Slashdot Mirror
Beyond Good, Evil, Sales, As UbiSoft Ponders Popularity
Thanks to GameSpot for reprinting news of UbiSoft's improved financials, but disappointing specifics, as the company noted in particular: "In a very competitive year-end market, sales of new brands such as Beyond Good and Evil and XIII, products which had been heavily marketed, were lower than the early-December forecasts... this had an impact of 10 million euros ($12.5 million)." Coincidentally, GameSpy has an editorial discussing the allegedly disappointing sales of UbiSoft titles, and notes: "Many of my peers felt that BG&E's style was too eccentric and didn't convey what type of game it was." Although Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has "sold 2 million units worldwide", UbiSoft's welcome announcement of a Prince Of Persia sequel with reference to "improved marketing positioning" implies some dissatisfaction with the initial sales, and GameSpy argue "the [U.S.] advertisements for both [BG&E and PoP] were horrendous", but overall, this didn't stop UbiSoft becoming "the second largest publisher in France, the third largest in Germany, and the sixth largest in the UK" over the holiday period.
Spending lots of money on advertising increases the purchase price of games and distracts the people making the game from putting all their efforts into making sure the game is excellent (as opposed to the ads).
Good games rise to the top (in respect and sales) because they are good, not because they had a great marketing effort. The worst part comes when a shitty (or average) game blames its sales on bad marketing.
Good games sell well. End of story.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
"Many of my peers felt that BG&E's style was too eccentric and didn't convey what type of game it was."
Is it such a crime that a game not fit neaty into one genre? Aren't people getting sick of the same old "shooting game" or "jumping game"?
As I wrote in a journal recently, there are two competeing gameplay styles emerging; the '10 or so solid hours of story' versus the '50+ hours of wandering around levelling up.'
BG&E was an amazing game; there wasn't a single sloppy, slow, or pointless part of the game that I can think of, off hand. They did some AMAZING cinematic tricks during the gameplay (the opening battle, and daring rooftop escape both leap to mind immediately) and pulled of that hardest trick; at no point in the game did you get dropped out of the world. No breaking the fourth wall, no cute little in-jokes, no nods to the fact that it was a video game, and it all flowed well.
Couple that with an amazing story, that pulled no punches, and you've got one hell of a game.
PoP, on the other hand, while good, wasn't great. The music, animation, voice acting, and concept were great, but the fighting system needed work, the level design needed tweaking (or just the Prince, after a few moments of looking around, saying something like "hmm, maybe if I try that pole...." The visions-of-the-future idea was good, but didn't quite cut it. Using the rewind feature to mask the 'must die to find the One True Path' was still frustrating. All in all, though, worth playing.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
And WTF does gamespy mean when they say the ads sucked? I thought POP's TV spot was one of the better game ads this year!
A-freaking-men. The POP ad was absolutely awesome, particularly the 1-minute spot. I'd see it on Adult Swim, and wake up my wife because I was wanting her to see it. I'm hoping that UbiSoft releases an OST for the game, as I'd be really interested in getting it.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
You can't expect people to lay money down and not know what they're getting. This may be symptomatic of a marketing system that doesn't know how to sell new types of games. If you're selling the next first person shooter, then all you have to do is say "it's just like that last game you liked, only better!" And in fact that's the only message video game marketing is any good at pushing.
Secondly, as video games get more popular, there's a whole crap load of people who haven't played the shooting and platform games you've gotten sick of. New consumers are born everyday, which means there's money to be made selling the same thing you sold yesterday, only NEWER(!!!) and SHINIER(!!!).
Finally, while it is possible for an innovative game to become famous mostly by word of mouth (The Sims would probably be a good example of that), it has to be a REALLY innovative or great game. Beyond Good and Evil and Prince of Persia are undoubtedly excellent games, but neither is a revolutionary game--PoP is a sequel to what was once a famous franchise, and BGaE sounds like just another Zelda-type of game. There's a LOT of games out there, so something has to be totally mind blowingly awesome to stand out without proper marketing.
Just a nitpick, it wasn't Rainbow Six that was released last year, it was Ghost Recon: Island Thunder, as I recall (which sold absurdly well).
The reason Ubisoft did badly (and compared to what it could have done, it did very badly) is because it released all of its phenominal games all at once, at the same time as everyone else released all of their phenominal games (as you mention).
They let out Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil, Rainbow Six 3, and a selection of other titles all at once, at the same time, and didn't market them well enough (despite what the article blurb says). Most people I talk to at EB have never heard of Beyond Good and Evil, or haven't tried it at all. I knew it was going to be good, bought it the first day, and loved it. I was surprised at the time that it was only $49.99 (CDN), but now it's down to $29.99, and it's still not selling. If it had been released this summer, or stretched out to a dry period, it would have been a phenominal hit.
I tallied it up one day when I was bored. Going through EB's new release list from the start of October to the end of January, there were over a thousand dollars worth of games I wanted for the Gamecube alone. Now that I have a PS2 as well, and am thinking about getting a cheap XBox, I'm sure I could spend my entire paycheque every month and still not catch up to the new releases. The industry needs to understand that we just don't have that kind of money, and we're going to pick the hot titles of the time. Go up against Final Fantasy X-2, the GTA double pack, and Prince of Persia, and you literally don't stand a chance.
When the game industry learns this, we'll all be better off, them especially.
--Dan