Shift Up, you are gonna have a reality check

[Don Sr. Cuca]

So everyone remember that game that was "good" called First Berserker: Khazan right?

What does it share with Stellar Blade? Let's check:
- Korean game
- hyped on the internet
- attractive art direction
- DENUVO
- Competitive price in the west

And how did it turn out?
32k concurrent players and flopped in sales

While your game might sell well in China because it costs 50 USD for the deluxe edition and chinese now don't care about denuvo games,
I doubt your 1 year old title priced at 70usd/80eur/60 gbp will perform MUCH better than other "hyped" titles like Khazan or the new flop Doom Dark Ages.

[Morrandir]

khazan does not have the assets that sb has

[Don Sr. Cuca]

Originally posted by Morrandir:

khazan does not have the assets that sb has

while I do believe that sex sells, SB ASSets were relevant on ps5 1 year ago. Not now and not in 3 weeks without any marketing push

[Heinz]

Originally posted by Don Sr. Cuca:

Originally posted by Morrandir:

khazan does not have the assets that sb has

while I do believe that sex sells, SB ASSets were relevant on ps5 1 year ago. Not now and not in 3 weeks without any marketing push

This is true. But there are also a lot of PC exclusive players that have been waiting for this. Shift Up has caught a lot of attention both with this and Nikke

[☣lolers Mick Jogers☣]

Just a quick heads-up — Stellar Blade is $60, not $70, at least in the U.S. The deluxe edition is $80, but that's optional and consistent with most premium editions across major titles.

Comparing it directly to First Berserker: Khazan feels like a stretch. Sure, they’re both Korean games with stylized visuals, but Stellar Blade launched with significantly more marketing, broader platform support, and a far stronger community presence, especially on PlayStation before even hitting PC.

It’s also backed by Sony’s publishing and Shift Up's proven mobile success, which already puts it in a different league.

Whether it performs long-term is anyone’s guess, but calling it a guaranteed flop based on one loosely related title isn’t exactly a strong argument. Let’s not pretend Khazan and Stellar Blade had the same launch conditions or exposure.

[Don Sr. Cuca]

Originally posted by Heinz:

Originally posted by Don Sr. Cuca:

while I do believe that sex sells, SB ASSets were relevant on ps5 1 year ago. Not now and not in 3 weeks without any marketing push

This is true. But there are also a lot of PC exclusive players that have been waiting for this. Shift Up has caught a lot of attention both with this and Nikke

just because it was a banner against woke games from soyny in the mist of spiderwoke 2 and soy of war ragnarok, but the game itself was no Nier Automata level of success.
The game is just good but nothing exceptional, like Khazan.
I was also waiting for this release on PC but only men of culture care about this game at this moment. However they were either turned off by:

1- High prices
2- Denuvo
3- both from above

Men of culture have other things to support or play that are cheaper or free but let's see in 3 weeks

[Seagal]

Nothing you've said is actually grounded in facts, truth or reality. You're just grasping, at anything frankly, just because you're upset about a "boogieman" that will very likely be removed in 12 months.

Your comparison stinks also, and isn't even worth mentioning at all. There are no fair one-to-one comparison in gaming, because every game and launch is unique.

You're out here calling things flops without any factual evidence of such. Concurrent player numbers will never be a factual indicator on whether something actually flopped or not, unless it's at the extreme high or low end.

If you actually look at how many Steam games have had a concurrent user count over 100k, you'd see that number is extremely small with less than 180 games total even hitting that number. Less than 375 games even hit over 50k. Steam has a catalog of over 100,000 games in total, so should we just assume that there's been ~99,000 "flops" on Steam or something?

DOOM: The Dark Ages is now a confirmed flop by Don Sr. Cuca, because it has 31k concurrent users on Steam, costs US$70, and has Denuvo. While ignoring it's on Game Pass / Windows Store, Battle.net, and Steam. And is quite heavy on the system requirements along with requiring a Raytracing capable GPU and so on. All previous DOOM games had Denuvo also.

Originally posted by Don Sr. Cuca:

just because it was a banner against woke games from soyny in the mist of spiderwoke 2 and soy of war ragnarok, but the game itself was no Nier Automata level of success.
The game is just good but nothing exceptional, like Khazan.
I was also waiting for this release on PC but only men of culture care about this game at this moment. However they were either turned off by:

1- High prices
2- Denuvo
3- both from above

Men of culture have other things to support or play that are cheaper or free but let's see in 3 weeks

Uhh, Nier: Automata had a 23.9k concurrent user number on Steam. Wouldn't that make it a flop by your own criteria used in your anti-Denuvo rant/post? Nier: Automata actually launched with Denuvo also and had it for a long time... But here you are using Nier as that is some sort of benchmark for success.

Stellar Blade is not priced high. It is launching at US$60, which is cheaper than the PS5 verison right now, which is $70 for the standard edition. You also have games now looking to charge $80 for base editions! I certainly won't be buying any of those, and I've yet to pay $70 for a base game, but the idea that Stellar Blade is priced high is false.

The idea that Stellar Blade is an old game and is warranted of being in a bargain bin price is delusional and not true. It's barely a year old and just had the Nier expansion release in holiday 2024.

[Don Sr. Cuca]

Originally posted by ☣lolers Mick Jogers☣:

Just a quick heads-up — Stellar Blade is $60, not $70, at least in the U.S. The deluxe edition is $80, but that's optional and consistent with most premium editions across major titles.

Comparing it directly to First Berserker: Khazan feels like a stretch. Sure, they’re both Korean games with stylized visuals, but Stellar Blade launched with significantly more marketing, broader platform support, and a far stronger community presence, especially on PlayStation before even hitting PC.

It’s also backed by Sony’s publishing and Shift Up's proven mobile success, which already puts it in a different league.

Whether it performs long-term is anyone’s guess, but calling it a guaranteed flop based on one loosely related title isn’t exactly a strong argument. Let’s not pretend Khazan and Stellar Blade had the same launch conditions or exposure.

All right 60usd for it which is much better than the original price on PS5 but yet the discussion is about 80usd for the deluxe edition some reason.

My comparison against Khazan is more relevant when you see that Khazan had MORE broader and exclusive marketing from Nexon on shows like Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show and many others. It had casual based marketing like partnerships with Samsung 3D monitors and such.
Stellar Blade was and still under playstation wing and they only did youtube videos for marketing and nothing else!
Khazan comes from a bigger IP from Asia like Dungeon & Fighther so it should have been a huge exposure and drove sales
Nikke was big 1 year ago and still doing well today but let's see if they can manage all who play Nikke to move onto PC to play SB. I mean, they surely did it on PS5 right? That is why Sony never mentioned its sales performance last year....

[☣lolers Mick Jogers☣]

Originally posted by Don Sr. Cuca:

All right 60usd for it which is much better than the original price on PS5 but yet the discussion is about 80usd for the deluxe edition some reason.

My comparison against Khazan is more relevant when you see that Khazan had MORE broader and exclusive marketing from Nexon on shows like Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show and many others. It had casual based marketing like partnerships with Samsung 3D monitors and such.
Stellar Blade was and still under playstation wing and they only did youtube videos for marketing and nothing else!
Khazan comes from a bigger IP from Asia like Dungeon & Fighther so it should have been a huge exposure and drove sales
Nikke was big 1 year ago and still doing well today but let's see if they can manage all who play Nikke to move onto PC to play SB. I mean, they surely did it on PS5 right? That is why Sony never mentioned its sales performance last year....

It’s 80$ because both DLCs are 10$ each and there are 2 DLCs they also don’t charge for the Deluxe Edition skins so it’s 20$ cheaper then ps5, shift up released the sale performance and stellar blade made 140 million 24.6% of shift ups total revenue.

[Don Sr. Cuca]

Originally posted by Seagal:

Nothing you've said is actually grounded in facts, truth or reality. You're just grasping, at anything frankly, just because you're upset about a "boogieman" that will very likely be removed in 12 months.

Your comparison stinks also, and isn't even worth mentioning at all. There are no fair one-to-one comparison in gaming, because every game and launch is unique.

You're out here calling things flops without any factual evidence of such. Concurrent player numbers will never be a factual indicator on whether something actually flopped or not, unless it's at the extreme high or low end.

If you actually look at how many Steam games have had a concurrent user count over 100k, you'd see that number is extremely small with less than 180 games total even hitting that number. Less than 375 games even hit over 50k. Steam has a catalog of over 100,000 games in total, so should we just assume that there's been ~99,000 "flops" on Steam or something?

DOOM: The Dark Ages is now a confirmed flop by Don Sr. Cuca, because it has 31k concurrent users on Steam, costs US$70, and has Denuvo. While ignoring it's on Game Pass / Windows Store, Battle.net, and Steam. And is quite heavy on the system requirements along with requiring a Raytracing capable GPU and so on. All previous DOOM games had Denuvo also.

Originally posted by Don Sr. Cuca:

just because it was a banner against woke games from soyny in the mist of spiderwoke 2 and soy of war ragnarok, but the game itself was no Nier Automata level of success.
The game is just good but nothing exceptional, like Khazan.
I was also waiting for this release on PC but only men of culture care about this game at this moment. However they were either turned off by:

1- High prices
2- Denuvo
3- both from above

Men of culture have other things to support or play that are cheaper or free but let's see in 3 weeks

Uhh, Nier: Automata had a 23.9k concurrent user number on Steam. Wouldn't that make it a flop by your own criteria used in your anti-Denuvo rant/post? Nier: Automata actually launched with Denuvo also and had it for a long time... But here you are using Nier as that is some sort of benchmark for success.

Stellar Blade is not priced high. It is launching at US$60, which is cheaper than the PS5 verison right now, which is $70 for the standard edition. You also have games now looking to charge $80 for base editions! I certainly won't be buying any of those, and I've yet to pay $70 for a base game, but the idea that Stellar Blade is priced high is false.

The idea that Stellar Blade is an old game and is warranted of being in a bargain bin price is delusional and not true. It's barely a year old and just had the Nier expansion release in holiday 2024.

did I touch a nerve?

Anyway, here is Nexon coping with the fact that despite having positive feedback, sales were dissapointing than expected
https://pdf.irpocket.com/C3659/vAfC/Bwkm/njVR.pdf

The point of the post is to show that pricing and availability matters most than any sh¡tty copy protection implemented.
Yes Doom is on gamepass but so as Oblivion remastered, Expedition 33, Palworld or Forza Horizon 5
Each game is unique and caters to different people but the ones that succeed share some features.
Nier Automata was released in 2017 with denuvo and a sh¡tty PC port, it didn't have a big number of concurrent players yet it in 1 year it had already 3 million sold and it became a
phenomenon.
In the US and China the price is competitive but not in the rest of the world, if they play to make up for the costs of porting and development on 1 SINGLE platform and sell at least 1 million units, then they can cope as much as they want showing us a sh¡tty fake comparison table of "Protected vs Unprotected".
We are in 2025, people have free options to play games with sexy women and spend on games below 60usd. If Shift Up think that SB is the most "desired" game just because it made noise on the internet and want to protect their game at any cost then they are gonna have a reality check.

[DmonHiro]

You know what this has that Berserker didn't? MARKETING.

[Morrandir]

Originally posted by Don Sr. Cuca:

Originally posted by Morrandir:

khazan does not have the assets that sb has

while I do believe that sex sells, SB ASSets were relevant on ps5 1 year ago. Not now and not in 3 weeks without any marketing push

a lot of pc players having been waiting for this game due to the potential it has in the modding scene though. this is why shift up mentioned that it will have full mod support on release.

[DinoRex79]

I don't think you realize the number of people who are hyped about this game.

[☣lolers Mick Jogers☣]

Originally posted by DinoRex79:

I don't think you realize the number of people who are hyped about this game.

It’s not even top 10 most wishlist so clearly no one cares about it

[Michiru]

Originally posted by ☣lolers Mick Jogers☣:

Originally posted by DinoRex79:

I don't think you realize the number of people who are hyped about this game.

It’s not even top 10 most wishlist so clearly no one cares about it

thats doesnt say anything because it was added on steam a little bit more than 1 month ago
top wishlisted games have been on steam for years and some of them are close to a decade
top 19 is very, very high for such a fresh game

[S4mple]

First descentdant beats this when the physics arrive and its f2p