Game Development Giant

Dreambox3's sales exceeded everyone's expectations.

Not only Mars Entertainment itself, but also their competitors. In the past half month, Sony and Sega have held countless meetings, and the originally expected console sales report every three months has not been made.

When a Sony Games executive was interviewed by a gaming media, he was asked, ‘Is there any discrepancy between the console sales statistics calculated by previous media and your own statistics? ’ question, which made the Sony Games executive extremely embarrassed. Mao Zhewei, the Sony Games executive, answered rudely. He did not answer the question directly.

Instead, he took matters into his own hands.

"We believe that it is unwise to always focus on sales. What we need to consider more is the feedback from players. They are dissatisfied with our products. This is the most important thing. How many consoles do you sell?" , but the feedback from players is not friendly, and we don’t want to see such sales data.”

The Sony Games executive also added something at the end that surprised everyone.

"I think it is not wise to announce the sales of game consoles every once in a while. It does not have any effect, either for us or for our opponents. We should not pay attention to this. , but to change our focus, as I said before, we should pay more attention to the feedback of our players. For example, are they satisfied with our game? Do they have any complaints about our price... …and stuff like that.”

The reporter who interviewed him was also a little dissatisfied when he heard that the senior executive of Sony Games was still taking matters into his own hands.

They also heard what the Sony executive meant, but the executive didn't seem to want to make his words clear. However, the reporters didn't mean to save face for him, and simply asked the question directly: "Your Does this mean that Sony will no longer announce the sales statistics of game consoles every three months as it did before?”

This is very rude to say.

After the reporter asked this question, the Sony executive immediately changed his face.

But he did not deny the reporter's question. He just shook his head quickly: "I didn't say that. This is all what you said. I just said that we should not always focus on the sales of game consoles." Above, this is actually just a matter of the game and the manufacturer, and has nothing to do with the players. We should pay more attention to the feedback of the players, rather than other things..."

However, before the other party could finish this extremely boring sentence, he was interrupted by the reporter.

"But, sir, I think the sales of game consoles are still very important to players. It helps players know which game console is better, so that they can make more reasonable decisions when purchasing a console. choices, for example..."

Jester smiled helplessly after reading the report.

He looked at the photo of the ugly-looking senior official from Sony in the magazine and felt a little emotional. He really didn't expect that Sony and Sega would temporarily not announce the sales of their consoles to the public - of course, this It has not been officially recognized. It's just a personal opinion expressed by an internal interviewer during the interview.

In fact, such a situation has also appeared in Jester's memory.

Probably in October of 2015, Jester remembered that he had read a report. The background at that time was that the sales volume of PS4 was 24 to 5 million, while the sales volume of XBO was about 12 million, and, In terms of market performance, XBO has no expectations at all. Basically, the sales in recent weeks in every market have been crushed by PS4.

Under this situation.

A senior Microsoft official was interviewed by a media outlet, and he talked about the sales of game consoles, of course. He didn't say this was Microsoft's official statement.

This is what he said in the interview.

"A Microsoft insider told the foreign game media Game Informer that the company will no longer disclose Xbox One sales data. In fact, Microsoft has been absent from Xbox sales data in the recently released last quarter financial report, and this time the insider Sources from people familiar with the matter let us know why. People familiar with the matter said that Microsoft will pay more attention to the level of participation in the platform in the future, instead of regularly disclosing PS4 sales like competitor Sony Computer Entertainment."

As soon as this news appeared at the time, it immediately caused an uproar in the entire gaming industry.

Of course, what's more is the unscrupulous mockery of the fans by the fans.

Although Microsoft's official words seem to be high-sounding, in fact. It's just a fig leaf. It's just because the sales volume of XBO is far behind that of PS4, and there is no possibility of them catching up in the foreseeable time. That's why they come up with this theory. , to explain Microsoft’s behavior in simple and easy-to-understand terms.

"We gave in."

Therefore, when this news came out, faced with the ridicule from fans, the fans were speechless - because there was really nothing to say and nothing to say.

The situation that Jester is facing now is not the same as the news he watched, but it is not far different. The sales situation of Dreambox 3 in the first month was too terrible, but the situation in the second month was better. It's a big decline, but it's reasonable. It's foreseeable that basically, when the statistics for the second month come out, it won't be a problem for Dreambox 3 to surpass Sega Saturn in sales and rise to the top of this generation.

Not only that, even in terms of games, the sales of Dreambox3 games are a mess.

There are currently five models that have exceeded one million.

As for the entire Sega Saturn and Sony's PS2, there is not a single game that has reached one million copies. You know, Dreambox 3 has only been released for a month and less than a week, and the other two have already been released. one Year.

However, in Jester’s view, the reason why sales were so good last month is not only due to the strong launch game camp he prepared, but also because it happened to be the Christmas season, which is the most important time in North America. sales season for their game console companies. At most, the number of game consoles sold during Christmas can account for 20% or even 25% of the entire annual sales.

However, after entering January, the decline in sales was still obvious, which is also expected.

certainly. The release of so many excellent games at the same time will do great harm to Mars Entertainment's sales.

Because so many games are released at the same time, it is actually impossible for a player to buy them all, because the prices of the games are not cheap. Sixty dollars, generally speaking, a player buys one game in a period of time. This is the most common phenomenon. In Jester’s memory, there is Aaron Greenberg, the sales director of Microsoft games. Let’s use SE’s “Rise of the Tomb Raider” as an example.

As we all know, "Tomb Raider" is a plagiarism... No, it is the second game after the revision of "Uncharted". It is a limited-time exclusive to Microsoft. This game was released in November 2015. tenth.

And around this date. It can be called a collection of masterpieces.

There is COD, there is Fallout 4, there is Halo 5, and there is even the biggest emotional Star Wars in the European and American world...

It can be said that this is a bad release time. It is very likely that the sales of a game that was originally worth tens of millions of copies will be reduced by one or two million copies because of this release time... …This is not alarmist.

Regarding this situation, the sales director of Microsoft's gaming department said this.

"We work very closely with our internal staff on things like the launch of Halo. Then we're working with Crystal on the marketing of Tomb Raider. The challenge is. You really have to think about production planning. , you have to make sure you don’t rush things and don’t put half-finished or low-quality work on the market – that’s always our number one priority.”

"The specific challenge facing Tomb Raider is that if it is released a week later, it will hit Star Wars: Battlefront. A week earlier it will hit Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and if it is released two weeks earlier, it will hit "Star Wars: Battlefront." It will collide with "Halo". If it is later, customers will not have the money to buy new games, so choosing this week between "Star Wars" and "Call of Duty" is already the best choice. We think "Fallout" It is not a direct competition with us because the target groups of players are different. But yes, these two games are both masterpieces, and their release dates coincide with each other. We hope that players will buy both works."

"We are the first party. So we know when the release date is. But many production teams need to set the release date of their own game without knowing the release date of other games. Once you know it, you will choose to compete with "Call of Duty", Did "Star Wars" and "Fallout" collide? At this time, you have to release it according to the previous plan. You have to have confidence in your work and believe that it can stand up. "Tomb Raider" is great."

Although from this answer, it can be seen that people from Microsoft are promoting Tomb Raider, saying that it can be compared with masterpieces such as Fallout, COD, and Halo.

However, they also know that it is actually a very unwise choice to collide with so many big games, because the bombardment of big games for several consecutive weeks is likely to cause a situation where players are spending their own pocket money or their own money. I bought one game after another in my little treasury. When I saw that there were still games that I wanted to buy, I found out.

He has no money anymore.

And when he got money the next month, he discovered that the game he wanted was released this month, and he forgot about the previous game.

This kind of situation is something that game companies try to avoid.

After all, everyone wants to be harmonious and make money - foreign companies may not know this term, but they must abide by this code of conduct.

Therefore, generally speaking, it is rare to see some games scheduled to be released in the same time period, unless the first party wants to attack its own host platform opponents and uses its own third-party game when the opponent's first-party masterpiece is released. One side's masterpiece competes with the other's.

However, there is the Christmas season at the end of every year. This is something that any game manufacturer, whether first-party or third-party, wants to seize. So on the one hand, major manufacturers do not want to compete with their own similar games. , but if you have to choose to release it during the Christmas season, you can only try it once.

Therefore, "Tomb Raider" chose "Fallout 4", the weakest opponent among "Halo 5", "Call of Duty 13", "Fallout 4" and "Star Wars: Battlefront", as its opponent—— The people at Microsoft also recognized their choice. This does not mean to look down on the palace-level game series "Fallout 4", but it is just because in terms of sales, "Fallout 4" really does not have the qualifications to be compared with the other three.

The first is "Halo 5", one of the biggest emotions among European and American shooting games, the plot of Master Chief for countless people, the average sales record of a single game on a single platform exceeds 10 million, and it is also a guarantee of XBO sales.

In addition, "Tomb Raider" is an XBO limited-time exclusive, so it is naturally impossible for Microsoft to let this game compete with its own signature games.

Followed by "Call of Duty 13" - European and American CF, it is undoubtedly the No. 1 shooting game. It is released once a year, and each game has 20 million copies. Basically, in terms of sales, COD is qualified to stand out among the others. Finally, it is "Star Wars" is a work that EA has been honing for several years, coupled with the high expectations of "Star Wars 7" at the end of that year and the aura of the greatest feelings in Europe and the United States.

No one wants to compete with a great Star Wars game when Star Wars: Episode VII comes out.

The fact that it attracted nine million people to participate in BETA and received rave reviews also shows this - this game is definitely going to be a hit.

However, looking back at "Fallout" - this is indeed a palace-level game. It may sell 10 million units. Of course, it is also possible to sell 20 million units, but that will have to wait until a year or even two years later. , so, in this aspect, he is indeed the weakest opponent among the many masterpieces at the end of the year.

"Rise of the Tomb Raider" chose it as its launch opponent, which was also carefully considered.

"Although the impact on the total sales of games is a bit big, and it may reduce the sales of many games by 20%, but every loss must have a gain. Without the support of so many games, Dreambox 3 may not be able to achieve such good results. results."

After thinking about it for a long time, Jester sighed.

This incident was quickly forgotten.

What he is thinking about now is the previous interview with people from Sony. Are they really like Microsoft, giving in to their opponents in this generation? (~^~)