Davesto's Blogs

The demise of Project Zero 4 in the west and the profitability o

Lately there have been a lot of talks over the profitability of adult contents on Nintendo platforms. Firstly both EA and Ubisoft are keen on developing more adult contents to capitalise the huge instalment base of the Wii console (51 million units sold worldwide). EA is going to publish a “First Person Adventure Experience” (not quite a first person rail shooter but not a third person adventure either according to them) “Dead Space: Extraction” later this year. Ubisoft also has works in the pipeline that are specifically built for Wii, such as “Red Steel 2”, which adopt the Motion Plus accessory. However, at the same time, there were broad discussions over the sales of the GTA title “China Town Wars” being disappointing despite the huge instalment base on DS (105 million units sold worldwide). Also Nintendo’s decision not to publish “Project Zero 4” (Or Fatal Frame 4) in the west sparkled outrage among wester gamers condemning Nintendo’s hypocrisy over its “family friendly image” because they published it in Japan. But is it really an “image” issue or Nintendo just didn’t see any profitability from the title in the west?

To answer this question, maybe we should take a look at the sales figures for adult titles on the current and last generation Nintendo platforms. In the current and last generation consoles (Wii and GameCube), Capcom has been the biggest supplier of adult content. They published “Resident Evil: Remake”, “Resident Evil Zero” and “Resident Evil 4” on the Cube, with the first two as exclusive titles (still are at the time of writing) to the Nintendo platform. The sales figures for these titles were:

Resident Evil: Remake 1.42m

Resident Evil Zero 1.28m

Resident Evil 4 1.69m

Yes, “Resident Evil 4” sold 2.93m units on PS2 but then we have to understand that PS2 has a 100 million unit instalment base as compared the GameCube which was far lagging behind and even being outsold by the new comer Xbox. “Resident Evil 4” was eventually ported to Wii and it sold 1.58m units.

Another Wii specific game that Capcom released on the platform was “Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles”, a rail shooter that completely deviates from the franchise’s genre. That game sold 1.28m, and there is a sequel “The Dark Side Chronicles” coming out later this year. In various company reports, Capcom hailed the profitability of its “Resident Evil” games on the Nintendo platforms that buoyed the sales figures of the company. So is it really that adult contents have no market on Nintendo’s platform? Surely, Capcom has misses too: “Resident Evil: Deadly Silence” on DS and “Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop” on Wii both just sold a humble 0.21 m and 0.15m. However, the previous one is a port of the 1997 original PSOne game and the later is a complete washed down version from the successful Xbox 360 title. Strictly speaking they cannot be considered as original content.

Looking at other publishers – Ubisoft and Sega, who are providing the major load of adult content on Wii at the moment:

No More Heroes (developed by Grasshopper but published by Ubisoft) 0.44m

Red Steel (Ubisoft) 1.19m

Mad World (Sega) 0.23m

House of the Dead: Overkill (Sega) 0.31m

Except for “Red Steel”, the numbers for all other titles are extremely humble as compared to Capcom’s. The commonality among these 4 titles are that they were all pretty highly rated games that exhibit their own styles with a specific control scheme tailored to Wii. “Red Steel” also marked itself against the other three titles in a way that it was published alongside the launch of Wii, so there it rode the hype of the console when it launched. However, despite the sales figures, both Ubisoft and Sega claimed that they are very happy with the sales and said that they will continue to develop adult titles for the platform.

Then back to the controversial sales of “GTA: The China Town Wars”. People were saying that the sales figure (0.58m) was disappointing considering that it is a 10/10 AAA title on a platform with 100 million unit instalment base. However, what the market showed was that, the title is looking to be a longevity title on the platform as compared to being an instant sales title. Reports of retailers dumping the game into bargain bins shortly after the release and then found out the longevity of the title and decided to take them back after sales spiked showed that the title did require time to warm up in sales.

In the coming months, there are more adult contents coming out on Wii from major publishers – EA’s “Dead Space: Extraction”, Konami’s “Silent Hill: Shattered Memories”, Ubisoft’s “Red Steel 2”, Capcom’s “Resident Evil: The Dark Side Chronicles” etc. If there is no profitability, surely these developers will not be publishing more of the same contents on the console. One thing we needed to pay attention to is that these titles are all specific titles for Wii instead of a port with a tag on Wii control scheme. And also as some of the developers pointed out at various forums, ports will not work on Wii anymore as it is a complete different territory with complete different gaming expectations from its owners.

Of course sales figures of these adult titles are no match with all the other family friendly titles on the platform – just consider that “Wii Fit” (20.43m) sold nearly as many units as PS3 itself and “Mario Kart Wii” commanded a staggering sales figure of 16.32 worldwide. However simply dismissing the prospect of adult contents because of this is highly premature. We have to note that Nintendo’s never tread into the mature games territory or provide huge support to adult titles – compare the marketing campaigns of “Resident Evil 4” on the Cube and PS2 – so this market was never fully explored and materialised. The fact that Nintendo did publish “Project Zero 4” in Japan was a surprise to everyone. However the sales figure of just 0.08m units could be the main contributing factor that Nintendo refused to invest more money to market and publish the game in the west. At this point of time, all we can hope is that more adult titles on the Nintendo platforms sell well and eventually convince Nintendo that there is indeed a market for adult content on its platform and has a change of heart to publish “Project Zero 4” in the west. Otherwise, fans of the franchise will need to pray that some other publishers will be willing to pick up the title and release it instead.

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On 29 June 2009, 12:15PM Posted by Xenojay

Pretty good blog. It's similar to the short point made at Wired.com for their "Top 10 Raw Deals For Gamers"

"3. Nintendo Sitting on Games

Want to play the latest game in the Fatal Frame series? Too bad. It’s just one of many Wii and Nintendo DS games that Nintendo holds the publishing rights to, but has refrained from bringing to America. Disaster: Day of Crisis, Mother 3, Soma Bringer and Another Code are other examples.

The rationale is almost understandable: Releasing niche titles like these is fine for smaller publishers with lower overhead, but Nintendo is the world’s biggest game publisher, and needs to focus its energies on surefire hits. So why not license these games to smaller publishers? Why hoard publishing rights to so many quality games, especially when titles like Disaster are better than 99 percent of Wii shovelware? (To say nothing of the stranglehold that the company has on Virtual Console classic game releases.)"

It's just..with the Wii, I personally never perceived it as an adult platform, even when I owned one for 6 months, with Zelda, having tried Red Steel, I could not be convinced that it was anything but a unit for simple, casual gaming, the type younger people eat up.

I think Nintendo should be kind and release the mature IP's out to other platforms so we can truly experience those games.

One more things, GTA: The Chinatown Wars has been cleared for release on the PSP I belive. Something else to consider.

 

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On 29 June 2009, 01:14PM Posted by Oliver

Good blog. Although everytime you wrote "adult content" I thought you meant porn...

 

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On 29 June 2009, 01:16PM Posted by Srassy

Nice job man. I giving you a 5 just because of all the research you appear to have done.

Keep up the good work!

 

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On 29 June 2009, 02:16PM Posted by bahamut_zero

Awesome blog! yeah disappointing indeed that Fatal Frame was not released in the West. I'm hoping that will change in the near future though.

I'm also surprised that House of the Dead didnt sell that much according to your sale figures there. Perhaps the reality is that ppl who enjoy adult games haven't or won't purchase a wii simply because it has that 'kiddy' connotation to it.

 

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On 29 June 2009, 11:36PM Posted by Tekkennut

Great Blog Davesto,

I too am unhappy about the demise of fatal frame 4 and would've loved to have played it on my dusty and unused Wii (Writing that and reading that last part is so weird). I'm afraid though that I have contributed to it by buying games like Resident Evil: Umbrella chronicles which after playing through a few levels, sadly regret ever buying. But It is still a lesson learned and returning to my cheap persona I will only buy the good stuff and not buy into the hype and excitement generated by these releases.

Although it is very disappointing to see great games like No More Heroes and Madworld pale in camparison to the capcom titles. I never see these games in the cheap bins ever.

 

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On 30 June 2009, 09:47AM Posted by Davesto

Reply to Tekkennut29 June 2009, 11:36PM
Great Blog Davesto, I too am unhappy about the demise of fatal frame 4 and would've loved to have played it on my dusty and unused Wii (Writing that and reading that last part is so weird). I'm afraid though that I have contributed to it by buying games like Resident Evil: Umbrella chronicles which after playing through a few levels, sadly regret ever buying. But It is still a lesson learned and returning to my cheap persona I will only buy the good stuff and not buy into the hype and excitement generated by these releases. Although it is very disappointing to see great games like No More Heroes and Madworld pale in camparison to the capcom titles. I never see these games in the cheap bins ever.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. :)

I do think that if developers and publishers want mature content (he he try not to use the word "adult" to mislead Oliver :) ) to sell on Nintendo platforms more work needs to be done on top of just putting good games out.

IMO there is a general unawareness of mature content among Nintendo users, especially the "new gamers". So it is more of a matter of creating that awareness. "Resident Evil" is quite an established franchise across most platforms, so just with a little push and if the game is not extremely bad, it will sell. Capcom has an upper hand on this one.

However, for "GTA" to sell on Nintendo, they have to re-create the market. This is because people haven't played "GTA" on any of Nintendo home consoles, and DS hasn't been really well known with adult content either. So for Rockstar to sell "China Town Wars" they will need to do a lot more apart from putting out a good game. Just compare the marketing campaign of "China Town Wars" with other "GTA" games that they released in the past, you can't really complain that DS players are not buying it. Every week there are shovels of games coming out on DS and the "GTA" franchise is not a strong brand for them unless you create the market and demand for it. Sadly enough, even Ubisoft's "Imagine" franchise is much stronger because they pushed it by releasing truck loads of those games and buy prominent spaces at the retailers. If Rockstar wants a share of the DS and Wii market, it is more than just doing a guerilla warfare with one good game.

So I think that is what a lot of publishers need to think about when they put out mature content on Nintendo consoles.

 

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On 30 June 2009, 03:07PM Posted by Ruptunex

RE4 is awesome as is No More Heroes. It's just a matter of marketing. NMH got pretty much zero marketing yet Wii Fit got more than the damned superbowl

 

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On 1 July 2009, 09:16AM Posted by Davesto

Reply to Ruptunex30 June 2009, 03:07PM
RE4 is awesome as is No More Heroes. It's just a matter of marketing. NMH got pretty much zero marketing yet Wii Fit got more than the damned superbowl

Just on that note. Sega just talked about adult / mature content on the Gamesindustry website:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/sega-its-not-game-over-for-mature-wii-titles

 

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On 2 July 2009, 02:20PM Posted by tnzk

I know, it really sucks. The new Project Zero/Fatal Frame looked really awesome too. At least everyone's getting Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

 

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On 5 July 2009, 10:18PM Posted by joshklaz

Good blog. It's hard enough for me to find the first Fatal Frames, although I would like to.

 

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On 7 July 2009, 04:45PM Posted by Rapidity

I don't own any nintendo products, hell I've never even heard of Project Zero but your blog was interesting nonetheless.

 

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On 26 July 2009, 08:24PM Posted by simcharles

Reply to Oliver29 June 2009, 01:14PM
Good blog. Although everytime you wrote "adult content" I thought you meant porn...

LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!