Marvelous Entertainment stuff
Marvelous Entertainment also made a post on the staff blog for Little King’s Story where they mentioned that games such as No more heroes, Rune Factory F, Oboromuramasa, Arc Rise Fantasia etc were all games that they have tried their best to make under very limited time and budget but all of these games have experienced similar shipment numbers, all of which are not very high. And he feels like crying.
But the writer also adds that despite the current bad market, games that sell are still selling really well, so it’s probably just a lack of ability on Marvelous Entertainment’s part.
They’re asking interested people to pre-order their upcoming game Little King’s Story, as it is apparently getting very little pre-orders, and retailers won’t even take their game for display in the shop if the pre-orders are bad.
Also Marvelous Entertainment related, they had a Q&A for their annual report which listed their average development costs for the high end consoles, and how European price protection schemes are killing them.
Q: It appears your company is making games for the high end game consoles such as the PS3 and the Xbox360, how much are the development costs and how much do you expect to sell? And what kind of game genres are you currently developing games for?
A: Development costs, on average, currently cost 50 to 60 million yen (US$600,000) for a PS2 title, and a PSP title would cost about 120 million yen (US$1,200,000). But for the high end game consoles it would cost about 3 times the amount of what it costs to make a PSP title. Just to recoup the development costs, we would need to sell at least 100,000 copies per title. As for the game genre, we are currently making action games and RPG-like games.
Q: The effects of the economic downturn is causing retailers to run low on funds and causing game prices to drop. How does your company plan to deal with these risks?
A: We have not seen much of the effects of the economic downturn in Japan, but we have been affected greatly overseas. Especially in Europe, where the retailers drop prices without informing the maker. And they would claim the price difference from the maker later, almost as if that is the way that everything is supposed work. We’re already charging extra to cover costs for the price protection, but past late last year the prices have dropped below what can be covered by the amount, badly affecting the profits for our subsidiary in Britain. For the current financial year, we’re starting to take more money to compensate for price protection.
Via: Marvelous Entertainment Annual Report 2009 (pdf)
June 16th, 2009 at 12:01 am
They lack marketing skills
The only ones who will buy these games are gamers that are already fans
The average gamer probably never even heard of these titles
Once again it’s not about how skillful you are (although that is important) It’s how skillful you are at getting other people to know that you have skills
June 16th, 2009 at 12:08 am
(continued)
They also have to consider that their main base seems to be the Wii and a huge bulk of Wii gamers are casuals who are don’t pay attention to videogame news. They’ll hear about the new Wii Sports Resorts but it’s going to be hard to market these games to this base.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:39 am
I’m pretty glad that European prices like to drop down sharply once in a while. 50-60e is a bit to steep for a game, big name title or not. Thankfully, retailers are much more selective about pricing now and new niche games cost around 30e now (there’s not much of a price drop after that though :/).
Or at least that’s the case in rip-off Ireland (might be a celtic tiger effect).
June 16th, 2009 at 2:56 am
I still feel bad for Marvelous Entertainment, just like how I feel bad for other people who make good games that don’t sell.
But what, Little King’s Story is already released in EU? When did that happen?!
June 16th, 2009 at 10:48 am
@Anon above
It’s outrageous that Europe gets one in [insertlargenumberhere] titles a bit earlier, isn’t it ? The cheek of them…
June 16th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
mmm PR video having english voices but the game is in japanese…. and in douga no less…. but the only games i liked from MMV was luminous arc <_< so far…
June 16th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
They also have to consider that their main base seems to be the Wii and a huge bulk of Wii gamers are casuals who are don’t pay attention to videogame news.
The problem is you’re assuming 1. that gamers on 360/PS3 would be more likely to buy these games (the relatively pathetic sales of Viva Pinata which had a huge, huge marketing push go a long way to putting the kabosh on the theory) and 2. that the dev budgets for the games would increase dramatically, thus requiring even more copies to be sold. Marvelous simply can’t afford to spend the money required to compete on 360/PS3, period.
I tend to agree w/ the first part of your post, however: the marketing just isn’t there and even the specialist media doesn’t really give these games the time of day anymore (except in the case of No More Heroes) since they’re too busy covering Halo 3 (and its other, super-hyped, brethren) to the detriment of the smaller, more art-house, titles out there. (It also doesn’t help that the specialist media has it out for the Wii, which makes getting coverage that much more difficult.)
June 16th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
@kcr
No, I’m actually from Europe, it’s just that I’ve really been looking forward to that game, and it just slipped me by unnoticed like this.
June 16th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
japan=portable land
June 17th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Stop making games for the wii then, and start making WAGGLAN. You’ll sell trillions
June 17th, 2009 at 8:43 am
oboro muramasa almost made me get a Wii for one game.
Almost.
June 17th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Oboro Muramasa is the only good game on Wii.
Oh, and Super Mario Galaxy.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
buuu, buuu… cry more
if a girly shitty pos like “King’s Story” was a 360@ps3 game = 0 sales
man up cry baby. make real games. ( i dont mean 360/ ps3 games they are also shit)
June 18th, 2009 at 12:00 am
the problem is games especially wii games need marketing since the bulk of their audience dont surf game sites and small companies like marvelous cant afford expensive marketing tv ads are out the question. actually in europe it is Rising Star who publish most of their games but they are a small entity too. Its sad but competing with well marketed nintendo titles and third party junk is just too much. I think the only way for niche titles to succeed is for the developer to have a mass market title to raise funds for it, in the same way sega uses sonic to pay for more experimental stuff like the superb valkyria chronicles.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:48 am
Oboro Muramasa isn’t a good game. It’s a very pretty and stylish game, but not a good one.
June 28th, 2009 at 3:41 am
I’m sure the problem lies in ability just as what the writer of Marvelous Entertainment stuff commented. I played all of their games, but honestly I would say they lack appeal in all fields, just mediocre if I say, cannot be more. If they could get streaks of good games just twice or thrice.. I’m sure, the market will gain them favor. Well, the rest is marketing ability after you got ability..