Comments 945

Re: Capcom Endures Some Truly Incredible Monster Hunter Wilds Investor Questions

ChrisDeku

@Haruki_NLI Monster Hunter World also came to PC later(only 2 months different in the gap). The Xbox release also only sold a very small amount too due to it being a much smaller install base concentrated mainly in NA when MH in biggest in Asia(Japan on consoles and rest of Asia on PC).

While Rise is newer its sales have slowed down to the point that World sells roughly the same or slightly more copies every quarter now since a year ago. In the last update from Capcom covering up to March 31st both Rise and World sold 500,000 copies although Worlds numbers don’t account for the Iceborne Master edition(which is base game + expansion, this is a weird quirk of Capcom counting method which they since no longer do for newer games) which accounts for about 1/5 of all World sales(and closer to 1/3 since the release of Iceborne) and Iceborne outsold sunbreak 1M to 600k.

So world not only sold more overall it continues to do better in the later stages of it’s lifetime even when the newer rise got ported and people are picking up world over it still.

The biggest indicator of the way people view Rise as inferior product outside of Japan is evident on Steam. Not only did World sell about 3 times as many copies but even now it is played by more people(right now online world is 33.5k vs Rise’s 8.7k) and its higher on the sales charts(World is 207th and Rise 432nd)

Another important thing to consider is that big games generally sell a lot better immediately after the big breakout game in a series or for a developer. For Example Cyberpunk 2077 sold much faster than The Witcher 3. Uncharted 3 sold about 300% of Uncharted 2 etc.

For Rise there was a massive breakthrough and then it sold much poorer than the previous game and it’s arguably now most important format(Steam) particularly ignored it in favour of continuing to play the older game.

Re: Capcom Endures Some Truly Incredible Monster Hunter Wilds Investor Questions

ChrisDeku

@Cutmastavictory

Capcom would much rather pull a monster hunter rise... which honestly, I wouldn't be upset about.

Actually Rise was significantly less successful than world selling 14.7M vs 25.3M. Even though Rise is now available on every platform and world is not on the switch.

The problem for Rise that being a Switch title meant that people perceived it as an inferior or lower end product and sales on other platforms suffered. On Steam Rise sold about 1/3rd of what World did(and PC gamers are likely to be the more open minded of it being a “Switch game”)Rise was very successful in Japan but outside of Japan it sold closer to about 40% of what world did. The PS and Xbox ports did basically non-existent numbers.

So Capcom might plan on porting to the Switch successor later but they might not want to make that known right away and avoid any perception of it being a lower quality product in order to target weaker hardware.

It’s possible they will need to keep making 2 different games to fully capture both markets, the handheld market in Japan that has always been the dominant way to play MH since the PSP games, and then the premium home console/PC game market.

Re: Concord's Free Open Beta Is Performing Abysmally on PC

ChrisDeku

Unfortunately for this game the competitive PVP playerbase is very Chud heavy and the Chuds hate this game for not having any white dudes and for being “too woke”. Just go on the steam forums and read the comments for like 2 minutes and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

Re: Forgotten PS2 Launch RPG Summoner Resurrected for PS5, PS4

ChrisDeku

I had this back in the day, in fact I was so desperate for good RPGs early in the PS2 era I even had Orphen: Scion of sorcery and Ephemeral Fantasia. I have no idea what I was thinking on those! Summoner was definitely the best of the bunch, but my game crashed and I lost like 2 hours of game time and never finished it.

Re: Round Up: Concord PS5 Previews Seem Torn on Sony's New Shooter

ChrisDeku

@PloverNutter Warner bros. Is primarily a film company with little specific expertise in the video game industry whose decisions will be getting made my money people based only on how to maximise existing IP.

Sony is one of the finest video game developers and publishers in the world with a massive history of producing top quality AAA games one after another. Studio heads and a lot of key executive staff are primarily video game makers with a history in creative rolls. The move to buy would have been contemplated for a long time and with a lot of feedback from all key gaming staff. Some dude in an office didn’t just decide to buy it one day without consulting the people that are actual experts in this area.

Re: Round Up: Concord PS5 Previews Seem Torn on Sony's New Shooter

ChrisDeku

@Tecinthebrain Didn’t have a screenshot to show? What does this even mean? They would have access to everything developed and planned at that time(they were already the publisher). There would be huge amounts of prototyping and concept art and full development overview documents. Very likely a playable vertical slice.

Re: Round Up: Concord PS5 Previews Seem Torn on Sony's New Shooter

ChrisDeku

@truerbluer the majority of Steam users have hardware worse than a PS5. Only a very small percentage of people have super high end hardware playing games at 120 fps and ultra wide resolutions.

The more likely scenario is that the majority of PC players will be turning down settings to low in order to eke out a stable 60 fps.

Also, cross-play will be optional I would assume, just like Helldivers 2.

Re: PS5 Fan Favourite Stellar Blade Sold Over 1 Million Copies, Dev Estimates

ChrisDeku

@Shad361 The Switch is very good at selling lots of copies of a very small number of games. It does not sell software well for a wide range of genres. There’s only something like 3 third party games on the Switch that have officially broken the 3M barrier, that tells you what people on the Switch are buying. Even with Bayonetta being published by Nintendo it was still going to struggle to find a massive market always.

R&C: Rift apart literally sold 2.87m copies between July 2021 and June 2023. That’s almost 1.5M per 12 months. That’s the only game we have solid numbers on, there’s zero evidence to suggest the other Sony games are not selling similarly considering they’ve always sold like that. Most Sony games do like 5-10x their opening month numbers over their lifetime. For a new IP from a lesser know studio the multiplier tends to be on the higher end. I’d be shocked if Stellar Blade does’t get around 5M sales.

Re: PS5 Fan Favourite Stellar Blade Sold Over 1 Million Copies, Dev Estimates

ChrisDeku

@Shad361

Bayonetta 3 was a flop so that’s not comforting at all…1 million is not strong 2024. Returnal didn’t keep selling nor did demon souls or ratchet,or sackboy only their biggest games keep selling.

Who declared Bayonetta 3 a flop? Do you have a reference for that?

All those games are still selling, you are just making stuff up. All the low end Sony PS4 games sold forever. Games like Until Dawn, Ratchet & Clank, Days Gone never charted significantly after release and never made any waves but by the end of the Gen those were all over 5M from official insomniac leaks, and their openings were nowhere near that. Bloodborne sold 1M in its first month and was at 7.46m in 2022. Detroit: Become Human was 1.5M in two months and is at 8m+ now.

We know for a fact that R&C: Rift apart continued to sell. It was at 1.1M after 6 weeks. At June 2023 it was at 3.97m(2 years later).

Returnal, Demon’s Souls, Stella Blade would all likely be 5M+ by the end of the gen. The only complication is that 2 of those are on PS Plus and it’s unknown how much that affects sales(R&C: Rift apart is also on PS Plus though)

Re: Midnight Society Drops Co-Founder, Streamer Dr Disrespect Following Twitch Ban Allegations

ChrisDeku

@Matroska

I don't care about whoever this guy is, but that's a terrible analogy because if you call your boss something to his face then he has proof you did it since he saw it. It would be like killing someone in front of the police. No need for an investigation then

Do you mean like when women get sexually abused right to their face and their perpetrators are considered innocent until proven guilty? When you witness something happen it doesn’t magically become proven, under the legal definition(as abuse protectors like to use) it’s innocent until proven guilty. So the abuser is innocent until charged and prosecuted by the state.

The person who swore at his boss is also “innocent” as per these rules.

Re: Midnight Society Drops Co-Founder, Streamer Dr Disrespect Following Twitch Ban Allegations

ChrisDeku

@LifeGirl he said he done nothing illegal, he didn’t deny grooming an underage girl to meet at twitchcon which is almost certainly true. When did not meeting the threshold for criminality become the defining line for us as a society? Everyone in the world is free to judge him based on the publicly available information. His “innocence” only extends to not being a convicted criminal and not being treated like a criminal by the state. It doesn’t extend to him not being treated like an utter scumbag.

Re: Midnight Society Drops Co-Founder, Streamer Dr Disrespect Following Twitch Ban Allegations

ChrisDeku

@PSNChaoz

Innocent until proven guilty.

Only in the eyes of the law. If you go to work and call your boss a ***** then you will get fired on the spot. You didn’t commit a criminal offence, you didn’t go to court, you are “innocent” in the eyes of the law in regards to criminality. You’re still an idiot who deserved to get fired though.

The bar for getting fired and facing the consequences of your actions is a lot lower than a criminal conviction. This guy is very likely a major scumbag, regardless of any criminality committed. The “innocent until proven guilty” crowd want to rewrite the rules of our society to that anything people do is fine unless you get criminally convicted. Thats clearly nonsense.

Re: Microsoft 'Really Pleased' with Sea of Thieves PS5 Sales

ChrisDeku

Everything will come to PS eventually, but it might take a lot of time. Xbox hardware is currently in its death spiral and they probably had the data that showed this was the likely outcome for a long time. Recent estimates has the Series X/S down to around 200k units a month worldwide. That’s basically dead already.

Re: PS5, PC Shooter Concord Appears to Be a $40 Game

ChrisDeku

@ThomasHL

Why risk all that money for something I've already got and enjoy?

If you enjoy Overwatch 2 then you’re in the minority as that game is bombing hard and has an 18.62% rating on Steam, which is one of the lowest rated games of all time.

Re: PS5, PC Shooter Concord Appears to Be a $40 Game

ChrisDeku

So many clowns acting like this game is bad because they don’t like the characters/dialogue. As if that has even 1% bearing on how good a PVP shooter will be.

The game will come down to gameplay only. If it’s good, it could very well be a successful game.

Re: Multiple Square Enix Rumours Spread Like Wildfire Ahead of Summer Game Fest

ChrisDeku

@IntrepidWombat I did account for that, I quite literally mentioned it. Also, the minimum wage in London is a joke, so comparing it to that is pointless. They make slightly more money, after accounting for cost of living, than a McDonald’s employee in London, ok great but a McDonald’s employee in London is poor as hell and you’re comparing them to a graduate in a high skilled labour job.

The UK minimum wage applies everywhere in the country. If you work as a cleaner in a poor area of Liverpool you will be making £21k minimum over full time hours.

Re: Multiple Square Enix Rumours Spread Like Wildfire Ahead of Summer Game Fest

ChrisDeku

@LowDefAl

You know, apart from the marketing costs, dev kits, outsourcing, replacing the pc's every couple of years, technology licensing costs, post release support, etc etc. While the budgets of the main development staff sitting at their desk are going to be a large part of the cost, they may still only be half the total outlay

Outsourcing costs is paying the salary of someone else sitting at a desk, just in a different building. The other costs are minuscule. The largest cost outwith normal salaries actually is tied to things like Voice Acting, motion capture etc. Marketing costs are after development costs, they are not tied to the development of the game in any way and have no bearing on the scale or scope of the game. That’s an entirely separate issue.

Re: Multiple Square Enix Rumours Spread Like Wildfire Ahead of Summer Game Fest

ChrisDeku

The Japanese game companies - and in particular Square and Capcom - prove that the game industry is doing just fine.
The problem with the American game companies is the exact same problem that Hollywood has right now: ridiculously bloated budgets to the point that EVEN IF they become blockbusters they still lose money

When we are talking about budgets in video games we are talking about salaries. Video games are made by people at a desk, there are very little costs outside of that.

Do you know how Japanese games cost less to develop than other places? A new graduate position at Capcom just got their starting pay increased, and is now one of the higher starting salaries, and the amount they get paid is literally less than the minimum wage in the UK. I could go work in McDonald’s and get paid more. A 10+ year experienced dev gets paid less than a janitor.

A game like Spider-man 2 cost so much because the staff got paid really highly, have great benefit packages and there were lots of bonuses related to their success etc. From the insomniac leak the average cost per insomniac employee associated with SM2 was over $200k per year. Again, a capcom graduate position pays 300,000 yen, thats under $20k per year. It’s £15,000 per year, in the UK the minimum wage for 21+ is £11.44 which over a year in full time employment would be around £22k.

So when people are celebrating the Japanese low budgets, remember that’s because the people get paid rubbish, even when you take into account the lower living cost there. It’s also a huge competitive advantage that Japan has over other countries. The same way China can manufacture goods cheaper and all the manufacturing in the west got shut down.

Most western countries have drastically cut down on crunch culture too, simply because they can’t get away with it mostly(Spider-man 2 was made with zero crunch they have stated), but in Japan it’s still the norm to work 15+ unpaid hours a month and is socially unacceptable to leave your office earlier than your boss.

So if you actually care about the people making the games you should be careful what you are celebrating and what you are asking for. Companies that are celebrated like FromSoft and Capcom are among the worst employers in the video game industry in regards to pay, crunch and employee burnout rate.

Re: PC Players Are Fuming Until Dawn, God of War Ragnarok Appear to Require PSN Logins

ChrisDeku

@Kienda

People who weren’t in countries where PSN is available, you know most of the countries on earth, they got locked out of a game they paid for or banned by Sony for trying to make accounts in other countries

This is literally a lie, no one got banned or access to the game revoked. The moderator of the Helldivers reddit is in vietnam(no longer purchasable there) and he has no issues playing. No one that bought the game losses access.

The countries that currently can't purchase it represent less than 5% of the steam player base, it's unfortunate and I hope it gets resolved, but it's not the majority of the world by actual players.

Lots of misinformation in these comments. It's not a launcher, or even something you need to sign-in to for a game session. It's a one time link at the Steam level. One time per steam account, not even once per game.

Yes it's technically against the TOS to put wrong data(location) into your psn account. That means you can also get banned technically if your DOB or name is wrong. I have a fake name on PSN, fake name and wrong DOB on Steam. I have no fear of getting banned.

While it is unfortunate the games can't be purchased in some regions, you can still play the games in those regions on your normal steam account, you can get a Steam global key.

Re: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Swings 11 Million Sales as Sony Calls PS5 Exclusive a 'Great Success'

ChrisDeku

@glennthefrog Sony get $70 from every digital copy(it’s never been on sale) and around $40 for physical sales. So with a 50/50 split it would be netting $55 a copy over those 11m sales. So likely around $600m net.

Total cost was ~$300m, that’s for insomniac, marketing and a proportional running cost for every Sony support studio that worked on the game, and all outsourcing.

It will also sell another 10m+ copies in its lifetime, the previous game still makes the top 20 psn games in NA some months.

Lifetime net income is likely to approach $1b.

dont forget disneys 30% cut

They get 19-26% on physical sales(that’s the $40 wholesale price, not the $70 sticker price) and 9-18% on Digital sales. The exact number will be based on performance, more sales = lower rates so it’s very likely Sony will hit the lowest possible rates at 19% and 9%.

So at the end of the day probably about $800m to Sony for $500m profit and about $150m to marvel

Re: State of Play Officially Confirmed for 30th May, Updates on PS5, PSVR2 Games

ChrisDeku

@Frmknst

There would be no mouning if Sony finally would deliver something someday

Finally deliver? Sony have been delivering for over a decade.

2013: The Last of Us
2014: Infamous: Second Son, Resogun
2015: Bloodborne, Until Dawn
2016: Uncharted 4, the Last Guardian
2017: Horizon: ZD, Uncharted: LL, Gravity Rush 2, GT Sport
2018: God of War, Spider-man, Shadow of the Colossus Remake
2019: Day’s Gone, Death Stranding, Dreams
2020: TLOUII, Ghost of Tsushima, Mile Morales, Demon’s Souls
2021: Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
2022: Gran Turismo 7, God of War: Ragnarok, Horizon: FW
2023: Spider-man 2
2024: Helldivers 2, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin

Compare that list to other big publishers and see how they compare. EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Take-Two etc. Only really Nintendo have been able to consistently release quality games on this kind of scale and regularity.