dead game

[lukeeez85]

didnt even get to 7k players peak. probably only sold 10k copies

huge financal loss for square enix

[archonsod]

I didn't realise we had a financial expert on the gaming industry here.

[Koby]

SteamDB estimates around 30k copies sold.

Japanese reports according to Bloomberg put Visions as the 2nd lowest first-week-sales selling Mana title ever, reaching only 1/4th that of Trails of Mana Remake. The worst was Heroes of Mana. However we have no worldwide report to compare with.

In any case, this has done better than some other jrpgs that released in the past few months. For example Trails Through Daybreak only ever hit a little over 2,000 peak last I looked and the Trails franchise as a whole has sold slightly less than the Mana series as a whole so they're pretty comparable.

So I'd say it's at the bottom of expectations but still within expectations of what people should have assumed it'd do on Steam. We still have no idea how well it sold worldwide on consoles so the game likely has gone over 100k total.

[marsHm311oW]

It’s a single player game. So why do you care how much copies sold? -.-

[Photon Shield]

I'm kinda conflicted. On one hand, it's sad that single player JRPG might be seen as unprofitable market so less developer might make them in the future. On the other hand, I'm kinda hopeful that we might get big discount soon?

[Nemesys9999]

Did you forget that this game was first sold only for PS? So I'd say square enix made enough money with it ... it's already way better than what Concord (which survived 2 weeks!) did ...

[archonsod]

Originally posted by Koby:

For example Trails Through Daybreak only ever hit a little over 2,000 peak last I looked and the Trails franchise as a whole has sold slightly less than the Mana series as a whole so they're pretty comparable.

Trails of course being the juggernaut that just keeps going. It's almost like it's possible to produce a game and still make a profit even if you don't sell a few million copies ...
I doubt it's faring that poorly. Second biggest selling physical release in Japan last week, which is pretty good going for a game that isn't available on the Switch. I also doubt expectations were particularly high to begin with - Squeenix declared Trials had surpassed expectations when it broke 1 million total sales, which for a multi-platform global release is nothing.

Originally posted by Photon Shield:

On one hand, it's sad that single player JRPG might be seen as unprofitable market so less developer might make them in the future. On the other hand, I'm kinda hopeful that we might get big discount soon?

Generally the console market is a larger and more lucrative one when it comes to JRPG's; only reason we get them on PC now is because it's almost zero effort (and more importantly, cost) to port them across. Given the game isn't exactly high budget and they're likely already sat on half a million sales I wouldn't be surprised if they've already turned a profit.

[ValiantBlade]

Originally posted by archonsod:

Originally posted by Koby:

For example Trails Through Daybreak only ever hit a little over 2,000 peak last I looked and the Trails franchise as a whole has sold slightly less than the Mana series as a whole so they're pretty comparable.

Trails of course being the juggernaut that just keeps going. It's almost like it's possible to produce a game and still make a profit even if you don't sell a few million copies ...
I doubt it's faring that poorly. Second biggest selling physical release in Japan last week, which is pretty good going for a game that isn't available on the Switch. I also doubt expectations were particularly high to begin with - Squeenix declared Trials had surpassed expectations when it broke 1 million total sales, which for a multi-platform global release is nothing.

Originally posted by Photon Shield:

On one hand, it's sad that single player JRPG might be seen as unprofitable market so less developer might make them in the future. On the other hand, I'm kinda hopeful that we might get big discount soon?

Generally the console market is a larger and more lucrative one when it comes to JRPG's; only reason we get them on PC now is because it's almost zero effort (and more importantly, cost) to port them across. Given the game isn't exactly high budget and they're likely already sat on half a million sales I wouldn't be surprised if they've already turned a profit.

It's worth noting PC's popularity has skyrocketed in Asia over the past few years, especially in Japan where the PC market is booming. Considering most JRPGs also target the Korean and Chinese market, both of which are PC dominant markets, you'd have to be a fool to not publish on PC.

But even prior, specific subgenres of RPGs like dungeon crawlers have traditionally had a presence on PC, so it's never really been that outlandish to release on PC. While the PC market was dead in the US, it was actually thriving in Japan up until 2007 or so, about when the PC market was springing back in the US.

Arguably, PC is quickly becoming as big of a player as Sony is in Japan.

[Doresh]

Total sales are probably hampered by not getting a release for the aging Switch, though depending on how close we are to the next Nintendo console it might be wiser to wait for that thing to drop.

[ValiantBlade]

Originally posted by Dave 'The Veteran' Finley:

didnt even get to 7k players peak. probably only sold 10k copies

huge financal loss for square enix

So, here's the thing about Steam peak player numbers, they mean literally nothing.

Dark Souls 3 had 8k peak. Hollow Knight had 7.7k, Dead Cells has 6k peak. Y'know, three of the most successful games last decade. The recently released Tekken 8 has 9k peak, and is also smashing sales records.

It turns out, timezones exist, and people play games for different periods of time at different times of day.

Unless you're running an MMO, player count and peak players mean literally nothing. Even the curve of the chart doesn't mean much, because games, as a rule, especially single player games, tend to have steady player loss from launch/update until reaching an equilibrium, which rises and falls based off the game's popularity.

Average players of 3.2k is still pretty good as far as a single player release goes, and success is always proportional to the budget. If you naively assume only Steam's peak player count are actual customers, that's a fraction of the buyers, and only takes PC into account which is notoriously the 3rd wheel of the American RPG community.

Then again, I've seen people call Black Myth Wukong a dead game citing similar asinine conclusions drawn from misreading statistics despite how it's currently the 2nd most concurrently played game on Steam right now.

As far as single player games go, all that matters, are total copies sold, and contrary to popular belief, not just the first week is taken into account, usually a game's success is judged by the end of the financial quarter when the quarterly earnings report is filed, and is further judged each quarter until the end of the year.

That's not to say the gaming industry isn't front-loaded to an extent, but the media makes the industry look more front-loaded than it is. First quarter sales are much more valued than sales in later quarters to most companies. However, most companies tend to wait a quarter to fully judge if a game is a success or flop, unless it is a game that requires constant costly maintenance, which is to say a multiplayer game, like Concord.

[ValiantBlade]

Originally posted by Koby:

SteamDB estimates around 30k copies sold.

Japanese reports according to Bloomberg put Visions as the 2nd lowest first-week-sales selling Mana title ever, reaching only 1/4th that of Trails of Mana Remake. The worst was Heroes of Mana. However we have no worldwide report to compare with.

In any case, this has done better than some other jrpgs that released in the past few months. For example Trails Through Daybreak only ever hit a little over 2,000 peak last I looked and the Trails franchise as a whole has sold slightly less than the Mana series as a whole so they're pretty comparable.

So I'd say it's at the bottom of expectations but still within expectations of what people should have assumed it'd do on Steam. We still have no idea how well it sold worldwide on consoles so the game likely has gone over 100k total.

The thing is that physical sales have been hemorrhaging globally for the past few years, they simply aren't a reliable metric anymore, but for some reason journalists don't like reporting on digital sales when talking about launch sales.

Competing with Gundam Breaker 4 also probably doesn't help considering how hotly anticipated that game was, and studio closure press like this game has had, absolutely has a chilling effect on sales.

[Minneyar]

It's bizarre how some people think that the number of concurrent players for a single-player game (especially one whose primary target was a console) matters.

Especially people who don't even own the game. Why are you even here?

[marsHm311oW]

Its a private profile = troll.

[lukeeez85]

Originally posted by Minneyar:

It's bizarre how some people think that the number of concurrent players for a single-player game (especially one whose primary target was a console) matters.

Especially people who don't even own the game. Why are you even here?

white knights have arrived

[somedude212]

Originally posted by Dave 'The Veteran' Finley:

Originally posted by Minneyar:

It's bizarre how some people think that the number of concurrent players for a single-player game (especially one whose primary target was a console) matters.

Especially people who don't even own the game. Why are you even here?

white knights have arrived

Why don't you argue against ValiantBlade's points about how it is impossible to make accurate judgments on the game's sales based on peak players alone before you start throwing buzzwords like white knights, huh? But then again, I highly doubt you came here to argue in good faith or have actual concrete evidence of this game's failing commercially.

[lukeeez85]

Originally posted by somedude212:

Originally posted by Dave 'The Veteran' Finley:

white knights have arrived

Why don't you argue against ValiantBlade's points about how it is impossible to make accurate judgments on the game's sales based on peak players alone before you start throwing buzzwords like white knights, huh? But then again, I highly doubt you came here to argue in good faith or have actual concrete evidence of this game's failing commercially.

I dont want to argue with ValiantBlade, their also a expert on the game industries and i agree with their points