Topic: What "lacked" to make Castlevania a mainstream ip?

[olrox2]

Everyone agrees that Castlevania sales are decent but never topped, at least not enough to make people from Marketting department wave their arms.

What is the thing that missed to sell millions or basillions of copies? Metroidvania games are not that hard, is it the concept itself that didnt look appealing to ordinary players?

The theme of the game that is not mainstream enough(yet vampires are popular)?

The lack of a decent marketting strategy(these games never had big advertisings on tv)?

Basically, what would prevent a metroidvania game from reaching 3-5 millions sales?

[Chernabogue]

Restricted gaming systems, "old school" look that don't appeal the "mainstream" audience, no real promotion.

[uzo]

After Symphony, the two N64 stinkers hit and bombed. Following that Circle of the Moon sold a bazillion copies, so they kept following that.

At some point they were reluctant to give any budget to Castlevania. They kept trying to repeat the success of Circle of the Moon by releasing non stop handhelds.

Lament and Curse did little to nothing to further the main stream appeal.Curse especially regressed on what Lament laid out, and sunk the Castlevania console market. Later Judgement came to put the nail in the coffin.

In doing this they kept marginalizing the mainstream appeal on the consoles, and segregating the franchise into the handheld market until lords of Shadow came along.

It's no secret that Lords of Shadow has so many advantages as a game above Lament, Curse, and the N64 titles for sure. They had a nice budget, which lead to a long game with great graphics, more solid gameplay than it's 3D predecessors, and a lot of marketing behind it.

[Ratty]

Short answer- Mismanagement from Konami. And non-viability of 2D games as mainstream console titles from about 1998 to 2012 or so.

Long answer-

Castlevania was a big name IP for a little while in the late 1980s/early 1990s. But then when the 16bit era hit Konami decided to hedge their bets and put a game out on each of the major 16bit systems, fraying consumer loyalty. Then when the 32bit era came around they failed to capitalize on the unexpected smash success of Symphony of the Night to instead jump on the "Everything has to be in 3D now!" bandwagon. A fad which was already starting to slow down by the time they did it. I like the N64 games but after SOTN they weren't what most people were looking for in the Castlevania brand (neither was Legends on the Gameboy) so they got an infamous reputation as disappointments.

In the early 00s, before digital distribution really existed, popular industry wisdom held that 2D games only sold on handhelds. So after two more non-starter 3D console games the money men at Konami decided that the series was going to be 2D only, which meant handheld only. (Disregarding the strange spinoff that was "Judgement") I think they kept chasing the success of Circle of the Moon, not really considering it owed its success in large part to being one of the few "must have" launch titles for the GBA. Konami kept pushing IGA and his team to pump out handheld MetroidVanias faster and cheaper, which lead to lots of sprite re-use and arguably an overall decline in level design quality.

All of which contributed to a disintegration in the prestige of the once-venerated series.

After that Konami apparently took competing proposals from IGA and makers of "Clive Barker's Jericho" MercurySteam. IGA made a proposal trailer for a 3D Alucard game, MercurySteam proposed the "Lords of Shadow" reboot. MercurySteam won and IGA was unceremoniously moved onto shovelware duty until he recently left Konami.

Considering their handling of Silent Hill it's anybody's guess what Konami will do next with the IP since MercurySteam has moved on. But it will most likely be a continuation of Lords of Shadow in some way. They don't seem to have been satisfied with the success of the previous digitally distributed titles in the series though.

[olrox2]

I admit that Circle of The Moon owed a lot to being a game available at launch, its the game that made me buy a gba basically.

When i played Harmony of Dissonance, i quickly finished it and forgot it, because i had a  feeling of déjà vu.Then came Aria of Sorrow, which i enjoyed mainly because of the hunt for souls and powers.

It is a bit sad to see hw management mistakes have sunk the ip.

I havent tried the DS generation castlevana games, but i should get them this week or next since i bought a 2DS and those games on amazon.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Lack of good marketing also did not help.
Back in the 80's and 90's, there would be TV commercials for the more popular games.

The last commercial for Castlevania that I remember seeing in the USA was for Lament of Innocence (awesome commercial):
CASTLEVANIA: LAMENT of INNOCENCE- 2003 Television Commercial #1

On TV, on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon, I still see Rated E commercials, such as Pokemon, etc.
Late at night, on Comedy Central, I still see commercials for games, but it's mostly for XBOX crap.
Having a commercial for a game that shows in late-night would give the brand a little more exposure...

...but it would also help if the game is good.  The LoS games are OK at best, but not super-great.

[beingthehero]

I think peeps are forgetting that Dawn of Sorrow was considered by Konami to be a great success. Like CotM, it was the 'killer app' that you had to get in 2005.

Anyways Castlevania wasn't all that low-key from the early 2000's to the late 00's. They always sold enough for them to make another one in one to two years, unlike Konami's other titles like Snatcher or Contra. Just about every 'list of GBA/DS games you must have' always included some or all of the Castlevania games. But by 2009 it seemed everyone had to have ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD for anything to be considered remotely successful.

Anyways marketing isn't everything, since LoS2 was just as heavily marketed as LoS1, and it flopped.

[crisis]

castlevania was, and arguably still is, going thru an identity crisis. journey back to 2008, and the mystical countryside of Japan. boardheads & execs were scrambling with random ideas, which produced Ecclesia, Akumajo Dracula: The Arcade, Encore of the Night, Judgment, Pachislot, Lords of Shadow, among others. now what do these all have in common? theyre vastly different from one another. so what sparked this sudden change? we all know how influential Hideo Kojima is at Konami, maybe his meddling went a lil beyond LoS? perhaps he told the suits "you guys have a legendary ip, perhaps you should throw stuff at the wall & see what sticks" or something like that, they misinterpretted his words, etc. who knows

the fact of the matter is, if konami put as much effort into castlevania as much as t hey do Metal Gear back in like 2000, then the course of the series would be very different than it is today. weather it wouldve be good or bad is anyones guess

[BLOOD MONKEY]

holy crap i just realised beingthehero's signature is breathing

[theplottwist]

Castlevania lacked guns, first-person mode, lacked a mandatory-badass eyepatch, lacked "World War II's" themes, lacked a silent, emotionless character that attacks people with a crowbar, lacked an assassin wannabe that travels through time to replay other assassin wannabes that must undergo a 2-hour tutorial to learn how to walk, lacked ZOMG PUBLICITY, lacked ZOMG 3D 60FPS 1080p, lacked repetitive candy-dragging puzzles and fly-through-pipe birds...

All in all, it lacked everything that is terrible and/or extremelly mainstream, and was actually a good game. The people are the ones with a problem. Too many kids playing shitty games are killing Castlevania.

[olrox2]

What was "good sales" for a Platform like DS? I checked numbers on vg chartz, apparently Circle of the moon sold around 890 k copies, and Dawn of Sorrow 400 k.

Compared to that, pokemon main game always go beyond 6 millions sales. Mario games do much better than Castlevania too.

Thinking about it, maybe that Castlevania has bad sales because its doesnt loook "Nintendoish" enough for players?

I got a look at Nintendo ds most sold games:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_DS_video_games

[theANdROId]

That's kinda what I was thinking...seems like the main thing anyone wants on consoles nowadays are that style of game...Halo, Modern Warfare, Call of Duty, etc..  At least, that's what I always hear my few gamer friends talking about. :-/

[VladCT]

What was "good sales" for a Platform like DS? I checked numbers on vg chartz, apparently Circle of the moon sold around 890 k copies, and Dawn of Sorrow 400 k.

Compared to that, pokemon main game always go beyond 6 millions sales. Mario games do much better than Castlevania too.

Thinking about it, maybe that Castlevania has bad sales because its doesnt loook "Nintendoish" enough for players?

I got a look at Nintendo ds most sold games:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_DS_video_games

VG Chartz isn't exactly a good source, from what I remember they've admitted that their numbers are pure guesswork.

[Shiroi Koumori]

Aside from Konami's mismanagement as what Ratty said, I think the gaming demographic has changed. The games they want now are vastly different from the games we wanted then. And as far as I know people tend to crowd on certain games more than others, so developers just decide to make copy pasta games which are tiring/boring to the veterans but are still capable of luring newbies and people who don't care.
If Castlevania changed to suit the new demographic, it loses its aesthetic and its identity. It slowly dies from the churning of the industry.... unless, someone steps up and breathes new life to it but not all things given new life will remain mainstream for long. Take for instance Prince of Persia, a successful reboot for the PS2 era, but sadly put on hold because the assassins took over.

[Claimh Solais]

Take for instance Prince of Persia, a successful reboot for the PS2 era, but sadly put on hold because the assassins took over.

And then Prince of Persia was rebooted AGAIN in 2008 to suit the new demographics of the time, and it just didn't even feel like Prince of Persia. T'was a good game in its own right (despite being mind-numbingly repetitive), but didn't feel like PoP to me. And then they went back to the Sands storyline again, and that was a good game at best.