Over the last few months here on N4G, we have been hearing a few phrases repeated over and over - "sales don't matter", "sales don't equal quality", and "you can't play sales". These "sales" arguements have been mainly confined to the last three months or so. It's not too hard to figure out why, but I'll leave it up to each person to come up with their own reasons. However, I believe that sales numbers are very important, and I'll give you my reasons why.
Let's start by looking at a few successful franchises. Gran Turismo debuted on the PS1, and was an immediate success, eventually selling around 10 million copies. But, what if it sold only 250,000 copies? Would that have changed the quality of the game? No - it would still be a masterpiece. Sales have NO effect on the quality of the game. However, if it sold only 250,000 copies, we probably would not be talking about GT5 today. A quarter million copies probably wouldn't have even made enough money to recoup the development costs, let alone make a profit that would warrant a sequel.
The same could be said about Halo. If it sold half a million instead of 8 million, there would most likely be no Halo 2 - and probably no Xbox 360. Yet, the game's quality would still be the same. God of War, Final Fantasy, Forza, Tekken - the list goes on and on. Gamers should be extremely interested in sales because it provides developers the revenue to keep franchises alive, and to keep making more games.
It is absolutely true that sales do not equal quality. It is also true that you can't play sales numbers. But, if it weren't for sales, you wouldn't have much to play at all.
A number of leaks have popped up that reference Pokemon Black and White remakes in some way. Are they all coincidences or real in 2024?
The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth combat director has expressed that he wants the final part in the trilogy to offer players "even more freedom".
Well its not an action game.
Even Elden Ring added jumping as an evolution of the combat system since Dark Souls did not feature jumping.
I want jumping as much as the next action game fan but this isnt that type of game.
I love the game so far but please don’t make the final part a mini game fest
Everytime I get to a new part in Rebirth it’s “mini game time”
Hope ya don't mind me asking since it seems like you've played it, did it feel like a decent step up from the last game or was it more like the best from the last but more polished?
It makes Remake feel like a demo.
9.5/10 imo. And I think the “mini games” did a great job of adding variety to the gameplay. Purely optional as well.
Here's my thoughts
I think it's a big step up from the first instalment, I'm enjoying it way more.
I thought keeping it just in Midgar was silly, it felt dragged out and it didn't have much variation in terms of the scenery.
However with Rebirth, as soon as you get out of Kalm you have a big world to explore and it's great to just wander round and explore.
Now that I'm half way in though, despite still liking what I'm playing, the gameplay loop is now starting to slow down on me. I've got to a new region and I'm like "Yaaay...need to go and find those towers again, oh look another special beast marker, is that a bird I see in the distance? Better follow it to another Mako Crystal"
It's like....you know how Peter Jackson was only supposed to have two Hobbit films then Warner Bros wanted a third film so he stretched the second film out as much as he could so he could keep stuff for the third film making a trilogy? Yeah it feels like that, so these mini games are a part of that overall gameplay loop to keep us going and stretch the game out overall so they have something for the third and final game.
I personally think you could have had the first instalment get you out of Midgar and through to Grasslands / Junon and the second game finishes things off.
I had a weird cycle of love/hate for all the mini games as I played through. At first I really hated the seeming need to check all these boxes while exploring the grasslands. I didn't enjoy the Gilgamesh quest initially, and thought Queen's blood was fine but didn't want to commit to it. The side quests didn't really grab me either.
Then for some reason everything in Junon region changed my mind and I did pretty much everything. I liked most of the side quests, I actually liked playing fort condor (didn't care for it in the intergrade dlc). And my interest for completing these quests stayed pretty much through to Cosmo Canyon.
Then they added that horrible Lifestream memory/battle mini game and I started getting so burnt out of it all. I just wanted to do the story. I didn't do any side quests in neibleheim and beyond except for the summon. I abandoned Gilgamesh.
So what I'm saying is I would like the third part to go back to the focused progression from remake. Keep the mini games to the gold saucer. Start the game snowboarding if you want, but from there keep the story rolling.
That's funny you say that because I did everything in the Grasslands but once in Junon I started to slow down a little until Corel where by the end I was burnt out. I'm still currently going but I'm just doing what I can while things keep getting thrown at me.
I would have preferred half of these mini game side fillers / collectibles for some really beefy side quests that really adds onto the world of FFVII.
Sounds like they hadn't really figured out what they wanted to do with Remake and this one is more of what they thought of doing which is probably why they're dragging it out to make a trilogy. Disappointed to hear it has towers cause man do i hate towers lol. It's been a while since I've played the first and it'll be a while longer to play the sequel, but it sounds like I'll enjoy it. 7 really impressed me especially after being disappointed with 15, felt like Square finally realized that FF was THEIR big franchise again.
How many hours are you into it at this point?
My friend got like 20-30 in and pretty much quit because of its mini game era. He loved and basically binged through Gran Blue compared to Rebirth
As long as it comes out on PS5 to have the entire series on one platform, do whatever you want
The combat is my favorite thing about Rebirth. Would be really cool if they can improve it even more.
I hope after FF7 Square will either give a new FF game the remake treatment. Or give some of their older titles a remake treatment like Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, even Xenogears.
Wccf tech writes: "Kingdom Come Deliverance 2's scope was impacted by the Xbox Series S hardware limitations, as developers could only make a game that was 25% bigger than its predecessor."
This is the issue with things like this
Xbox Series X is apparently to MS the worlds most powerful console
However the Series S is obviously a limitation because it’s underpowered and developers have to go for parity.
So what’s the point of the world’s most powerful console if you are holding third party developers back? They aren’t going to push themselves if they have to think about the weakest console.
The issue wouldn’t be as bad if it was just Xbox but you are also affecting the PS version aswell
I think developers need to start just taking advantage of a console and if one of them can’t do X Y and Z then f*** them…why should the others suffer. What’s MS going to do? The bigger the franchise the least chance MS are going to tell them to f*** off. Baulders Gate 3 seemed to have stood their ground and suddenly their “strict” parity rule didn’t really matter. We suddenly got super optimisation efforts for the Series S that got things sorted.
I agree, and the sad part is use normal folk saw it the second they announced their plans.
Agree 100% this is why I didn’t want the M$ Monopoly, now PS5 version will be held back too.
If PS5 Pro comes out and Series S is still a thing it’ll be interesting what differences and what devs choose to do. Really hoping Rockstar pushes the PS5 pro with GTA6 and we get the best version possible.
Good ole S indeed. Everyone knew this all along. S was holding games back...Now where the hell is Orchard i want a word with him.
More info from the author of the article, I think: https://www.reddit.com/r/ki...
Quote:
"1) I was told this info from the producer of the game Martin Klíma.
2) He specifically said the game will have only one mode.
3) And this mode is 4K 30 on PS5/XSX and 1440p 30 on XSS.
4) He said that the game is already running north of the 30 FPS cap so the performance should be stable on launch, much better than KCD1.
5) The limitation was XSS because of the 10GB memory. He said that's why they wanted to make the game 25% larger.
6) Speculation on my part: the output resolution is probably upscaled and the reason why there won't be a 60 FPS mode is because it'll most likely be very CPU heavy, like Dragon's Dogma 2 for example."
Doesn't seem like they're adding a 40fps mode on PS5/Series X for launch even if they can handle it.
I'd much rather have 1440p/60fps or even 45fps. Having just one, even with the Series S in mind, is disappointing.
Remember when xbots were adamant that the series s won’t hold back the gen?
Microsoft just needs to let go of the mandatory parity. Who cares if your grandma doesn’t understand that a game cannot be played on the S. It’s not like it she can buy you a physical game for it anyway. Before buying the game put up a notice that it only works on series X. If you’re buying for a friend-allow for a refund.
Bam. Everyone is happy. Most series s owners are for casuals that want Game Pass anyway and most likely don’t purchase most games.
If the developers want it to run on S, let them figure it out.
If it were Series X only then they'd only be selling to 25% of the Xbox Series userbase, and that's certainly not worth the time and effort into doing a port. Could just do PS5 & PC instead. No compromises needed.
“During the event, the Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 producer also revealed that on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, the game will run at 4K resolution and 30 frames per second“
Another “creative decision” right? 🤦♂️
Since you're not an amateur and clearly know more than them, can you over there and help get the game running on the S without having to sacrifice their true vision. Us gamers would really appreciate you using your wisdom for good 🙏
Thousands of games run just fine on S.
But Kingdom Come is the game that can’t. Must be one hell of a game!
Thousands of games run on PS4 and on Switch. If developers want them to run on those systems. Fine. Those two platforms still get new games. Sony isn’t making studios also make a ps4 pro version, or Nintendo a wiiu version. Microsoft technically is.
If games like Alan Wake 2, GTA6, COD, hellblade all run on S, no excuse for this 100x smaller and 100x worse looking game to be held back.
"Thousands of games run just fine on S.
But Kingdom Come is the game that can’t. Must be one hell of a game!"
Kingdom come 2 runs just fine alright. Its the SCOPE that they want. They had to cut it because of the stupid S series. Hellblade2 ran just fine too..but im pretty confident if it was just the X in mind, the scope of the game would have been much bigger.
As yes sales do determine if a game gets a sequel or not. But people are not saying they don't matter per say. They usually and only say it when people use sales to measure how good a game is when its entirely not the case.
Also I don't think we can determine if a game is successful or not depending on its sale as we don't know how much most games cost to make and advertise. So yeah a quarter mil sales may not be good for a huge budget game but thats pretty good for low budget games. Thats pure profit most likely so its up to the devs and the publishers and not us gamers to determine if a game is a flop or a bad choice or decision as it affects them directly way more than us gamers. If a game flops we just don't play it or waste 60 bucks on it. If a game flops for a dev that could be some people lose their jobs or the company shuts down so meh....
You also have to add in who the specific game is aimed at. Halo and Gran Turismo were aimed at a wide audience, both core and casual gamers. And they both succeeded with selling to these gamer demographics.
Games like Ico, Katamari Damacy or Okami are all great games but probably didn't aim to sell the same quantities since they appeal to a niche demographic of gamers. So it makes no sense to say Halo is better than these games cause it sold more copies.
What makes one game better than the other comes down to personal taste, which is not measurable in any objective way. One thing you can measure though is the success of games that compete for the same audience. Like Killzone 2 and Halo 3 for instance. Or Forza and Gran Turismo.
We can't say that Halo 3 is better than Killzone 2, or GT better than Forza. But we can say that one has been more succesful than the other so far.
"Gamers should be extremely interested in sales because it provides developers the revenue to keep franchises alive, and to keep making more games" - Great words.
Yet you still hear...you can't play sales! Quality >>>>> Sales!!1
true sales are important in the gaming industry BUT i dont see why fanboys n some real gamers care bout sales so much unless they got stocks in any of the companys lol it shouldnt really matter to them only that the quality games keep comin not how many they sold its pointless imo
just commenting on your tag we won the world series in 2005 chisox not bosox......but back to the biz sales does play at least 85% but also a good positive feedback from us, well plays a key role too........take NFL Street 1 and 2 it sold soment in the mills i know for sure then when NFL Tour came around on the 360 EA expected to sell almost the same number and what it do flop out of this world bad feedback= bad sales