With today's sad news that (even though I haven't played prior games and neither do I have a 3DS) Mega Man Legends 3 being cancelled, it really got me wondering....which matters more to publishers? Money...or fans? Let's not forget the MM Universe cancellation as well as EA's problem with Valve. Yes, I understand that publishers need money to make games - but they're not going to make squat if they don't produce quality games that fans practically ask for. Namco is a good example. In Japan, hundreds of Tales games are released there. But HERE (US)....all we get from them are a FEW Tales games, the Soul Calibur series, and a pile of random crap. And from that pile of random crap, they expect to make tons of money and have ridiculous sales projections that they're not going to make. Now, I wouldn't mind this if some of that pile was games I'd actually be interested in (like Ar Tonelico Qoga and, to some extent, Hyperdimension Neptunia), but how often does that happen? Oh, and you gotta love this: Sega West (aka of America/of Europe) decided that they're not going to bring us Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity (which is more of an expansion to the original PSPo2) and Valkyria Chronicles 3 (both on PSP) over to us because of piracy issues and low sales. Now, I can understand the deal with the piracy (oh, Apple! Sony needs your help to keep jailbreakers from hacking PSPs!), but what about fans who have been anticipating these games (as I have, particularly with PSPo2I) for quite a while now? Now, I know that these publishers have to make financial decisions to keep themselves alive (I mean, look at what happened to Working Designs, the localizers of Lunar...), but all I ask is that if you have to go and disappoint fans, why can't you just give fans SOMETHING instead of nothing? Sega did just that in 1996 with Sonic X-Treme's cancellation by giving us a Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast: Flicky's Island....(which IMO is better than both the Mega Drive and PC versions)
The main goal of every publisher, as well as every developer is money. No one will decide to bring over a game that will lose money just because theres a handfull of loyal fans. No one cares about fans, aside from a few devs, because they are fickle, whiny, man children with entitlement issues. Catering to such an audience could spell disaster for a company.
Always money, gaming is a business - that's what makes it an industry. Listening to fans however, isnt just about the 'love' for gamers, much of it is PR--PR being a great and transparent business tactic.
It sucks that VC3 isn't hitting NA, but perhaps it will hit the PSP2 as some sort of retro download somewhere down the line...
Anyway, if there aren't enough paying fans to make releasing (or developing) a game profitable, its perfectly reasonable for a company not to release a game.
With today's sad news that (even though I haven't played prior games and neither do I have a 3DS) Mega Man Legends 3 being cancelled, it really got me wondering....which matters more to publishers? Money...or fans? Let's not forget the MM Universe cancellation as well as EA's problem with Valve. Yes, I understand that publishers need money to make games - but they're not going to make squat if they don't produce quality games that fans practically ask for. Namco is a good example. In Japan, hundreds of Tales games are released there. But HERE (US)....all we get from them are a FEW Tales games, the Soul Calibur series, and a pile of random crap. And from that pile of random crap, they expect to make tons of money and have ridiculous sales projections that they're not going to make. Now, I wouldn't mind this if some of that pile was games I'd actually be interested in (like Ar Tonelico Qoga and, to some extent, Hyperdimension Neptunia), but how often does that happen? Oh, and you gotta love this: Sega West (aka of America/of Europe) decided that they're not going to bring us Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity (which is more of an expansion to the original PSPo2) and Valkyria Chronicles 3 (both on PSP) over to us because of piracy issues and low sales. Now, I can understand the deal with the piracy (oh, Apple! Sony needs your help to keep jailbreakers from hacking PSPs!), but what about fans who have been anticipating these games (as I have, particularly with PSPo2I) for quite a while now? Now, I know that these publishers have to make financial decisions to keep themselves alive (I mean, look at what happened to Working Designs, the localizers of Lunar...), but all I ask is that if you have to go and disappoint fans, why can't you just give fans SOMETHING instead of nothing? Sega did just that in 1996 with Sonic X-Treme's cancellation by giving us a Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast: Flicky's Island....(which IMO is better than both the Mega Drive and PC versions)tjoeb123
Money of course. And then there are those rare publishers who figured out that pleasing fans means making more money. Ubisoft is one, for the most part
It takes money to buy fans.capaho
Thanks for making that joke in my stead. Someone had to
They go hand-in-hand, you can't make money without fans. It's a business and no one should be shocked or apalled if a company balks at the notion of spending 10 million plus on a product that perhaps only a small number of people may buy. There are also other reasons for canning a game like for instance maybe it's just not coming together all that well and it's best to just stop putting more money into it. I don't fault companies for dropping things that are potential losing situations for them as I'd rather see them stay in business.
Log in to comment