SEGA has spoken to investors about the fact that its range of full-price games aren’t selling as much in comparison to how highly they have been rated by critics. The Japanese company acknowledges that releasing what they deem to be definitive versions of their games could be impacting launch sales of its games. Atlus is synonymous with releasing improved editions of its games a couple of years or so after launch, which could be partly to blame for the situation, with some preferring to wait it out rather than pick up a SEGA or Atlus game straightaway at launch.
“While we haven’t been able to pinpoint a precise cause of [the lower-than-expected sales performance], we believe the problem also lies in our marketing, which wasn’t able to sufficiently convey the appeal of our games to users,”
Having an upgrade path would solve this entirely. Also, shifting away from game key cards on Switch 2 would help for that console.
Well, also they didn’t even try to make Persona 3 60fps on Switch 2 when it is possible on Steam Deck. It’s definitely capable to do that at least in docked mode for Switch 2. I would have bought it right away otherwise.
Trails in the Sky is an open-worldish JRPG and they were able to accomplish 60fps there.
I heard it wasn’t even a stable 30fps.
Maybe properly optimize the game for the hardware it’s on and we’ll buy …
Wow, marketing had to feel that one!
There’s several reasons AAA games aren’t selling as well right now:
* Quality hasn’t been up to standard, although that hasn’t really been true for Sega who have been pretty solid lately.
* People simply don’t have much money, so high priced games are not a priority
* Everybody knows that most games will go on deep discounts within a year of launch. For example Metaphor: Refantazio launched just over a year ago and is now 50% off on Steam. Why pay full price? There’s a reason Nintendo don’t do this, and people say it’s anti-consumer but it’s actually respectful to their fans who buy day 1 to not discount so soon.
* You’re always competing with great indie games that are selling for $20 and under and sometimes can give hundreds of hours of fun, and also F2P games.
* You’re also competing with these now eternal libraries where you can buy many of the best games of all time for dirt cheap prices. In a sale you can buy Portal and Portal 2 for like $5 combined or something, that’s two of the best games of all time, and that’s just one example. Why would you ever need to buy these overpriced new games when you can just find gems like this?
It feels like people, developers and publishers are trying to find any reason for the current AAA crisis when it is just so obviously the above. These problems are very systemic and not easy to solve though, so it’s easier to just make up reasons like “it’s because we make Definitive Editions” as if Atlus haven’t literally always made definitive versions. But if you give a simple reason like that it’s solvable, and tells your shareholders that we know the problem, so we can fix it. But it’s not going to be that easy. It seems all of the big publishers, including Nintendo, have their head in the sand right now.
If you buy on day 1 you are paying full price for the worst version of the game. You are privileged to buy DLC but people who wait get the DLC bundled for free.
Then there are the cases where the launch version might actually be the peak of the game’s lifespan (Overwatch for instance).
Yeah, that checks out. OW2 lacks any of the charm and optimism that the original had (personally, I blame the addition of Brigitte and the onset of GOATS meta as the beginning of the games’ decline, when she broke the game so bad that 2-2-2 had to become the norm just so that couldn’t happen again).
Yep. Customers can just buy the often better and cheaper indie games, enjoy them, and wait until the AAA games go on sale and/or release the complete AKA “definitive” version
That is just dumb to say.