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.

its the economy.  plain and simple.

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.

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.

If they think their ports to PS360 will sell better, this will happen sooner or later.

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)

Gee, with that attitude I can't see why developers wouldn't want to come develop for our fanbase.

It's a horrible element that I saw fester during the N64 days. That, and Nintendo's 'hardcore' is slowly becoming more annoying the Final Fantasy's entire fanbase.

Can't do much about it.

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 also forgot that they also didn't or couldn't afford to advertise heavily.
Nintendo is trying to rectify this problem, but for some it may be too late.

This news story is a little strange to me, for what ShyGuy notes.  The games Marvelous developed aren't exactly high-budget titles, and don't seem like they'd take very long to create.  If they're costing more than a few million dollars to make, then something is a little fishy about their pay schemes, publication costs, or work processes.  The numbers these titles are putting up don't seem all that bad, and the man-power it seems would be required seemingly should be justified.

So what's the real problem here?  I don't believe Marvelous is being candid at all, except about sales volume, which to my eyes, seems satisfactory.

Of course I'm not an expert, but aren't these numbers close to what we saw with No More Heroes initial numbers, which had a much higher production cost and marketing budget?  The game had legs, longer legs than these might have, but it's cost decreased quickly and dramatically, too, to balance out.  In the end, VGChartz says it sold about .45 million since launch, so I suppose that's more, but like I said, the price was reduced quickly, and it had a good-sized marketing budget.

This is weird news, really.

It's a niche game with no appeal, that's why.  The same with all of Marvelous and other third party games that have failed on the Wii.

Even though Little King Story is a great game and all, who exactly is the audience?  The average person once they see the artstyle to the game and the name, is going to think it's something for young kids and ignore it.  Not to mention any young kid who see it will just ignore it since they have no idea what it's about.

In the end the only people who knew anything about it was the internet gaming crowd who only makes up an extremly small percentage of the total gaming population.

Valhalla Knights is supposedly crap. I didn't get LKS because I got Pikmin 2 around the same time and didn't want two games that are that similar at once. No interest in Muramasa because I didn't like Odin Sphere and I didn't really have an opportunity to buy ARF.

It's hard to know what to make of this.  Marvelous makes spectacularly niche games so it's not surprising they haven't sold well.  Some companies like Atlus can get away with doing that, but Atlus has been very strong for years now in generating interest and excitement in their fanbase.  I look at a Marvelous game, and it just screams "budget title, get it later for cheaper" because Marvelous hasn't done a damn thing to convince me that the game's worth buying now.  Maybe Marvelous might want to look at adopting Atlus' business strategy of only producing a certain number of their games to increase demand by decreasing supply.

Still, you'd think given the low budget nature of these titles that Marvelous would be doing better than it is.  I kind of wonder if they're just blowing smoke to try to scare people into buying their games for fear of losing support on the console.

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.

I thought Wii dev costs were cheap as well. How different is deving for Wii versus PSP? Shouldn't be much different cost-wise because everyone else seems to think they are sister systems and port games from one to the other all the time.

I didn't even realize Valhalla Knights was out until I saw it for sale on Amazon. There are ways to get word of your game out without expensive add campaigns. Working with news sites to make nterviews, play tests and developer diaries can help a lot as well. No word about a game means low profile in gamers minds and people miss them completely.

It states in the article that LKS sold the best.

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.

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.

I'm not whining about poor sales, though, Pap.  I've heard of at least one game that's sold numbers like this, at least looked like it cost more to produce, and was a moderate success.  That's what bothers me.  These aren't unsuccessful numbers for this type of game.  It might cost a few million, at the most, to make these games, but even that's pushing it.  These aren't titles that typically take much time, nor resources to create, and should have expected these numbers.  There was virtually no marketing.  I don't see where the cost is.  I truly believe something is being withheld here, that there's some type of dishonesty being presented, given what's presented to us here.

No other game was released across all three regions.

Agreed. Notice how the Harvest Moon sales are Year-to-Date and 'came out earlier this year' while Muramasa has been out, what? A month or two?

NPD placed Muramasa at 56k if I recall and so Japanese 46k + NA 56k = 104k. Muramasa sold more than LKS excluding the PAL region. So Muramasa performed better than Harvest Moon. Also note certain XSeed published titles like Rune Factory are not on the list even though Marvelous had a hand with that game as well.

Off the top of my head, I'd like to know how many copies of Muramasa sold in the US.  Additionally, if the game hasn't been released in all territories, are they really utilizing a publishing process that's designed to maximize sales?  To me, this press release left me with the impression that the sales of these titles was virtually over.

Expensive niche games with no advertising?  Give me a break.

With the promotion side of things in the gutter, these games were made for the sake of existing, not for the sake of making money.

Not only must your products compete, your marketing has to compete.

It was 36,000 for NPD, not 56,000

The only number that was left off this list was Vanhalla Knights sales in Japan, which are around 10,000 units.  Here's a handy chart for everyone.



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

Looks like only one real failure there: Valhalla Knights.

Muramasa will probably hit 100k at least. Holiday will probably boost it's tail end of sales.

Thanks for the chart and clarification, Vudu.

You're welcome!  I agree that it was hard to read the information in paragraph form.  Charts are great!  ;D

No, Muramasa's US sales were left off the list, too, vudu.  It means there were two numbers left off the list Marvelous spoke about.

To the me, I'd think absence would mean negligible sales, but that isn't the case.  36,000 sold isn't a small number.  Then, seeing that only one game has been released across all three region makes me wonder if this statement wasn't an attempt to hide that Marvelous has been inept at delivering their content to the region they've had highest sales success in so far.  When you present it in chart form, the absence of releases in Europe shows poor planning and management.

Like I said, something was wrong, and your chart helps solidify that idea:  Why aren't titles being released in Europe, where, apparently, they've been the most successful?

Edit:  Additionally, this news comes on the heel of the announcement of No More Heroes being ported to the 360 and PS3.  Wasn't that speculated from the release of the game on the Wii, and ever since then?  Marvelous is behind the port, as far as I'm aware, and the delay in progressing said port forward also raises questions.  No More Heroes was released in 2007.  If a company believed it could be successful on another platform, waiting three years to release a port really seems like a bad business decision... And even if there were strategic purpose, wouldn't you want to time the release to either be simultaneous to it's sequel's release, or perhaps even a month or two before it?

Literally, what I'm trying to say is that at least the big-budget guys have somewhat reasonable complaints.  They offer games that have higher production values, market them, and attempt to be competitive.  The circumstance here is different.  Rather than getting the games to as many hands as possible, they've cut off their most successful region.  Rather than making a simple port available as a reaction to the marketplace, they wait to release it to what could be the least optimal time possible.  If I were a share-holder, I'd be calling for the CEO's head, observing this.  This is bad business, especially for a publicly traded company.

Muramasa was supposed to hit Europe this week but got delayed.  Not sure when it's coming out but it shouldn't be too much longer.  ARF hasn't been localized to English yet and Valhalla Knights doesn't seem like it's going to be worth bringing to Europe based on the critical reception and initial sales.

Correct, for some reason Marvelous did not disclose US numbers for Muramasa.

Also, two of the PSP games were visual novels, one was a remix of an existing game, and one was a sequel that re-used an existing engine.  All very cheap to make.  The Wii games were much more ambitious (and costly, apparently).

I think the reason they didn't release US numbers is Ignition got the Muramasa publishing rights cheap for a flat rate (no residual?) so Ignition makes all the money off sales.

Is that the same case with Rune Factory? Because XSeed had a hand in LKS and Valhalla Knights coming out in North America but Rune Factory is strangely absent. I am repeatedly bringing up this point because Marvelous has their name on the front of the box while XSeed's logo is relegated to the back. It may be similar to why Muramasa's NA numbers are not listed or it could be negligence in the article or even an attempt to mask the true facts since RF is reportedly having consistent and decent sales even now.

If VK was never ported, they would've saved some money.

If XSEED had money, they might've marketed their games with substantial material.

Last I heard, RFF was a niche success despite the absence of marketing.

Well, Niche did say "marketing is dead."

The play style is very similar to Pikmin. Anyone who liked Pikmin would probably like this as well. In fact, in some ways I thought it was even better than Pikmin. It is very unfortunate if people mistakenly believe the game is "kiddie" and then dismiss it without giving it a chance, but if that is the case why would they be Wii owners in the first place? Nintendo has long been criticized as being "kiddie", so anyone who owns a Wii you would think would be above that nonsense...

Anyway, has everyone on this forum done their part? I strongly recommend the game to anyone who likes Pikmin or Harvest Moon type stuff... if that happens to be you, then buy the game so that the sales figures imrprove. And be sure to tell your friends.

"Done our part"?  Since when is it our job to do Marvelous' marketing for them?  If they don't want to put the funds into making sure that the general public knows about their game, as far as I'm concerned let them die.  Their list of titles hasn't exactly wowed me so far (especially Muramasa), outside of what I've heard of Little King Story.

I don't have any of these games but Muramasa is the only one I've considered getting.  It had the unfortunate bad luck of coming out around the same time as the PS3 Slim, so I bought that and Muramasa has just sort of slipped through the cracks.  If I don't buy a game when it comes out then it just sort of falls into a "I'll get it when it's cheap" scenario.

Though this does create an obvious problem with Wii third party support.  They all just shit the bed so bad at first and dicked us around and it ruined the trust between Wii owners and them.  I'm not saying Marvelous did this but the whole situation is such that all third parties are lumped together.  For YEARS whenever I bitched on this board about the weak lineup of games on the Wii I was told to buy another console and a lot of the people on this board owned another console.  It was like that's how it works: if you're a core gamer you own a Wii for Nintendo's games and one of the other consoles to make up for the crappy Wii third party selection.

Now that I own a PS3, I don't pay as much attention to the Wii aside from Nintendo's own stuff.  Why pay attention to Wii third party efforts that SUCK 99% of the time when the PS3 is FULL of great third party games?  Once I bought that second console the Wii became my "Nintendo game console" and the PS3 is the focus for everything else.  And lots of core gamers have this setup.  I was told to go to this setup.  I complained that one shouldn't have to buy a second console and everyone brushed that off.  It's like you're either super die-hard Wii fan that's willing to give everything a chance or you're a jaded Wii owner that has found something else and the Wii grabs your attention only when something big comes out that you can't miss.

And Marvelous doesn't make those kinds of games that grab the attention of people that weren't paying attention already. If the Wii userbase has a lot of people that own another console, then it's just all the more harder for a third party to grab their attention and get the sale.  They turned us away with their crappy con-man bullshit and now they bitch because they can't grab our attention with decent but not extravagant games.

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.

I convinced somebody to get Little King's Story so I guess you could say I "did my part".

Ian, I'm very sure you'd like Little King's Story.

PS3 is full of great 3rd party games.  Of course Ian doesn't truly know that cuz he hasn't tried them.

LKS is a great 3rd party game.  Ian won't know that cuz it's automatically part of the 99% Wii 3rd party crap he won't try.

Ian, you will be missing out on a great game if you don't check out Little King's Story. You mentioned before you like Pikmin, and this game is very similar in some respects.

I hope they port Half-minute Hero to a Nintendo platform.

I was going to reply with something flippant like "there's only so much Harvest Moon we can take" but Marvellous really are a quality indy publisher and it's a shame tos ee them struggle.

I wasn't saying they were bad games, although I guess you could say I was weakly implying it. As far as marketing goes Little King Story was the one that i got interested in the most. What I am saying though is if you're not going to make games that sell themselves then your not going to have sales. Its a difficult thing to do if you don't have recognizable IPs, but usually brand recognition comes before IP recognition. I am a huge Zelda fan, but I hadn't played any Zelda games until Ocarina of time. A little marketing, and some mario/nintendo love led to Zelda love. Either the company is going to set all of its focus onto making one hit game that gets them brand recognition or they aren't going to have any hits at all. Both Square and Nintendo had these problems at first. Before Square made Final Fantasy they were a sorta shitty company that made lame titles. Nintendo was the same way with Radar Scope, and licensed Popeye games..until Donkey Kong they were nobody. All the games that Marvelous didn't sell well they shouldnt have wasted the resources on development, instead they should have focused that money on marketing. It is easy to criticize from the outside though. The World of Goo guys are probably making bank though.

What would you have had them do?  I may be wrong but marketing isn't effective as it used to be.  I don't listen to the radio, and I use a DVR to record all my shows, so I don't watch commercials.  I haven't seen a 360, PS3, or Wii ad in ages.  The only reason I know games exist is because I look for them on the internet.  It's easy to cherry pick and say they weren't advertised, but have niche games like this ever been advertised?  While they didn't sell great their high end probably wasn't much higher and you want them to throw $10M dollars into an ad campaign? 

It makes me sad actually.  Everytime a third company says this, I come on here and see everyone ripping on that company.  It didn't sell because a. advertising, b. port of PS3/360 game, c. niche game d. released too close to Nintendo game.  There's some truth to each one, but I rarely hear third parties complain about 360/PS3 games and this just means less support for the Wii going forward.  There are also two big problems plauging the Wii.  a.  There is a large portion of people that bought it only for Wii Sports and Wii Fit, and b. There is a large portion that also own a PS3/360 and would rather buy games for that.  Hope this doesn't mean Wii 2 (or whatever they call it) will have this dismal of support because Sony and Microsoft will have gimmicks ready for the next round.

If Maramusa drops in price, I'll definately pick it up. The gameplay might be shallow, but the art direction blows my mind.

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. This spreads out the game's tail, but means that initial payback is much less. Marvelous will make money on LKS and Maramusa, it'll just take a little while.

I'm actually saying that in this case, they're development process must be broken and overly expensive, causing them to hemorrhage money, if those sales numbers didn't produce profits.

There's a difference.  Literally, I believe there's something seriously broken with the company for them to make this announcement with those numbers.  Muramasa, while fun to play, literally felt like an ambitious flash game.  There were about ten different random enemies, maybe fifteen.  In every area, art assets were reused.  Voice acting was used sparingly.  Fighting and battle mechanics weren't complicated.  There were several bosses, yes, but most were simple, and didn't have very complicated animations.  Maybe Muramasa is the game they profited from, but if it wasn't, I'm stating that their design process is definitely more expensive than it needs to be.  By far more expensive than it should be.

So in essence, in this case, I really feel like Marvelous is trying to blame the Wii's niche market in this, especially with their comparison to those PSP titles.  Given that I get that feeling, when I see strong numbers for low-budget niche games, I do grow a little irate.

While I do think there are things that a company like EA could do to produce more sales, I know with niche games that isn't always possible.  I know that these games were released in relatively open periods of time.  I know they couldn't spend much, or even any, on advertising.  I also know that no one with a PS3 or 360 would buy these games for $40, but maybe for $10 or even $15 as downloadable games.

And that's what bugs me.  Marvelous should know that, too.  What numbers were they expecting, exactly?  What was the budget of these games, so we can compare the development cost to the sales volume?  At a shareholders meeting, I'd be asking these questions, and I'm surprised they weren't answered.  Truthfully, I don't think these games could have been successful on any platform, if they weren't successful on the Wii, with those sales numbers.  That's assuming they were selling the same game on those other platforms.  If they were to sell a higher number of copies, the price would have to be lower, but I doubt they'd sell enough to make up the gap for the dropped price.

Like I've said repeatedly, with games like these, what kind of numbers do you expect?  I still believe they sold well, and that the number sold should have resulted in a profit.  The fact that they didn't make a profit is a testament to development costs, not poor numbers sold.

BOOM Headshot! Couldn't have said it better myself, this thread is over.

I want to know if XSeed is making a profit off of these titles. LKS was a joint venture (along with Valhalla Knights I believe) but XSeed has voiced that they have been pleased with sales numbers for their Wii Games.

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.

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.

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.

It helps a lot if you know what you're looking for before you even enter the store. You can go on various sites such as this one before hand and read reviews and hear what other players have to say, and then you can get a good idea of what titles are worth looking into.

Where'd you hear the "average" cost, and beyond that, and why would you think every developer expects over 100k in sales?  There are so many low-budget Wii games out there, it's incredible.

That might be to earn a million dollars in profit, providing a standard cost of game production, but 100k in sales generates four million dollars of revenue for a $40 game, and five million for a fifty dollar game.  While we don't know the actual production cost, we can expect that the game didn't cost as much as the typical game does, since they're lower budget niche games.  The shipping charges and the retailer's cut can't be too high, since they ship in bulk and the margins from new video games tend to be very low, hence why used games are GS's bread winners.  So, depending on the price sold, 100K would bring in somewhere around 3 million dollars of revenue, higher for a $50 tag, perhaps a little lower for a $40 one.

The issue becomes murky when there's multiple publishers in each region, like with many of Marvelous's game.  It's not clear who developed the game, from my perspective.  If Marvelous provided the development or payed for the cost of development, then I would believe that they'd have control of the license, and should have profited from selling said license to other publishers for other regions, too.  If they didn't, then, as a publisher, they would have had to bought the rights for whichever regioin they chose to publish in.  This is another place where bad business can enter into play, since buying over-valued rights would just be a mistake, and selling them under-valued would also be an issue.  Chances are, this is where the money would have had to have been lost, if anywhere, I suppose, because these games have sold enough copies across all regions that you'd expect a profit to be turned.

Anyways, a game I've spoken with a few developers about appeared on the Xbox360 initially, Jason Hillhouse, over at PixlBit is someone who worked on it, and I went to high school with another guy who was lead programmer.  The project was completely funded by their publisher, SouthPeak Games, and sold about 77k, according to VGChartz.  Last I had heard, sales of the game earned SouthPeak a few million dollars in profits, but that was from the last time I spoke with the guy I knew, and before SouthPeak even decided to port the game to the PS3.  While the game was no masterpiece, it still had a full story campaign and various online modes.  It featured a full voice cast, albeit of nobodies from a college town.  I suppose you could say I'm comparing what I know about that game to what we're being told about these from Marvelous, and I still don't believe things add up, given that knowledge.

What numbers does Atlus usually go for? D3P has a gigantic pile of games where selling 100k is a rare achievement (AFAIK the only Simple Series game to break the 200k barrier was EDF2).

Digital distribution is niche and most people simply won't buy a game like that. You'd hurt your sales more than you could make up for with steady prices.

Well, I got Little King's Story after seeing it in a bargain bin for 20€ even though I don't really have space on my gaming schedule or any real desire for the game.

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 saw a similar thing at a Target during the N64-Gamecube shift. There were a few N64 games that very nearly sat on the shelf to the Wii's launch. I think it may be some managers are cheap and won't discount the games and they may have figured that as time went by someone was bound to come by and get it. Demand and value for some old games does go up so maybe they used that logic.

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'.

Agreed.  I believe last time I checked to see if these games were still there (it's like a compulsion if I happen to be in town and at the Walmart) they also had those stickers on them.  I started laughing and the lost-looking mom next to me gave me a weird look.  I then offered to help her since she looked so lost and she seemed to like me better then.  I still think the 'Plays on Wii!' stickers are funny, but that's because I would probably stick them on Wii games to see if anyone noticed.

I understand that compulsion. I tend to go and look at game racks in stores to see what old games are still there. I did it with players guides as well but got bored of it. Now I also look at certain titles I am hoping sell well and trying to gauge if they are selling or not.

Sometime I'm tempted to buy those old last-gen games if it is a title I missed that I had wanted to get. On occasion the store caves and lowers their price. I know that the full NPD actually tracks ALL system game sales because I saw a complete leaked list once and at the bottom were old gen before last games selling 1-5 copies.

Quite awhile ago, I read somewhere online on some blog or something about someone having seen brand new NES games for sale at Kmart for $40 and they asked the store if it was some mistake or something, and apparently it wasn't. This had to have been in the late 90s or early 2000s, so it was quite awhile ago, but that was still a weird time for new NES games to still be on store shelves. Considering they never lowered the price, that's probably why no one ever bought it. I doubt its still there on the shelves, but who knows?

Stores would rather sell off assets for abysmal prices to liquidation companies than give customers a better value.  At least, inept stores that do things like that, I should say.  I'd imagine the Wal-Mart she mentioned has Oodama, Baiten Kaitos Origins, and some game that currently evades my mind on sale, still.  My closest Wal-Mart does, at least.

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.

I think they are the publisher. Not sure... I've seen the Cing and some other splash screens on the startup too, but I don't really pay too much attention to that stuff.

Marvelous was the publisher in Japan.

Marvelous paid the bills.

In any case, regardless of who made it, it is a decent game...

Yeah, I'm just wondering if the European sales even give them much money.

Why would you say that? Is this a money matter with the value of the Euro vs Yen vs Dollar or are you considering the cost of making the game be PAL friendly?

I mean because someone else published it here.

Ah, so that might explain why they didn't mention those numbers in this press release.

Maybe Marvelous should take the Evony game ad approach to advertising.  I'm not into those types of games at all.  And I despise their lowest common denominator approach to advertising.  Yet.  I find the ads working.  I'm very closing to playing the game.  There's just something about those pictures, calling me, beckoning me, I don't want to disappoint t them.

The only reason I got my copy of LKS is because I seen it on Amazon for a good price and it had really great reviews, so those two factors convinced me to get it. But I never seen any commercials for it, and probably wouldn't even have been aware of its existence otherwise.

See, that's the issue. I was able to find it and got a cool game, but 99% of consumers will never know this game even existed. You can't rely on word of mouth alone to sell a game, and word of mouth will only work if someone had actually knew about it in the first place.