daoster wrote:Yeah sure, if Konami wants to sell the series to the 3000 or so people who make up this board and the couple other thousand who make up SuikoX. We remember the stories and all the little particulars because we're hardcore Suikoden fans. What about the average joe who just wants to play an RPG? OR hell, even a Suikoden fan who's not as hardcore as we are? Or somebody who started with V? Making prequels that cater to the Suikoden II crowd is all fine and dandy, but I doubt it'll sell well enough for Konami. Oh yes, YOU'LL buy the game, and I imagine most of the people on this board will, but they're going to need a lot more people than THAT.
If this is how the "average Joe" feels they can go play one of the many other RPGs still coming out. What exactly would appeal to them about a Suikoden game to begin with? If you're going to make a game that sheds most of what made the series interesting I don't see why you'd want to make it part of the same series. That's a waste of IP. I think you're missing the point in saying that most people wouldn't get all the little details - that doesn't mean they don't remember anything of the story and don't want it to continue. How many Suikoden fans do you really think fall into that category, of not caring about the story being continued? You can count the number of people here and at Suikox but you can't count the number of real Suikoden fans, especially not when Suikoden has always sold more in Japan and these aren't even Japanese message boards.
You seem to be repeating the argument that we thought Konami was making, that a game like Tierkreis will sell more than a proper entry in the series. This argument never made the slightest bit of sense to me. How is making an RPG more generic and, if you ask me, just all around worse, going to make it sell better? You think people are actually intimidated by a game with a backstory? How many Suikoden series reviews have you read that said "good game, but you really need to have played the others to enjoy it"? I've never read one, probably because that's never how the games have been designed. But if someone is going to see a game from a franchise they recognize but have never played and throw their hands up saying they're not going to play this one either they would have done the exact same thing with Tierkreis.
This argument never made sense to me, and now we're learning that it was just a myth. And what was the result? Tierkreis selling worse than V despite being sold under much more favorable conditions, and btw, a late PS2 game would have made much more profit per sale than a DS game, especially considering the high media/licensing cost for DS carts. Sure, Tierkreis would have had a smaller budget, but somehow I think Konami could get away with selling a mainline game with a more conservative budget, but maybe Konami doesn't realize this.
Look at it this way, Tierkreis made almost all of its Japanese sales within its first month of availability, then dropped like a rock. Why do you think this is? My feeling is that a lot of hardcore fans swiped it up as soon as it was out, then word got out what the game was actually like. Let's see if anyone makes THAT mistake again.
Anyway, I don't get how you can claim that mainline Suikoden games don't sell enough copies then turn around and say Tierkreis did just fine when it did worse. Are you just being defensive because you liked the game or something?
daoster wrote:Then again, Kingdom Hearts games still sell gang busters, and I doubt many people remember the story from the original game. But Disney characters and Final Fantasy characters are usually a guaranteed sell...it's a shame that Suikoden won't have any Disney characters!
You really don't think much of RPG gamers, do you..
daoster wrote:You're right, I don't know if the game earned Konami a profit, so my mistake. I do know that Konami cited the game as a
strong performer. And has green lighted another Suikoden for the PSP. For some reason, people are assuming that it's Tiekres 2, so let's assume that.
I don't know who Konami thinks they're kidding if they really think Tierkreis was a "strong performer" - maybe they decided that a little too quickly after a strong
start. If Tierkreis was such a success then Konami greenlit the wrong game - they should be making a second DS game or maybe 3DS game instead. Think about it - if Tierkreis was supposed to appeal to a new crowd instead of long time RPG fans was it really reaching out to the type that by and large owns both a DS and a PSP?
Fortunately we don't know this is Tierkreis 2, I'm NOT going to be assuming that, and it doesn't sound like you'd care to either so how about we don't?