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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.
it ranks up there with windwaker, and metroid prime as THE games of the last year. (so, yea, perhaps prime is a bit old now, but it was years ahead of its time) these are the games that make consoles worth having, and its a shame they flop in comparison to the crap sequels that are getting so mass produced these days.
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
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
don't pick Iran as the setting.
What's next, Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a first person shooter?
Ubisoft didn't release BG&E or PoP for XBox or Gamecube in Europe in time for Christmas. PoP is still not out for Xbox over here yet, despite them both having been out for all systems for some time in the US. Allegedly Sony did some deal with them to delay the games.
Now, granted, the PS2 has a much larger install base than the XBox and Gamecube in Europe, with about 20 million units compared to almost 4 million units each for Xbox and Gamecube. However, that's nearly 30% of their potential audience they're cutting out there, and as both the Xbox and Cube have smaller catalogues, there's less internal competition.
Dunno how much Sony paid them to hold those games back, but I'm not convinced it was worth it...
What a worthless company.
In Beyond Good & Evil (pc version) there is a game ending bug. Affects a whole lot of people. Message boards everywhere have people desperately seeking an answer as to what is wrong (search on Google for the second triangle key bug) and guess what Ubisoft says about it.. NOTHING!
So all of these people, including myself, are completely screwed. Ubisoft hasn't released a fix for it and hasnt said a word. The only reason I have even been able to get past that point is because I stumbled across an unofficial hack that some guy wrote to specifically get past the part in the game that is broken.
So sure, there is a fix, but what about all of those people who aren't as good at the internet and can't find it? Or the little kids who got the game as a present and don't have internet access? It wasn't an official fix, it wasn't found on the BG&E site, there were no notes on the tech support pages. It was only through searching on Google and bouncing myself around on different message boards did I eventually find the fix. Heck, FAQs on gamefaqs even mention the bug and say that if you find it your best bet is to find someone with a save game past that point.
Releasing a game broken and then refusing to fix it is a huge mistake on their part. As soon as a bug like this is found they should release an official fix for it the next day, not drag their feet and maybe address it in a few months.
Splinter Cell (PC) had the same sort of problem, in many cases a player would shoot his weapon and the sound would go completely nuts. Loud static would make it unplayable. Gamers would have to quit out of the game completely and go back in to make the sound go back to normal.
So what did Ubisoft do to address the problem? Jack. They did nothing. People were trying to find an answer but they provided nothing.
So sure, they can release killer games but if they keep releasing them broken and refuse to support the people who spent their money, why should anyone bother?
"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"?
I rather have a short, immersive extremely well done game (PoP:SoT, Elite Force (the first one) or Max Payne 2), then to have a game that can give lots of gameplay time but with poor mechanics/plot/whatever that make it a grueling experience (Super Mario Sunshine for example).
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I bought both the day they came out, and I couldn't have been happier. When I used to work at EB, the Wednesday before the week of Thanksgiving was absolute hell because you'd literally have over 50 games coming out. The Tuesday night before that Wednesday you always had to have the staff clear off every new release shelf to prepare. Most of this 50 new releases just got filed in with the old ones because we didn't have room. And we were a well-staffed and district flagship EB. I can't imagine what would happen to those 50 new releases per system at a out of the way Best Buy or Wal-Mart.
Moreover, when the mom comes in to buy the kid a Christmas game, or even the wife for the gameplaying husband, all she knows is that she's looking for that game that's like GTA that's been on TV, or the new Mario game (even for the PS2). When I bought them at Toys R' Us during their Buy 2 Get 1 Free, the guy behind the counter knew Prince of Persia was good but couldn't find it, and it took him a good 3 or 4 minutes to track down Beyond Good & Evil.
What Ubisoft was trying to do, at least with PoP, was create another Splinter Cell. The difference though is that last Christmas, when Splinter Cell was released for Xbox, you really didn't have much in the way of strong titles. Maybe MechAssault, and that's pushing it. In Christmas of 2003, the "new" Splinter Cell (PoP) had stuff like KOTOR and Rainbow Six (ironically, another Ubisoft title) and that was only on the Xbox. The other platforms were probably even stronger (Mario Kart, SOCOM II). The problem is that investors create such an expectation for Christmas that if Ubisoft didn't get closer to EA's numbers during Christmas, what good is the Ubisoft stock? Consider this an insder retail proverb : A dollar in profit during Christmas is worth two during third quarter.
It's a shame, because it's investors that are indirectly responsible for half-shipped games and marketing mistakes like this. If you haven't already noticed, there are these mini-huge release days (like the one before Thanksgiving) on the Wednesday at the end of every financial quarter (next one is at the end of March I think). The releases will all clump and crowd on that one day. Another proverb: a dollar made at the end of the quarter for a half-finished game is worth two dollars made for a complete game released in the middle of a quarter.
From Gamespot's review of BG&E:
Nonlethal stealth is quickly becoming one of those "love it or hate it" gameplay elements, and while the stealth in BG&E is handled well, there's enough of it to turn off people who don't care for it.
Running around dark corridors isn't the only thing you'll do in Beyond Good & Evil. The game's 10- to 15-hour quest [...]
Personally, it takes a lot to make me go out and buy a game that's only 10-15 hours in length. Additionally, I'm in the latter crowd on stealth gameplay. While PoP's ads were decent, BG&E had some of the worst video game ads I've ever seen (ok, FF:TA was worse, by far, only showing that ads won't deter me from a game I really want).
Prince of Persia is also noted as being a short game, but I've still considered picking it up.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Laugh if you will, but the Ubisoft developers can blame themselves for truncating the growth of XIII on the PC. Mod and map development has become a critical aspect of a growing FPS title and with the Unreal engine as it's core - XIII should have been an easy sell for that. Built in map editor, OO scripting language, and the only cel shaded toy on the block.
So what did Ubisoft do?
Well, they released the US version of XIII with a flaw that disabled the use of custom maps thanks to the CD checking software. Yup. It came with an editor, you just couldn't really play with them.
Mods? They stripped out the source of the scripts required to get a full compile. Epic told me that it might be possible to get a compile if you had UT2003 handy, which has similar core classes, but you probably wouldn't get very far.
Community? For some reason, Ubi added a Map/Mod community to their XIII forums. It's a joke. Developers don't go there, heck moderators rarely go there.
Not to mention that they reworked the basic gametype framework so that even once you get past any of the above, it's still annoying to get custom material running in the game.
Result? XIII is probably a better buy as a console title than PC. At least that way you can easily sell it to EB when you're done. Because when you finish the game, that's it. You have a coaster.
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."
I've been slow picking up PoP (it has been on my list because of my love for the old games back when I was in middle school), but the two-pack is what sold me.
And, dammit, it shouldn't have needed to be packaged with SC (not that my wallet is complaining)! This game is easily the best I've played in years. I've already spent six or seven hours playing the game, and it is a massive step forward for gamers who have been following the Legacy of Kain series or who love good platformers or who thought Enter the Matrix could have been so much more than it was (if only Ubisoft and this development team had worked on that game as opposed to Atari and Shiny..). I cannot sing PoP's praises more! BUY THIS GAME.
As for Splinter Cell: I'll play it at some point. :)
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.