Gaming industry should desaturate Q4

[Roufuss]

Making a mistake and knowing more than your average TNL user are two very different things.

Apparently alot of companies made mistakes this year.

[Diff-chan]

It's easy to say, "look at how shitty BG&E sold, if they released it in June it would've done better!", and offer Rayman 2 as proof, but:

01. Rayman 2 was first released in late October of 1999 for N64. The DC version was the benefactor of months of word-of-mouth hype about how good the game was.
02. Correlation doesnt imply causality. Is BG&E the sort of game that would sell? Im not sure.

[Tyler_Durden]

BG&E is TNL's new Rez. A decent game, but the praise it gets around here is fucking ridiculous.

[Mzo]

Rayman 2 > BG&E

[Yoshi]

Rayman 2 > BG&E

Rayman 2 > BG&E > Rez

[Brisco Bold]

02. Correlation doesnt imply causality. Is BG&E the sort of game that would sell? Im not sure.

I'd like to point out how important and overlooked this fact is. It's easy for arm-chair analysts to go off without recognizing this.

[gamevet]

Q1 seems to have quite a lineup in store for gamers: Final Fantasy:CC, Final Fantasy Online (PS2),Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA), Champions of Norrath:Realms of Everquest (PS2 online), Maximo VS. Army of Zin (PS2), Shining Soul II (GBA), R-Type Final (PS2), NFL Street (Multi), River City Ransom (GBA), PSO III:C.A.R.D Revolution (GC), Nightshade (PS2) and MGS: Twin Snakes.


I think the games listed above are just as good as what was offered the 4th quarter.

[Kinopio]

Ubi Soft was retarded for releasing so many titles at once. Other than that everyone seemed to have a good holiday season.

[Captain Vegetable]

Q1 seems to have quite a lineup in store for gamers: Final Fantasy:CC, Final Fantasy Online (PS2),Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA), Champions of Norrath:Realms of Everquest (PS2 online), Maximo VS. Army of Zin (PS2), Shining Soul II (GBA), R-Type Final (PS2), NFL Street (Multi), River City Ransom (GBA), PSO III:C.A.R.D Revolution (GC), Nightshade (PS2) and MGS: Twin Snakes.


I think the games listed above are just as good as what was offered the 4th quarter.

If you didn't say it, I would have.

Look around, guys. There's no shortage of big name titles this quarter.

[Agent X]

It's easy to say, "look at how shitty BG&E sold, if they released it in June it would've done better!", and offer Rayman 2 as proof, but:

01. Rayman 2 was first released in late October of 1999 for N64. The DC version was the benefactor of months of word-of-mouth hype about how good the game was.
02. Correlation doesnt imply causality. Is BG&E the sort of game that would sell? Im not sure.

Also, the Dreamcast version of Rayman 2 had some other factors in its favor. The Dreamcast was still a very new system, so lots of its early games sold well, even some really shoddy PS1/N64 port jobs. Pretty much anything that happened to have the words "Sega" and "Dreamcast" on the box was basking in the post-launch afterglow, regardless of quality. Going with your first point, the general consensus is that the game was stunning, so that helped sales even more. It was a high-quality Dreamcast platform game--probably the best the system ever had--and it came out at a time when the only other good platformer for the system was Sonic Adventure.

To address your second point, it probably would. The critics (consisting of professional magazine/Web site reviewers, as well as hardcore gamers that tend to populate Web forums like this one) generally adored Beyond Good & Evil. The mainstream masses don't necessarily hate the game. Most mainstream/casual gamers simply don't have an opinion on the game, since they haven't tried it, and generally aren't even aware of its existence. Ubisoft had no TV spots for it, very few print ads, and I don't recall any demos being produced for it. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and XIII had all of these.

I'd say that Ubisoft just didn't market the game very well. Even though I was following the game fairly closely, I had thought it was more of a platformer than anything. So, I passed on it when it was initally released, figuring that I'd had enough of that type of game on my plate with Jak II and Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando. It's really much more of an adventure game than a platformer--a lot like the popular Sierra/LucasArts point-and-click graphic adventures of a decade ago, but more linear, and with some action sequences thrown in. I never fully understood that until I put the disc into my own system. Chalk that one up to no pre-release demo. The people who love the Legend of Zelda games on the GameCube would probably gobble this one up if they knew more about it. Same with the graphic adventure fans, as long as they're open to something with more action and less puzzle-solving.

I'll end here by combining all of the scenarios: If BG&E was in a similar situation as Rayman 2 for the Dreamcast (a really good game being released in the afterglow of a system launch), it probably would have sold much better than it did.