounded worth while to play.
Can you imagine in music if there was more then one format and the musical artist was bitching about how their songs didn't sell? Good things sell themselves. They have nothing to complain about. The Wii has a 56.69 million user base at 48.6% market share. If their products aren't going to sell on there, they aren't going to sell on another format either.
Every generation there is an acclaim or a midway who does this, they usually make too much product with not enough focus.
You obviously haven't played the games mentioned in this article. Save for Valhalla Knights (which was crap) and Arc Rise Fantasia (which hasn't been released in North America), they have released some good to great games on Wii. Muramasa has a fantastic art style and solid gameplay, and I have yet to hear anything bad about Little King's Story. So, the games' overall quality didn't affect sales.
What I will agree, however, is that they are very niche, and it's hard for them to compete for either audience. The hardcore audience is dominated by games like GTA, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Halo and such, while the casual side is head over heels in LOVE with the Wii series and similar third party games. In other words, a game like Muramasa is too obscure for the mainstream audience, and its too weird for its core audience.
Also, guys, while I agree that whining about poor sales and blaming the Wii will not create better sales, you have to remember that even the simplest of games can cost up to millions to produce. If a publisher doesn't see any return them can you blame them for being upset? It doesn't help that the world economy is still in the crapper.
The fact that they didn't make a profit is a testament to development costs, not poor numbers sold.
I think part of the problem with video games sales generally, and this probably affects 3rd parties the most, is that the consumer base knows that if they don't buy the game right away, it will drop in price--often radically--within a few months.
AFAIK the rule of thumb is that you must sell 100k units for every million dollars you invested into the development.
There's a reason Iwata told people not to do pricedrops. I preordered NSMBWii from Amazon while all 360 games I bought were significantly below MSRP (most expensive was Brütal Legend at 55€, MSRP 70€, second was Prototype at 40€ and it goes down from there). That's in part because Nintendo also starts out with a saner price (40-50€ instead of 70) but also because you can be sure the price won't drop much.
One promplem I rarely hear mentioned is finding an interesting Wii game at the store. There's just so much crap on the shelves making it tricky to know which titles may be any good. I don't even walk down the Wii aisles anymore to look for deals. Too much effort to sift through the mountain of titles.
AFAIK the rule of thumb is that you must sell 100k units for every million dollars you invested into the development.
Last I heard an average Wii game cost $10M. It's tough to say what these games cost, but I think it's safe to say that nobody comes to market with a game (that's not Wiiware) and expects to sell only 100,000 especially with the Wii usesrbase at 50+ million and expanding at least 1+million a month. This is a problem. I know these are niche games, but unfortunately these are some of the better games to hit the Wii.QuoteThere's a reason Iwata told people not to do pricedrops. I preordered NSMBWii from Amazon while all 360 games I bought were significantly below MSRP (most expensive was Brütal Legend at 55€, MSRP 70€, second was Prototype at 40€ and it goes down from there). That's in part because Nintendo also starts out with a saner price (40-50€ instead of 70) but also because you can be sure the price won't drop much.
I think first it's a general problem in our economy right now. Look at other retail items. It's I won't buy this until Thanksgiving sales, or after Christmas sales, or until the government makes a program incentivizing me to purchase something. And I think in general consumers are still scared to purchase, job cuts are still coming in the areas I live. I think my job is secure but the more businesses our area loses even I wonder when my business won't make enough to support itself. So their is a problem in the environment right now.
However, having said that, I think your argument is more for digital distribution than companies not to decrease prices. Nintendo has clought in retail. While Excite Trucks is nary to be found at retail, most stores with have a few copies of Galaxy or Twilight Princess at $50, because they know when people buy a Wii these two titles have a good chance of being picked up as well. Most developers don't have that luxury. Retail in general wants to see turnover if they are holding your products. So if a developer like Marlvelous takes this stand they can expect fewer sales to retail because retail doesn't want to gamble on sales.
It also doesn't mean a sale won't occur. Retailers often hold unofficial sales to get gamers in. And it's sure with the games mentioned at some point the retailer is just going to decide to dump their product at whatever price they can get for the copies because they see 20+ new releases a week, they like the cycle of games sell for 6 months and then dump.
Digital games don't have this issue. It cost a fee to run a server, but to add one game to a server to hold available for download costs almost nothing. So if 5 years after release someone downloads LKS or whatever, it's almost all profit. A retail wouldn't hold a game for 5 years (without it continually turning I.E. Galaxy) because it takes up space for them to be selling something else to their customer that will turn.
AFAIK the rule of thumb is that you must sell 100k units for every million dollars you invested into the development.I think part of the problem with video games sales generally, and this probably affects 3rd parties the most, is that the consumer base knows that if they don't buy the game right away, it will drop in price--often radically--within a few months.
There's a reason Iwata told people not to do pricedrops. I preordered NSMBWii from Amazon while all 360 games I bought were significantly below MSRP (most expensive was Brütal Legend at 55€, MSRP 70€, second was Prototype at 40€ and it goes down from there). That's in part because Nintendo also starts out with a saner price (40-50€ instead of 70) but also because you can be sure the price won't drop much.
I think it's safe to say that nobody comes to market with a game (that's not Wiiware) and expects to sell only 100,000 especially with the Wii usesrbase at 50+ million and expanding at least 1+million a month. This is a problem. I know these are niche games, but unfortunately these are some of the better games to hit the Wii.
However, having said that, I think your argument is more for digital distribution than companies not to decrease prices.
A retail wouldn't hold a game for 5 years (without it continually turning I.E. Galaxy) because it takes up space for them to be selling something else to their customer that will turn.
That makes sense. And if I ever know of someone who's looking to buy a brand-new copy of Eternal Darkness.......I know just where to send them (if they want to spend $50 for it).
That makes sense. And if I ever know of someone who's looking to buy a brand-new copy of Eternal Darkness.......I know just where to send them (if they want to spend $50 for it).
I saw a copy of Eternal Darkness among other games for sale a while back with a sticker on it that said 'Play's on Wii!'. I assumed at the time it was a re-release but maybe those were just old games with stickers to try and sell them off finally to the 'new market'.
A retail wouldn't hold a game for 5 years (without it continually turning I.E. Galaxy) because it takes up space for them to be selling something else to their customer that will turn.
I agree with this, but just wanted to mention something weird that's bothered me for a few years. The Walmart in the town where I went to college has 3 Gamecube games in the case with the Wii games that they are still selling for $50. And these 3 games have been in there a while because I noticed them almost 3 years ago. Does anyone have any idea how normal that is because I think it's very very strange.
I'm wondering, what involvement did Marvelous have with LKS anyway? My PAL version shows splash screens for Red Star (the publisher on tons of niche Japanese games BTW, their mark is also present on games like Contact or No More Heroes), CING and Townfactory.
Yeah, I'm just wondering if the European sales even give them much money.
