Topic: Konami: "Taking risks with CV prevented it from becoming another Megaman"

[Flame]

I couldn't stand the R+V anime. probably because I saw the manga first, and found the Anime to be nothing like the manga, where I was hoping for just a plain adaptation, not distillation.

Then again, wasn't the first manga series still being released when the Anime was made? or am i trippin'? (still find it hillarious the author actually separated a MANGA into SEASONS)

[Pfil]

Yes, they are very different. The manga is more serious.
I'm not familiar with the release dates, I just read what was available in the manga right after finishing watching the anime.

[TheouAegis]

MoF doesn't mean 2D gaming is dead, it means LoS scuked enough that no one wanted to spend $40 on a 3DS game from the same company. People probably bought LoS because of the name, not the gameplay. Gamers probably bought it, played it, then returned it for some money back because of how much they disliked it, but Konami and MS wouldn't have access to those figures so as far as they see the game's a huge seller. MoF comes out, people are now familiar with MS, so sales take a hit.

IGA ruined the series and Cox decimated it. People only pay for Cox' shit because they want to go back to the good old days of Castlevania and were hoping he'd do that. I wwas eagerly awaiting MoF but after watching videos of LoS and MoF I don't even want to touch it. I don't mind Cox being a douche, but those are not Castlevania games and so I will not buy them. I still regret paying more than $10 each for OoE and um, I think it's Aria of Sorrow, although I guess I was  entertained somewhat. But I dislike both IGA and Cox for what they've done.

Castlevania needs to be a fast action game again with nail-biting fear-inducing death traps.


R+V is so violent now. Even though it was a *****, Kurumu's death was super gory I thought. And you never know who to trust in the story now. I like it. Season II in the manga's definitely gotten better. It's a lot like Excel Saga. The series starts off comical and fairly light, but eventually takes on a much more serious tone.

[crisis]

Castlevania needs to be a fast action game again with nail-biting fear-inducing death traps.

Did you enjoy Adventure ReBirth? Just curious.

[TheouAegis]

No because I don't have a Wii. My friend hasn't downloaded it yet for his Wii. Although he did download Super Castlevania IV, so it's been fun talking to him about that. And now he has that NES/SNES system that came out on the market recently, so I can take my copy of CV3 down to his house one of these days and we can play it again.

[Flame]

opinions

ok

[TheouAegis]

Wow 2 downvotes for not having a Wii? It was a cool system with shitty games when it first came out. If I wanted to play it, I'd just go to my friend's house, but even then we'd spend 90% of our time playing PS2 or PS3 games (or Genesis, but those were special times). I love Nintendo keeping the Wiimote relatively compact and not putting 20 buttons on it. I'm sure the different controllers were all planned as revenue-makers early on, but I admire the foresight Nintendo had to let you use a controller with however many buttons you needed. If you don't need 20 buttons, you shouldn't have to manipulate a 20-button controller. Plus the wrist strap was a nice touch too. Still, didn't want to spend $200 on a Wii.

[Neobelmont]

No because I don't have a Wii. My friend hasn't downloaded it yet for his Wii. Although he did download Super Castlevania IV, so it's been fun talking to him about that. And now he has that NES/SNES system that came out on the market recently, so I can take my copy of CV3 down to his house one of these days and we can play it again.

Beware the famiclones if it's not a retroduo chances are it will not play cv3 trust me I have a fc-twin, retro-bit, and retro-duo and trust me out of the three on the rd works with cv3 and even then the music takes a hit. But maybe time has passed and more famiclones are compatible with cv3

[DragonSlayr81]

Wow 2 downvotes for not having a Wii? It was a cool system with shitty games when it first came out.

This is basically the current gen(PS3, X360, Wii U) in a nutshell, and one of the main reasons I actually held off buying both a PS3 and X360 for a good long while, no launch games peaked my interest. Doesn't help that a lot of the great franchises present through PS1 and PS2 either couldn't make the leap to HD because companies just couldn't scroung up the budget, or those franchises were abandoned because the companies felt they weren't profitable and budget should be focused on titles/franchises that are more attuned to mainstream tastes. It wasn't until, maybe, couple of years ago that I actually got a PS3 and X360. I did get a Wii U when it came out, but I've alwasy kinda been a Nintendo fan and though it COULD use a better selection of games, I kinda want to see it do good(despite it's, well, not doing so good).

Is it me or, with the NES, Sega Genesis, SNES, when those consoles launched, they had fuckin AWESOME games! PS1 even. Why does it take so long, nowadays, to get a good deal of games out for new consoles? Even slightly after launch, it seemed like NES, Genesis and SNES were getting a good slew of titles and their catalogs were steadily growing more and more. You don't see that anymore. It almost seems like a struggle to get a good number of launch titles out the door.

[A-Yty]

Probably the same thing as with movies; lack of ideas.

[DragonSlayr81]

Probably the same thing as with movies; lack of ideas.

Is it lack of ideas? I really question that because it's brought up a lot and I partially agree, but more so not based on lack of ideas more than people opting for the quick easy cash-in rather than, um, using that brain to come up with something really good or interesting. Sure, lots of base story concepts have been done to death, but there is way to innovation classic story ideas and make them seem new again without going the "Well, let's just do the basic of basics".

For games, I actually it's connected to the whole "play it safe" modern way of thinking. The reason why a lot of developers don't invest in creating launch titles for certain consoles is because they are waiting to see how the console will do FIRST to decide when they actually "jump in" with their games. Of course, a console, be it greatest of HD quality, is going to do shitty if there are NO FUCKIN GAMES FOR IT!! It's really idiotic logic you see a lot of nowadays. It's like everybody are standing on a bridge ready to jump on the moving train as it goes under them, but everybody's afraid to make the leap. It's all, "You first!", "No, YOU first!", "Oh, by all means, I'm a gentleman!", "That's alright, I'll follow you!", "I insist!"... I do think the "playing it safe" method is hindering progression AND creativity in the gaming industry. Irestingly enough, the whole idea behind the topic, taking risks, is almost the opposite of the popular belief of "playing it safe". I've said it before, if you always hang out in the wading pool, you're never really going to learn how to swim in the deep end, and you could sure as HELL forget about ever going to the beach and swiming in the ocean!! The whole recession topped off with the higher development prices for HD gaming has resulted in making developers pussies.

[X]

Is it me or, with the NES, Sega Genesis, SNES, when those consoles launched, they had fuckin AWESOME games! PS1 even. Why does it take so long, nowadays, to get a good deal of games out for new consoles? Even slightly after launch, it seemed like NES, Genesis and SNES were getting a good slew of titles and their catalogs were steadily growing more and more. You don't see that anymore. It almost seems like a struggle to get a good number of launch titles out the door.

Maybe it's because there were not so many people working on these earlier games unlike today. A game nowadays has more then one team behind it and they are usually scattered across the globe. Also take into consideration of just how many people are in each team. Some may think that have such a huge workforce behind a single game will make things progress fast and smooth, but it doesn't really. It just makes the progress that much more slower. I guess 'cluttered' is the word I'm looking for here. Back in the NES days for the most part you only had one team and they weren't even a group of ten people either. So in the short span of the NES' life there has been over 900 titles released then compared to todays' console library. This is just my opinion, it's not a fact.

[TheouAegis]

IGA's games were fun for a while, but the dude had to go. He's a gent, but someone who saw no problem with Cthulhu floating around in a residential quarter with chandeliers twice as big as The Old One had to go.

The series needed a change from IGA's formula, but it didn't need a drastic overhaul like Cox thinks. Some of Konami's best-selling franchises haven't changed much at all over the years, even though they've declined in popularity. Declining sales naturally encouraged Konami to try something different and SOTN took off because of that gamble, but then gamers quickly bored of IGAvanias. That's not opinion, that's economics. Even with very limited figures, Castlevania's history wasn't impressive even under IGA and still not impressive under Cox. Some of the most impressive figures were in the NES days. CV3 took a hit and the series changed after that but only SOTN and LOI made a dent in the figures. These numbers are off of VGChartz.com and some of the data is missing too. (SOTN sold only 210,000 copies in Japan, and all in the first year? I find that hard to believe.) The three NES games, according to the site, were hits in Japan and USA, but abyssmal flops in Europe. Whether this is true or just shows a lack of sales figures available from Europe, I can't say.

SOTN: 1.27 million units sold globally on the PS
CV1: 1.23 million units on the NES
LOI: 0.94 million units
CV2: 0.93 million units
COTM: 0.89 million units
CV3: 0.85 million units
LoS: 0.79 million units on the PS3
LoS: 0.51 million units on the XBox360 (for a total of 1.30 million in 3 years, not bad)
CV64: 0.64 million units
CoD: 0.42 million units
DoS: 0.37 million units
DXC: 0.37 million units
PoR: 0.35 million units
OoE: 0.31 million units
AoS: 0.28 million units without sales figures from Japan

A lot of the figures on that site are lacking data from various years. OoE, for example, only has the first two years of sales in Japan, but the US has sales numbers for every year since OoE's release. I can't help but wonder where Cox gets his figures and just how accurate they are. But let's just look at LoS's figures since they're likely to be the most accurate and revised (by the way, you'll notice MoF didn't even surpass AoS).

2010   400,574   N/A   400,574
2011   263,611   -34.2%   664,185
2012   101,745   -61.4%   765,930
2013   20,844   -79.5%   786,774

Those are actually decent declining figures. A steady drop is acceptable and a 400k opening weekend just for the PS2 is impressive. But wow, 2013 took a huge hit in the sales. In the first two years, everyone wanted to play it upon release. Sales were steady in the first three months upon release (October 2010) and sales were already at 300k before the year was even over. There's no denying that's impressive for a Castlevania game. In nearly every country, sales were high in the first two months. The US and Europe (on average) maintained 10k+ units per week for the first 5 weeks. Sales numbers for Japan on that sight show sales crippled by the third week. Are figures missing from Japan? Can't say. Are figures missing from other parts of Europe? Of course, as Spain isn't listed but probably sold a majority of the European sales, if Steampunk was representative of Spain at all. So there's no denying, on any one platform LoS is doing better than any of the recent Castlevania games, but overall it's on par with SOTN, since Saturn Sales aren't documented properly. Considering it's well above 1k sales this year, it's no doubt a success in Konami's eyes, but reports for MoF aren't even over 100k yet, so in the portable area MS has fizzled.

To put some things in perspective though:

• Asteroids on the Atari 2600 sold over 3 million units
• E.T. on the Atari 2600 sold (yes, sold) over 1.5 million units
• Demon Attack on the Atari 2600 sold over 2 million units
• Missile Command on the Atari 2600 sold over 2.5 million units
• Pitfall on the Atari 2600 alone sold over 4 million units
• Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 sold over 7 million units (and was shit)
• Pac-Man collection on the GBA sold 2.9 million units
• Six Pac-Man games have recorded sales of 1 million units or more.
• Pac-Man has sold over 43 million units in its franchise history
• The Sims franchise has sold over 150 million units
• The Sims 3 has sold over 10 million units across platforms
• Tetris has sold over 125 million units in franchise history
• Tetris DS sold over 2 million units
• Tetris Axis on the 3DS sold 0.31 million units (still better than MoF)
• Need For Speed has sold over 100 million units in franchise history
• Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit sold over 4.5 million units total
• Need For Speed: The Run sold 3 million units total
• Madden NFL 10 outsold most Castlevania games just in its first week
• Gran Turismo 4 outsold most Castlevania games just in its first week in Japan alone
• Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3 sold 10.4 million units
• Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) has sold over 61 million units in franchise history
• Bejeweled has sold 50 million copies (and it's just a clone of Same Game, wtf!)
• Tekken 6 sold over 3.7 million units between the PS3 and XBox3600 versions
• Mega Man Zero Collection for the DS sold 0.24 million units (still better than MoF)
• Mortal Kombat on the PS3 sold 2.2 million units
• Metroid has 8 titles that sold over 1 million units
• Metroid: Zero Mission sold 0.84 million units (essentially a remake of Metroid)
• Devil May Cry has sold over 11 million units spanning 4 titles
• Sim City has sold over 18 million units in franchise history

KONAMI'S LIST OF ACHIEVEMENTS

• Castlevania has sold over 20 million units in franchise history
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES sold 4.2 million units
• TMNT II:The Arcade on the NES sold 2.2 million units
• TMNT III: The Manhattan Project on the NES sold 1.4 million units
• TMNT on the GBA and PS2 both sold over 0.92 million units
• Gradius on the NES sold over 1.3 million units
• Konami's soccer games consistently sell over 2 million units
• Dance Dance Revolution typically sell 2 million units
• Yu-Gi-Oh video games typically sell over 2 million units

We can see a few things from this: Atari games sold better than most Castlevania games. Games franchises that have not changed much at all still outsell Castlevania. Sports and racing games are almost guaranteed sellers. Even Tetris outsells Castlevania. Most importantly and as everyone already knows, MoF was a flop. To be honest, I'm actually a bit surprised it flopped, but more on that in a sec.

While LoS so far has been Castlevania's greatest success, superseding SOTN by a smidgen, it's hardly a success story, let alone something Cox should be patting himself on the back for. Releasing a game of such magnitude in this era of bloated game developer staffs is praiseworthy, but in terms of sales figures it's not that impressive. We will have to wait until LoS2 to see if Cox actually did well. If LoS2 is a flop, Castlevania very well could be dead in Konami's eyes. The franchise has always been one of Konami's low sellers.

The history of the franchise has shown that the initial release of a director or system yields decent sales, but subsequent games yield shameful numbers. Castlevania was the best seller on the NES. Ironically, for all the love SCV4 gets these days, in terms of sales it was a bomb. Even CV64 beat it out. Why CV64 bombed so bad baffles me. Yes, the game sucked in many people's eyes, but it was the flagship of 3Dvanias; it should have actually fared better. LoI tried to bring the series back up and in a way it succeeded -- it could be argued that LoS would have been a total failure if LoI hadn't shown fans that Castlevania could be rendered in 3D. MoF was the series' 3DS flagship, but not Cox's. I almost wonder if MoF had come out before LoS if it would have had better opening sales. Would LoS have sold as well to this point if MoF had come out first?

Of course all of this could be wrong -- much of the info comes from vgchartz.com. A lot of information is lacking. How many units of Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge sold? According to vgchartz.com, less than 10,000. I find that hard to believe. Obviously information is missing. And therein lies the problem with Cox's comments. He says his game is the best selling game in CV history, but how do we know? We assume he has insider knowledge from Konami, but it's just as plausible he's scouring the net for information like the rest of us. He sees the sales figures, tallies them up, sees that LoS sold more across two platforms than SotN did on one platform. LoS as far as VGChartz knows only barely beat out SotN in sales but there is no record of the Saturn version's sales. Only one or two versions of CV1's sales are even available from VGchartz and yet those versions alone are nearly the same in sales as LoS. From what I can tell at VGChartz, games from the SNES era often didn't have numbers reported for more than 2 years, whereas PS2, PS3, and XBox games have numbers reported for 3 or 4 years. Many Gameboy titles are lacking numbers and Wii VC sales aren't accurately reported as well. Just because he's an exec at Konami doesn't mean he has any significant insider knowledge. Also missing (and understandably so) are pirate figures; how many copies of Castlevania games have been pirated and downloaded illegally and are still present in the offenders' households?

It is entirely plausible LoS was just a flagship production destined to lead to horrible sales figures in subsequent releases as has it seems was the case throughout Konami's history according to vgchartz. While I don't think Cox is just pulling numbers out of his ass, I think he's ignoring what they mean. He's also further exemplifying his immaturity by boasting about his sales figures WITHIN THE FRANCHISE. So he may have sold more copies of LoS than any other CV game in Konami history, the sales revenue is still unimpressive in the history of video games. Cox sounds like a guy boasting about bowling 120 while his friends average 70 to 100, but the group of bowlers three lanes over are averaging 190 to 250.


I fell asleep while typing this. So now as for the release-date games: I like the staff size argument. Also is the fact I think that most developers of systems aren't waiting for a game library. They wasted enough time developing the systems, they want to capitalize on the new technology as soon as possible and release the system with or without a game library. Nintendo in the old days made sure it had a good games library. When they got jumpy, they released the Virtual Boy ahead of schedule with a horrible library of games. The system was a flop. It wasn't a bad system, it was marketed poorly. One of the reasons Mario is such an iconic gaming figure is because he continues to help Nintendo provide a fun flagship game for each system upon release. Developers can see how Nintendo incorporated Mario into the new system and then they can get on board to make games too. Also, I think maybe the programming languages for new systems might be a bit different and developers aren't being provided adequate development software. And then you have cases like Sega where the hardware developer told programmers to go fuck themselves if they didn't like something.

[Maedhros]

shitty numbers

This site take numbers from nowhere, they simply invent the numbers from their asses. The only trackers of the market are NPD, MediaCreate, Famitsu... these numbers simply have no base for them.

It's a banned site on Neogaf for a reason. They even admited it themselves that their number were only estimates, in other words, bullshit.

Just wanted to comment on that, didn't read the rest of your post.

[TheouAegis]

Meh. Either way, the final paragraph in my post still holds. Cox is talking out of his ass. It's obvious even from NPD, Famitsu and Chart-Track that LoS, let alone any CV game, will probably never be as popular as any of the big boys. And not all the figures were from VGchartz. Maybe 2/3 were. Castlevania is a decent franchise but still nowhere near as big of a money sucker as some other series. And considering how many games bear its title, it's kinda pathetic.

"[Cox's] also further exemplifying his immaturity by boasting about his sales figures WITHIN THE FRANCHISE. So he may have sold more copies of LoS than any other CV game in Konami history, the sales revenue is still unimpressive in the history of video games. Cox sounds like a guy boasting about bowling 120 while his friends average 70 to 100, but the group of bowlers three lanes over are averaging 190 to 250."

I don't expect him to match Metal Gear Solid, but even Konami's saying they're hoping to cross 2 million units sold -- in the sequel. I certainly hope LoS2 breaks the 3million mark, but time will tell. I have my doubts, though.