Bulletstorm under performs on consoles

D

defiant007

2[H]4U
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http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/8706.html

We sorta liked your crazy, over-the-top style, Bulletstorm, but sadly, your name is not "Call of Duty."

Based on the recent sales numbers, it seems the FPS that urges you to "kill with skill" isn't exactly burning up the charts. According to Cowan & Company analyst Doug Creutz, People Can Fly's in-your-face shooter has been "disappointing" thus far: it has sold around 279,000 total units on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The analyst compared that number to the impressive 790,000 tallied by Capcom's Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. It's interesting because both games in question hold just about the same average review score (about an 8.5), and one would assume that the latest, hottest shooter would hit big. But Killzone 3 sales haven't skyrocketed, either, so it appears that only one FPS is allowed to own the sales charts this generation... Then again, we shouldn't forget about that bad-ass Battlefield franchise, now should we?

But anyway, the competition continues to be extra stiff in most all categories of gaming, and it seems as if everyone is saving their money for the elite titles.
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But....but....consoles are meant to be the land of milk and honey, where every AAA release is guaranteed to sell at least a bajillion copies. :rolleyes:

This must be an isolated incident...oh wait, no it isn't:

The performance of Enslaved, however, has been dismal. Ninja Theory’s action-adventure was not a cheap project, with Hollywood writer Alex Garland and actor Andy Serkis involved and the title given a big marketing push.

Yet Namco Bandai’s financial statements show Enslaved sold just 460,000 copies in Japan, North America and Europe. By comparison Ben 10 Ultimate Alien sold 490,000 in North America and Europe combined.
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http://www.next-gen.biz/news/enslaved-sales-sour-namco-bandai-results

So much for that gaming myth. :cool:
 
Large marketing campaign with large marketing budget, involvement of renowned Hollywood screenwriter, developed using UE3, etc. Sounds like a AAA title to me.
 
defiant007 said:
Large marketing campaign with large marketing budget, involvement of renowned Hollywood screenwriter, developed using UE3, etc. Sounds like a AAA title to me.
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I guess so, I never thought of it as a AAA title personally.
 
The primary console market is casual gamers, the key to getting sales up is NOT making good games, it's marketing like crazy and appealing to the sheep like behaviour of casual gamers.

The fact is games like MW2 cost $40Mil-$50Mil to make but had a launch budget of $200Mill so just take a guess at the marketing numbers there, it's huge. The sad fact is that a 1/2 decent game will sell like a blockbuster with enough money pumped into the marketing.

Simply taking your hip new game to the consoles and abandoning the PC is not going to make you instantly rich, you need to invest many millions into marketing your product to the casual market to get Modern Warfare 2 type launch, Blops had even more spent on marketing from what I've read and the sales are approaching MW2 sales now, or has it passed now? Not sure...but anyway Blops is just as crap as MW2 if not worse so it really shows that all that matters is marketing.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
The primary console market is casual gamers, the key to getting sales up is NOT making good games, it's marketing like crazy and appealing to the sheep like behaviour of casual gamers.

The fact is games like MW2 cost $40Mil-$50Mil to make but had a launch budget of $200Mill so just take a guess at the marketing numbers there, it's huge. The sad fact is that a 1/2 decent game will sell like a blockbuster with enough money pumped into the marketing.

Simply taking your hip new game to the consoles and abandoning the PC is not going to make you instantly rich, you need to invest many millions into marketing your product to the casual market to get Modern Warfare 2 type launch, Blops had even more spent on marketing from what I've read and the sales are approaching MW2 sales now, or has it passed now? Not sure...but anyway Blops is just as crap as MW2 if not worse so it really shows that all that matters is marketing.
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A large marketing campaign isn't all you need. If people didn't like Call of Duty games, guess what? They wouldn't buy them. All the ads in the world won't continue selling a series people are sick of. Activsion learned that the hard way with Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero. Also Bulletstorm had a pretty sizable marketing campaign.
 
Does it still take 40 or 50 mil to make a COD game. They recycle the game engine, change the location and add some perks. Shouldn't it only take a team of monkeys to code the game at this point, once you have the story and voice actors? Should the cost of making a game like not come down, and give them some return on reusing old tech every year?
 
I was hoping this post would include "and here are the PC sales records! Whoaaaa!"
 
No it's not all you need, but it's certainly more important than the quality of the game, all the metacritic averages of BLOPS are lower than MW2 by a fair bit, but it's looking like it will sell more copies in the end, and they spent more on marketing it.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
No it's not all you need, but it's certainly more important than the quality of the game, all the metacritic averages of BLOPS are lower than MW2 by a fair bit, but it's looking like it will sell more copies in the end, and they spent more on marketing it.
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People really liked MW2 so its natural that BLOPS will sell well. That word spreads combined with the ads and boom. Personally I'm not a fan of the series period. MW2, BLOPS, or even the original I never understood the appeal of any of them.
 
Sure the brand/franchise holds significant weight on its own, but they would not be investing signficantly more money into marketing if wouldn't pay off. The simple fact is that even the huge amount of money spent on marketing with MW2 has not reached the tipping point where marketing costs are out weighing the extra revenue it brings in, the extra money spent on BLOPS and the resulting payoff is proof of concept.

I'm with you, I don't find these games appealing in the slightest, but I understand why, at this point they're built almost entirely for the casual gaming crowd, the divide between casual games and what I'd call "proper" games is becoming too big to ignore now, my average gaming has dropped to a few hours a week, it's sad to see that part of my life almost come to an end when it used to bring me so much happiness.
 
The facts definitely don't jibe with conventional wisdom that console games print money.
 
eh, bulletstorm may be good, but I suspect a lot of people did not find it to be $60 good....
 
Kinsaras said:
I'm with you Derangel. I loved Enslaved but I never thought it an AAA title myself. I saw zero hype for it coming out the door.
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http://www.joystiq.com/2010/08/20/namco-wants-enslaved-to-stand-out-amongst-the-crowd-will-actu/

Namco-Bandai is banking quite a bit on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, the action-adventure game from Ninja Theory -- at least, in Europe. MCV reports that Namco-Bandai has revealed it'll back the game with a massive marketing campaign leading up to its October launch, one that will even eclipse marketing efforts for the studio's previous big AAA release, Tekken 6. Big deal, thy name is Enslaved.

"We really want this title to stand out amongst the crowd as not just a brilliant gaming experience, but also as one of the greatest stories told within an interactive universe -- if it doesn't win awards then I'm going to eat my joypad," said PR and marketing manager Lee Kirton. Frankly, we don't know why he thinks eating joypads is a bad thing. How else are you supposed to get your daily allotment of plastics and dyes?
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I didnt see any ads for enslaved here either (actually i guess one or two video adds on gametrailers). Awesome game though, good story telling, great facial animations. I enjoyed it alot. It was definitly a AAA in terms of polish and looks it just didnt have the hype. It was also SP only and not super long. I am sure it lost alot of sales due to rentage.
 
wha? I don't even....

what is this thread?
No one said every game on a console is going to be a home run. That rings true for ANY system. :rolleyes:
 
I get the feeling that a great many PC gamers resent the attention that consoles games get from development studios and realise that a lot of this is down to dev studios chasing the biggest profit from the AAA titles on consoles.

All it takes is someone like Activision to make a game like CoD MW2 and get world breaking sales records, or Blizzards monthly income from MMOs and everyone is scrambling for a piece of that pie.

It's not guaranteed to make a game that sells like MW2 on the console platform but I think developers realise that its easier to do so, than on the PC platform, and more to the point it's safer, financially.
 
defiant007 said:
http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/8706.html



But....but....consoles are meant to be the land of milk and honey, where every AAA release is guaranteed to sell at least a bajillion copies. :rolleyes:

This must be an isolated incident...oh wait, no it isn't:



http://www.next-gen.biz/news/enslaved-sales-sour-namco-bandai-results

So much for that gaming myth. :cool:
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You have the potential to sell more games. It's a far larger install base you can sell to. Most PC's these days are laptops, or small desktops that can't game and there is no way to actually put a good GPU in either of them. By simple math, you'd have to be a complete idiot to target the PC world with AAA titles, there just aren't enough potential customers. And that's even before piracy.

However this doesn't mean much if your game is ass, and well... that game is ass! I didn't know anybody who was waiting for it or anybody who cares.

EPIC is a victim of their own game here, they are Gears of War, period. If they want to sell titles, they need to crank out more GoW games and stick with it.

And comparing it to MVC3 is just fucking stupid. MVC3 is based off a known franchise and it's a game that people have been nagging Capcom about for over a decade, there is no way it wasn't going to sell like gang busters.

Lessons for EPIC, don't make anything but Gears of War, that's all people know about from you. And if you are going to release a band new IP, don't do it right around the time proven titles are hitting the market, you'll be at the bottom of the list and nobody will buy it.
 
BLOPS was garbage, imo. I struggled to get through the single player without giving up on it, it was so rushed and generic. The multiplayer.. well it wasn't BFBC2 so it didn't stand a chance with me really. I played it for a weekend and was bored out of my skull with it.

Bulletstorm is hilarious, in the way that only Painkiller could manage previously. Skewering a line of bad guys against the wall with a drill bit in a spinning, shish-kebab catherine wheel of carnage had me whooping like a madman.

If it doesn't sell it's because they didn't market it and nobody is aware of how much fun it is.
 
Don't know why this is anything to celebrate. It's not like PCF is going to look at this and say "gee shucks we sure learned our lesson... next one's a PC exclusive!"

They will just try a different approach for their next multi-platform game. Or eventually they will get shut down if they can't get results.
 
drako said:
Don't know why this is anything to celebrate. It's not like PCF is going to look at this and say "gee shucks we sure learned our lesson... next one's a PC exclusive!"

They will just try a different approach for their next multi-platform game. Or eventually they will get shut down if they can't get results.
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The timing of the launch, marketing, and brand identification were all a royal mess.
 
uhh, how about finding a better website for your News OP?

You do realize they just compared MvC3 to Bulletstorm; a well known franchise to a completely new IP. And from that comparison, made some rather bold claims.

I know, let's compare Bulletstorm or Enslaved sales to Super Mario Brothers for the Wii. Look, SMB is doing better than Bulletstorm! This must mean fail for the FPS genre this year. DOOM!
 
drako said:
Don't know why this is anything to celebrate. It's not like PCF is going to look at this and say "gee shucks we sure learned our lesson... next one's a PC exclusive!"

They will just try a different approach for their next multi-platform game. Or eventually they will get shut down if they can't get results.
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It's not really about celebration, but a bit of satisfaction on the PC Gamers side, in regards to Epic. Epic was one of the first to quite clearly favor consoles over the PC, even though their roots and major hits were on the PC. Instead of realizing that they gave a pretty horrible console port in the form of UT3, to PC Gamers, they started being quite vocal about piracy on the PC and attributed their UT3 failure to it.
 
But Killzone 3 sales haven't skyrocketed, either, so it appears that only one FPS is allowed to own the sales charts this generation... Then again, we shouldn't forget about that bad-ass Battlefield franchise, now should we?
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I hope this is a sign that the FPS boom might be coming to an end. Until some real innovation comes along again, I'd be happy to see FPS games disappear for a while. I grew up playing FPS games on the PC but since they became big on consoles it's felt like the genre has become pretty stagnant. I feel the genre really needs a Half-Life 3 or something new and completely original at the moment.
 
Silus said:
It's not really about celebration, but a bit of satisfaction on the PC Gamers side, in regards to Epic. Epic was one of the first to quite clearly favor consoles over the PC, even though their roots and major hits were on the PC. Instead of realizing that they gave a pretty horrible console port in the form of UT3, to PC Gamers, they started being quite vocal about piracy on the PC and attributed their UT3 failure to it.
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Major hits :rolleyes:

They had one franchise, Unreal, that they fucked and ran into the ground. Unreal was amazing, the first Quake clone that actually stacked up. Unreal Tournament was also amazing and is still played. Unreal Tournament 2003 was a horrible pile of shit that took a ton of steps in the wrong direction. Unreal 2 was "WTF" but not horrible. Unreal Tournament 2004 was more garbage that didn't actually fix what was wrong with UT2003 and then noobed the crap out of the games with vehicles and Onslaught as a game mode.

They had been failing on every game after UT99 and the only "quality" item they had was a good game engine, that just about everybody used.

Then came UT3, which again tried to fix some of the things wrong with the franchise, and then screwed it up even more by having even more vehicles and idiocy in it. It was a bad at creating a good Unreal game and an equally bad attempt at creating Battlefield UT.

It wasn't that UT3 was a console port, it's that they have been making worse and worse Unreal games with each iteration, while making better and better engines. The fact that it was way to demanding system spec wise didn't help things either.

By comparison, Gears of War was actually a good game. Blaming piracy is stupid, they ran their franchise that was nothing more than a Quake clone into the ground by trying to clone other sucessfull games into the mix at the same time, oh well. And then when confronted with the fact decided to concentrate on a franchise that they hadn't made a disaster out of.
 
The analyst compared that number to the impressive 790,000 tallied by Capcom's Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds.
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The analyst should now be out of a job because they're retarded. Comparing "another shooter" to a fighting game a lot of people (myself included) have been waiting 11 yrs for is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. Bulletstorm has it's quirks, pros and cons, but at it's core it's a shooter. Not trying to sound negative, but it's a shooter in a realm of a lot of shooters on 360, Ps3 and PC.

jiminator said:
eh, bulletstorm may be good, but I suspect a lot of people did not find it to be $60 good....
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I enjoyed the demo but I'm not paying more than bargain bin $20 or less for Bulletstorm.
The gist of the game is the over the top skill kill stuff and TBH I don't see much longevity or long term appeal with that, not enough to make a full game of it with a short single player campaign, some multiplayer, and a full $59.99 MSRP price tag. I didn't really care for the over the top main character either; it's like they're trying to make him a [H]ardass and it just comes off as corny and stupid IMHO.

There are better traditional shooters that have better single and multiplayer modes that can be bought nowadays for 1/2 the price (or less). I think the game had an uphill battle before it was even released, but that's just my $0.02 cents.
 
If your GF dumps you for another guy and the guy then cheats on her, you don't go around posting on facebook, however much schadenfreude it gives you. It's a waste of time. Go look for other fish.
 
I'm not sure why the original article feels that COD is the only franchise that can do well. Consoles also have Halo and GOW, both are exceedingly successful. I think what should be taken from this is that the current market wants "gritty" military type shooters (even GOW and Halo behave similar to military shooters, despite being set in the future). Medal of Honor had terrible reviews and reception, but financially it still did well. Battlefield does well. One reason for this could be that the current focus of the world is on real military conflicts. You contrast this with space sims, and the lack of interest in space exploration these days, means the genre in entertainment has lack of interest as well.

Kwisatz Haderach said:
Does it still take 40 or 50 mil to make a COD game. They recycle the game engine, change the location and add some perks. Shouldn't it only take a team of monkeys to code the game at this point, once you have the story and voice actors? Should the cost of making a game like not come down, and give them some return on reusing old tech every year?
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Art assets (not just visual) and licensing costs (to some extent) make up the bulk costs of most modern AAA games. I believe on average approximately 2/3 of a development teams staff is devoted to the art portion compared to other aspects in general. Compare say the writing, character art design, modeling, voice acting, and etc. that went into the main character of Black Ops (whoever he is, I dunno) versus the "doom guy" from Doom. Gamers nowadays have different expectations in this area.

I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of these budget going into art, and how it impacts a game. For instance in terms of graphics, the technical aspect of a game, the coding, basically only determines what you can put in visually. You need the art portion to actually take advantage of it, which is what these large game budgets allow. If you say have a genius programming team and make a game engine that can handle 50000 polygon characters with fluid life like animation, but you hire one graphics artist and animator with minimal experience, your game will still end up looking like junk.
 
simpsons_nelson_haha3.jpg
 
limitedaccess said:
I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of these budget going into art, and how it impacts a game. For instance in terms of graphics, the technical aspect of a game, the coding, basically only determines what you can put in visually. You need the art portion to actually take advantage of it, which is what these large game budgets allow. If you say have a genius programming team and make a game engine that can handle 50000 polygon characters with fluid life like animation, but you hire one graphics artist and animator with minimal experience, your game will still end up looking like junk.
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Very true. I think a large part of the reason for UE3's dominance in this generation is the fact that Epic has some really talented art designers. I remember first buying UT2k3/4 and marveling at the design of some of the levels. They make the Unreal Engine look worlds better than other engines just because they have great art in their presentations, regardless of whether it is actually better technically.
 
Finkus said:
If it doesn't sell it's because they didn't market it and nobody is aware of how much fun it is.
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there was a pretty good run of marketing. I've seen TV ads everyother day for about the past two months. Magazine previews, internet video previews/interviews and promo videos.


I think the problem is just that the console version is a pile.

The console demo has the most blatant auto-aim I've seen in a game in a long time. I dunno if the final game is as bad or not, but a big slogan for the game is "Kill With Skill". Yet, you need no skill to aim. Kick a guy into bullet time (which causes the enemy to hang in the air for several seconds), press action button for a snap-to-shoot. You don't need to aim the whip thing. Just press the action button in the general direction of the enemies and you wrangle one automatically. The scatter gun just needs to be pointed in an enemie's general direction for it to wrap itself around. Its boring and takes not thought, concentration, skill------its completely empty, slow, lazy. On top of that, I was running around soaking up bullets and literally running circles around the enemies. Going right up to them, etc.

Epic has not taken the time to update on the latest ways to squeeze the PS3, so its lacking important graphical effects and generally runs worse on top of that, when there is no reason for it. Huge strides have been made during the past two years in understanding the PS3 and how best to utilize it.



sd11 said:
Unreal Tournament 2004 was more garbage.
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I don't want to derail, but I think you are going to have a hard time finding a lot of people that hate UT2K4. It may be true that the classic game modes lacked something in comparison to UT and Quake III (which are the finest distilled examples of their kind), but the other modes were amazing, especially in a LAN setting.
 
Games like Homefront and Bulletstorm will not sell as well as a COD for a few reasons.

They do not already have a player base; and their SP is not that great. So you are dropping $60 for a 5-10 hour experience that is not that fun.

And all of your friends are not going to drop $60 to play the MP.

So buy COD, all your friends buy COD, play MP together for 6 months, then wait for next COD. (somewhere in there spend 10-20 on DLC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
 
I wonder how this game did on the PC. I actually like this game and it works pretty well with 3D Surround. Personally I can't get enough of shooters.
 
jiminator said:
eh, bulletstorm may be good, but I suspect a lot of people did not find it to be $60 good....
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This is how I felt too. I think it might have sold better if people could not access the demo which was short and not terribly impressive. $60 for a 6 hour long game with crappy co-op and no competitive multiplayer is steep. Plus I think they tried way too hard to fill the game with testosterone and immature content.
 
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