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Why Beyond Good and Evil Tanked
Via Joystiq, a post on the JumpButton blog talking with a PR manager at Ubisoft about the title Beyond Good and Evil. Despite critical acclaim and crackerjack gameplay, the title just didn't do very well commercially. The rep explains why it did so badly in the stores, and what that means for future quality game titles. From the article: "When BG&E was released in 2003, it was competing against some of the strongest franchises in gaming. Like a weak wolf cub in a litter, it was forced to fight its siblings for attention and nurturing. Strong brands such as Tom Clancy and the reinvented Prince of Persia were the favourite sons that year. While XIII, a stylish FPS based on an obscure Belgian graphic novel, almost suffered a similar fate to BG&E, but sales in European territories still managed to qualify that game for Sony's best-seller Platinum label. It was only late in the piece that IGN.com managed to arm us with a majestic and summarizing quote for the difficult BG&E: 'Zelda for grown-ups.'"
Actually, he's right and his comments are far from lame.
There are three "main" existing ways of creating a story driven with text that is aided by drawings.
A) There's the way that originated in america: The "comic" version.
The comic version is small publication that is sold in the way that magazines are sold. A periodical release. Usually contains publicity and the paper size is usually small. Small number of pages (if you exclude publicity). Sometimes a "collection" of comics can be re-published as "trade-paperbacks" in a larger volume.
B) There's the way it originated in Europe: The "graphic novel" version.
The graphic novel version is longer than a "comic". Their release is irregular (usually once every year or two for a major series). The number of pages is often "around" 40 and the size of the pages themselves are bigger.
C) There's the way it originated in Japan: The "manga".
Usually black and white, very small sized, but with a number of pages that is often over a hundred.
NOW, you can use any terminology you want, but these three ways of doing things are there. Comics exist in Europe, Bigger "graphic novels" also exist in North America. Mangas now exist everywhere, but they are often cut in "comic" size for the american market. Likewise, comics are often presented only in their trade-paperbacks form in Europe.
TinTin, Asterix and XIII are all originaly made the European way. Big graphic novels.
SpiderMan, X-Men, BatMan are all originaly made the North American way, small comic publications.
Ranma, Sailor Moon, are all originaly made the Japanese way, small books with tons of pages.
Now about XIII...
XIII is a MAJOR series of "European-type" graphic novels. Just because it hasn't been released or is wide-known in the U.S. doesn't mean it's "obscure".
XIII is big in Europe. It's scenarist, Jean Van Hamme, has done some of the most well-known European graphic novel series that i would rank right after TinTin and Asterix in popularity.
Saying that XIII is "obscure" is to put a blind-fold over your eyes and refusing to see that there are people living outside your own country that are doing thing you don't know of.
I don't live in Europe, i live in Quebec, Canada. Due to the fact of the bilingual situation here, we get the best of the three ways (European, American and Japanese [we get both english and french translations of those]).
In our market, European graphic novels actually is making it as big as the American way, if not even bigger.
The french versions of american comic books (in their trade-paperback forms as they don't exist in "comic form") are NOT those that sell the most. European graphic novels like XIII sell a lot more.