DmC: Devil May Cry

[Deserticedragon]

I always feel a little bad waiting for games to get cheaper, especially when they don't do well. I like when companies are successful with games I have an interest in but I guess it's somewhat on them for not making me want it more than X game i chose over it.



A lot of it may have to do with the fact that it's an established IP they are working with even though it's a reboot.

I know what you mean, like i REALLY know. Nero was a clever rendition for the devil may cry he was like a clever rendition of a younger dante. and im not gonna lie i love Nero an i blame Jonny Young Bosch hes such a good voice actor

[Hector Garfria]

[shadowedge]

I guess I'll post these here since its relevant. DmC's week 3 UK numbers are in, and it's out of the top 10 all together now.

http://ukie.info/content/ukie-week-0...o-games-charts

And (as you can see by the Dtoid article about RE6 being a failure), Capcom updated their expectations for DmC again by now lowering it down to 1.2 million units (this is the third time they've revised & lowered expectations).

I'm fully aware I've been harder on this game than a lot of other people have, but even I'm really stunned how poorly the game is selling.

1.2 million units at $60 each is $72,000,000. Did this game cost close to that much to make? Is the 1.2 million units their break even amount?

[Arttemis]

Capcom doesn't get the full $60 for each sale. Generally, retailers buy then from publishers for about $30 a copy. Also, the licensing fees to release their game on consoles, and that can be $3-10 per game. Then there's the advertisement campaign, which can cost millions.

[Wry Guy]

Yeah, the actual costs of getting a game on the shelves are ridiculous. From my days at GameStop not too long ago the amount of profit you netted from selling a new game was 4-5 dollars on a good day.

I somehow doubt Capcom sees a much higher return themselves if the retailers are paying 30 dollars per copy.

And as much as some fans want to take credit for the game doing poorly because "Capcom hath angered us," there's also the fact that game franchises have a history of slowing down in sales when sequels are released late in a console's life span.

How many copies of a game do you really expect to sell when it's the fifth entry, near the end of the console's life span when sales in general have been dropping steadily year after year, IN THE SLOWEST PERIOD OF THE YEAR.

January and February are so uneventful that few people even pay attention to the games industry and are less inclined to spend money on games even if they were kind of excited for them. Everyone has all their holiday games still. There's no pressing need to obtain further entertainment, especially for the flurry of students returning to school with tight wallets.

[SephirothX]

If Trev's still following this thread, I'm conceding an "I told you so" moment. VGChartz went back and revised their DmC numbers now that the NPD data is out (granted, they ended up lowering their numbers, but still).

Yeah, the actual costs of getting a game on the shelves are ridiculous. From my days at GameStop not too long ago the amount of profit you netted from selling a new game was 4-5 dollars on a good day.

I somehow doubt Capcom sees a much higher return themselves if the retailers are paying 30 dollars per copy.

And as much as some fans want to take credit for the game doing poorly because "Capcom hath angered us," there's also the fact that game franchises have a history of slowing down in sales when sequels are released late in a console's life span.

How many copies of a game do you really expect to sell when it's the fifth entry, near the end of the console's life span when sales in general have been dropping steadily year after year, IN THE SLOWEST PERIOD OF THE YEAR.

January and February are so uneventful that few people even pay attention to the games industry and are less inclined to spend money on games even if they were kind of excited for them. Everyone has all their holiday games still. There's no pressing need to obtain further entertainment, especially for the flurry of students returning to school with tight wallets.

I just think there's too much of a correlation between the overhaul to the franchise and the sudden drop in sales. The whole "game economy" thing is just far too convenient of an excuse, especially with other franchises still selling well. DMC used to be a guaranteed near 2 million or more franchise, sales wise, and DmC at this point is almost assuredly not going to hit a million sales. Now, if God of War Ascension has some dramatic dropoff in sales then there might be more of a foundation for this idea. I say dramatic, because I expect Ascension to sell pretty damn well but not God of War 3 well.

[Arttemis]

Holy fuck, those sales are puny. I'd like to think people were fed up with Capcom's insistence on fucking up the gameplay a series is known for.

[SephirothX]

There's no doubt going to be tons of people comparing the DmC and Revengeance sales numbers.

To be honest, while I was fairly spot on about how DmC would sell, I have no clue how MGR is going to sell. I'd think the "Metal Gear" name alone would carry it past DmC's sales, but it's just so obviously different from Metal Gear that I don't know if it will pull in the normal Metal Gear audience. The only thing I can think of for how it will sell is that MGR might be that it'll get love from old school DMC fans, Platinum fans, and a chunk of the Metal Gear fanbase.

[Arttemis]

I had/have no desire to buy DmC. I bought the special edition of MGR. I hope that choice is representative of most fans of the genre.

[SephirothX]

I might pick up DmC someday down the line when it's on a 10 or 15 dollar Steam sale or something. It's not a "bad" game per say in the gameplay department, it's just nowhere close to the 9/10 scores it got.

[Wry Guy]

Well keep in mind I'm not just basing this around random theories. Historically Capcom has seen this stuff happen time and time again:



Series begins at 2.16 million, drops to 1.7 and drops again to 1.3 despite the third entry in the series being argued as the best. The sales just continued to drop the later into the console cycle you got. Then you hit the fourth entry which did enter very early in the console cycle, still around the time the market wasn't as competitive. The sales peaked again. It is very unlikely it was indicative of how amazing a game Devil May Cry 4 was, but rather how likely a market was to buy a game when there was nothing else.

Devil May Cry released 1 year into its console span. Devil May Cry 3 released 4 years into its console span. Devil May Cry released 2 years into its console's life span.

DmC released 7 YEARS IN. There are certain franchises seemingly immune to sales drops. God of War is one that does seem to be immune to it, if nothing else because Sony uses it to push the hardware to its limits. Personally I think almost every Sony first party game amounts to little more than a tech demo with how much fun I usually have (Team Ico games are one of the few exceptions.)

[SephirothX]

I'm kind of curious where you got those numbers from, because I've never heard DMC3's numbers being that low. I've heard them being closer to the 1.7 or 1.8 million marker. (It's also not factoring in the sales that came via the DMC3 Special Edition)

DMC3's sales had nothing to do with console life spans. It had everything to do with Devil May Cry 2. It was a biproduct of having to follow a pretty bad game.

While you can make the argument that DMC4 was a step back from DMC3, it was in no way even remotely as bad as DMC2 and was still a pretty well liked game. So I don't think there's much merit behind either "late in a consoles life" or "because DMC4".

I'd be more prone to believe you Wry if the difference between DmC and DMC3 or DMC4 was only like, 300k, but DmC could double its sales and it still would be well behind the other titles. Dropoffs that tremendous don't happen just because of industry economics.

Devil May Cry has been around long enough that it should have a fairly consistent level of sales/customers by now and shouldn't flux like this so much.

[Wry Guy]

It's old data from Capcom that's been archived on some sales related site: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Best_selling_Capcom_games

There's also data from Capcom directly that doesn't relate strictly to the Devil May Cry franchise: http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/b...s/million.html

Just being a general Capcom fan, this is something I've observed for a long time. In this generation the Street Fighter, Marvel vs, Devil May Cry, Mega Man and Resident Evil series have all experienced sales drops this generation as sequels were released. The only franchises I can think of that experienced sales spikes are Dead Rising and Lost Planet, which went from being exclusives to multi-platform. A lot of game companies like to claim it makes a big difference in sales.

[SephirothX]

Thanks for the data!

I get where you're coming from, but still, with all of those other games you never saw such a large drop-off percentage wise as we're seeing from DMC4 to DmC. The closest contender is probably Resident Evil 6, but the reasons why that game didn't do as well are closer to the reasons why DmC isn't doing well (departures from things that made the series famous)

[Wry Guy]

Oh, I'm not saying the reboot isn't responsible at all for sales drops. Playing Enslaved was more than enough to strip my faith that DmC would be revolutionary enough to validate a complete reboot. I just like to point out that history has played its hand on top of other factors. This game would have almost certainly done better if it was released before DMC4 was.

[SephirothX]

Well, are we saying it would be selling better than it is now or saying it would be selling at DMC4 level numbers? Cuz you also need to remember that the install base for the 360 and PS3 was a lot smaller when DMC4 came out.

[Wry Guy]

It just would have sold better. How much I can't say, but timing is important. I think a lot of people neglect the fact that even if the install base technically gets larger, the longer you wait the more people start to throw their stuff into the closet or lose interest. There's eventually a been there, seen that mentality.

I mean, the install base is at its largest right now as you said and yet the NPD reports retail sales going down every year and the industry as a whole only staying roughly about even thanks to the new digital markets offsetting everything.

[Arttemis]

The bloody palace comes out tomorrow. Since it's just a showcase of the game's "combat" mechanics, it sounds as entertaining to me as cleaning my cat's litter box. I just can't give two shits for the loose combat mechanics in Enslaved, Heavenly Sword, God of War, Dante's Inferno, etc, etc, and now DmC.

[SephirothX]

It just would have sold better. How much I can't say, but timing is important. I think a lot of people neglect the fact that even if the install base technically gets larger, the longer you wait the more people start to throw their stuff into the closet or lose interest. There's eventually a been there, seen that mentality.

I mean, the install base is at its largest right now as you said and yet the NPD reports retail sales going down every year and the industry as a whole only staying roughly about even thanks to the new digital markets offsetting everything.

It probably would have sold better, but its one of those things where its a "we'll never really know" type thing. Because, while we all agree the alienation of a lot of fans as a big factor, we also cant quantify how much of a factor that was as well.

[Wry Guy]

I'd call it a fair assessment. There also is the off chance this game has some long term legs. It's rare and normally reserved for big names like Mario and God of War (even if I think God of War sucks), but every once in a while a game does defy expectations and see a sales spike well after its release. That's what happened to Dragon's Dogma, wasn't it?