Spyborgs sells 500 copies in September

http://www.gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=101044

Muramasa > 35K
Dead Space Extraction >9K
Spyborgs 5XX

Both Spyborgs and Dead Space did pretty poorly. If this is true, it would explain why Spyborgs dropped to $20 within its first two weeks. Did anyone here pick it up?

EDIT: The numbers given by this source for Scribblenauts and Kingdom Hearts DS proved to be legit by the just released NPD numbers, so we can also assume these Wii numbers are real too. Spyborgs really did do that badly. Here's the link that adds validity to these numbers:

http://www.gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=101108

http://www.gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=101044

Muramasa > 35K
Dead Space Extraction >9K
Spyborgs 5XX

Both Spyborgs and Dead Space did pretty poorly. If this is true, it would explain why Spyborgs dropped to $20 within its first two weeks. Did anyone here pick it up?

JAB991

i'm not going to say that the developers for spyborgs did not put effort into the game, but the gameplay seemed more suited for a wiiware game. i think if they would have scaled it down for a wiiware title it may have done better. 500 is really terrible though.

Nope. I'm not even remotely interested in the game. I'm glad it tanked, looks like crap anyway. I feel bad for Dead Space, but that should teach EA and Visceral to not cut corners when they are developing a Wii game. Muramasa is doing better than I expected though.gamefan67

Teach EA and Visceral to not cut corners? I hate when people say things like that. They did a fantastic job.

[QUOTE="gamefan67"]Nope. I'm not even remotely interested in the game. I'm glad it tanked, looks like crap anyway. I feel bad for Dead Space, but that should teach EA and Visceral to not cut corners when they are developing a Wii game. Muramasa is doing better than I expected though.violentken88

Teach EA and Visceral to not cut corners? I hate when people say things like that. They did a fantastic job.

They transformed the game from the third-person shooter on the other consoles into a guided on-rails shooter, which is one that a number of its owners claim isn't even that great by the genre's standards. There was no reason for EA and Visceral to do what they did, but it seems that it's becoming a popular thing to do to take an otherwise solid third-person experience and, for no reason whatsoever, take away the control and exploration from the players when you make it a Wii game (in other words, make it a light-gun game). Sadly, the performance of this game probably won't teach EA and Visceral anything, though, and will just become more ammo in the whole "our games can't sell on Wii" debate, despite most of these games falling short of expectations.

In other news, I'm mixed about Muramasa's performance, but it is a niche game, so maybe it's not that bad. At least Marvelous can be happy it didn't sell Little King's Story bad, even though that's not saying too much. And Spyborgs was just a bad idea, and Capcom did NOTHING to prove that it was going to be a worthwhile investment. 500 units is insanely bad, but it was hard to expect anything from the game to begin with.

No advertising = no sales. Capcom!

ill but dead space when its 20 bucks, rail gun shooters offer like 5 hours..Javieralijandro

[QUOTE="violentken88"]

[QUOTE="gamefan67"]Nope. I'm not even remotely interested in the game. I'm glad it tanked, looks like crap anyway. I feel bad for Dead Space, but that should teach EA and Visceral to not cut corners when they are developing a Wii game. Muramasa is doing better than I expected though.Madmangamer364

Teach EA and Visceral to not cut corners? I hate when people say things like that. They did a fantastic job.

They transformed the game from the third-person shooter on the other consoles into a guided on-rails shooter, which is one that a number of its owners claim isn't even that great by the genre's standards. There was no reason for EA and Visceral to do what they did, but it seems that it's becoming a popular thing to do to take an otherwise solid third-person experience and, for no reason whatsoever, take away the control and exploration from the players when you make it a Wii game (in other words, make it a light-gun game). Sadly, the performance of this game probably won't teach EA and Visceral anything, though, and will just become more ammo in the whole "our games can't sell on Wii" debate, despite most of these games falling short of expectations.

Crap that was basically going to be my response. EA and Visceral stripped Dead Space of a 3rd person perspective and chilling atmosphere to bring Wii owners an on-rails shooter that pales in the comparison to the original. Why did they do this? I believe EA did not trust the Wii market with a 3rd person horror/action game, so they went with what sales a lot. They must have saw that rail shooters do pretty well on the Wii (I'm looking at you UC and HotD), and decided to play it safe. Little did they know that the on-rails shooter market is kind of saturated, with no advertisements and a high asking price this game was doomed before it even began.

Wow, if that's true, I'm gonna' burst out laughing. That's just pitiful.:P

I feel bad for Spyborgs, but Im glad DSE tanked, people who take the easy route get what they deserve.

I feel bad for Spyborgs, but Im glad DSE tanked, people who take the easy route get what they deserve.

TaMuK711

[QUOTE="TaMuK711"]

I feel bad for Spyborgs, but Im glad DSE tanked, people who take the easy route get what they deserve.

umcommon

I'm not surprised Dead Space did poorly, rail shooters already have bad rep on the Wii.

Well, as far as overall video game sales trends are now, I'm suprised any games are doing well. I wouldn't read to much into these number until the holidays roll around.

Thats just sadening. Pour Capcom.

No advertising = no sales. Capcom!

chris3116

Only half of it...the game isn't that great, they should have put more into it really ->bad camera zooming, crap AI partners, lack of moves, lack of variety of enemies, average beat-em with a poor story line or a non existent one.

i'm not going to say that the developers for spyborgs did not put effort into the game, but the gameplay seemed more suited for a wiiware game. i think if they would have scaled it down for a wiiware title it may have done better. 500 is really terrible though.

90xGrad

Are any of the people saying EA cut corners and that DSE is bad...have any of them played it? It's a creepy game and it's actually longer than the first dead space. It's easily one of the most revolutionary rail shooters in over a decade.

Spyborgs sounds like shovelware, the cover looks like shovelware, and the SP component plays like shovelware. The co-op is better, but not enough to really justify the kind of budgeting that went into this game. Capcom should REALLY stop listening to the media about its Wii games. They should tap into the soccer mom blogosphere instead - that should at least get them some better sales.

Look, it's ridiculous to say that DS failed because it's a rail shooter. If you look at a list of best-selling Wii games that aren't launch titles or Ninty games, you'll see a trend. There are only two types of gamesthat break 1 million in the West on Wii:

1. Music games (Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero WT, Rock Band)

2. Sports/Mini-game collections (Deca Sports, Game Party, Game Party 2, EA Sports Active, Carnival Games, Rayman Raving Rabbids, We Ski, Big Beach Sports, Active Life: Outdoor Challenge)

Those are all the non-ninty non-launch third party titles that broke 1 mill, save three that don't fit in those two categories. Those are: RE4 wiimake, RE:UC, and Sonic & the Secret Rings. That makes only two "mature" third-party titles that succeeded on Wii. Why? RE4 succeeded because, obviously, it was RE4. But what about RE:UC?

RE:UC proved that you can take an existing third-person shooter horror franchise and turn it into a first-person rail shooter in order to succeed on Wii. HotD 2&3 Return's success seemed to prove that it was the "rail shooter" part that made RE:UC successful, not the "RE" part. So naturally they turned Dead Space -- an existing third-person shooter horror franchise --- into a first-person rail shooter.

How are you going to explain it when Silent Hill -- which allows you freedom of movement -- doesn't sell on Wii? Hmm... because it didn't have guns? Wasn't advertised enough? Blah blah. There's always an excuse, isn't there? Face it. Mature games just don't sell on Wii, but if you want to make one sell, your best shot is a rail shooter.

Look, it's ridiculous to say that DS failed because it's a rail shooter. If you look at a list of best-selling Wii games that aren't launch titles or Ninty games, you'll see a trend. There are only two types of gamesthat break 1 million in the West on Wii:

1. Music games (Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero WT, Rock Band)

2. Sports/Mini-game collections (Deca Sports, Game Party, Game Party 2, EA Sports Active, Carnival Games, Rayman Raving Rabbids, We Ski, Big Beach Sports, Active Life: Outdoor Challenge)

Those are all the non-ninty non-launch third party titles that broke 1 mill, save three that don't fit in those two categories. Those are: RE4 wiimake, RE:UC, and Sonic & the Secret Rings. That makes only two "mature" third-party titles that succeeded on Wii. Why? RE4 succeeded because, obviously, it was RE4. But what about RE:UC?

RE:UC proved that you can take an existing third-person shooter horror franchise and turn it into a first-person rail shooter in order to succeed on Wii. HotD 2&3 Return's success seemed to prove that it was the "rail shooter" part that made RE:UC successful, not the "RE" part. So naturally they turned Dead Space -- an existing third-person shooter horror franchise --- into a first-person rail shooter.

How are you going to explain it when Silent Hill -- which allows you freedom of movement -- doesn't sell on Wii? Hmm... because it didn't have guns? Wasn't advertised enough? Blah blah. There's always an excuse, isn't there? Face it. Mature games just don't sell on Wii, but if you want to make one sell, your best shot is a rail shooter.

clicketyclick

I don't want on-rail shooter versions of full fledged games on other consoles. I'd rather have the watered down port. Seriously.

Secondly, Spyborgs is 1. A dumb title. 2. Its extremely repetitive and honestly, not that great.

Though these sales are still surprising.

So it was a little misleading of me to refer to RE as only appealing to a core gamer. Like Halo games and Madden games, you can be a casual gamer and still play these immensely popular franchises. But I think it's important to distinguish these kinds of popular franchise casual gamers from Wii casual gamers who were non-gamers before, since they know more about games.

So either the casual gamers who bought it were Pop Franchise gamers and knew enough to know what they were getting into, or, they were non-gamers that the Wii converted and barely know anything about gaming, in which case it's doubtful they recognised the brand, but even if they did and bought it, they wouldn't have any pre-conceived notions about what the game would be.

As for them being niche games... well, core gamers are by definition niche (the core is the smallest part, at the center of the whole) and therefore have niche tastes. There's just a smaller pool of them on the Wii than on other consoles.

You're absolutely correct that ads are important in convincing people to buy things. Otherwise, why would companies spend so much money on them if they didn't affect people? What I'm saying is not that ads are entirely irrelevant, but that they're not the most important factor.

Maybe things are different here in Canada, but I haven't seen a single ad for any of those craptacular minigame collections. I also never see ads for any of the Imagine DS games. You know there's such a deluge of crap on the Wii and the vast majority of it isn't advertised, but you'd be surprised at how well many of these crap titles do (esp. when you factor in how low the budget was.)

So it was a little misleading of me to refer to RE as only appealing to a core gamer. Like Halo games and Madden games, you can be a casual gamer and still play these immensely popular franchises. But I think it's important to distinguish these kinds of popular franchise casual gamers from Wii casual gamers who were non-gamers before, since they know more about games.

So either the casual gamers who bought it were Pop Franchise gamers and knew enough to know what they were getting into, or, they were non-gamers that the Wii converted and barely know anything about gaming, in which case it's doubtful they recognised the brand, but even if they did and bought it, they wouldn't have any pre-conceived notions about what the game would be.

As for them being niche games... well, core gamers are by definition niche (the core is the smallest part, at the center of the whole) and therefore have niche tastes. There's just a smaller pool of them on the Wii than on other consoles.

You're absolutely correct that ads are important in convincing people to buy things. Otherwise, why would companies spend so much money on them if they didn't affect people? What I'm saying is not that ads are entirely irrelevant, but that they're not the most important factor.

Maybe things are different here in Canada, but I haven't seen a single ad for any of those craptacular minigame collections. I also never see ads for any of the Imagine DS games. You know there's such a deluge of crap on the Wii and the vast majority of it isn't advertised, but you'd be surprised at how well many of these crap titles do (esp. when you factor in how low the budget was.)

clicketyclick

Ouch.

All I can say is that these games should be priced better. Spyborgs and Dead Space Extraction are not worth 50-60 dollars.

You're right about the million mark thing. It's just a little hard to enumerate all the games that did well under 1 million (and I'm lazy.) clicketyclick

Games do not have to be successful by selling at least one million copies. They can sell less than 100K or 50K copies and be successful. Success is determined by publisher expectations, not by a fixed number like one million. If games are expected to sell a million copies to be successful, then there will be no "niche" games in the market, as they are never intended to sell that many copies.

Muramasa did pretty well for the type of game it is. I kind of saw Spyborgs and Dead Space bombing a mile away. Spyborgs just looks completely soulless and unimaginative and the original Dead Space didn't even do well on 360/PS3.

ill but dead space when its 20 bucks, rail gun shooters offer like 5 hours..Javieralijandro

I didn't even know Spyborgs was out yet.alberto1128

Omgosh people, hearing so many people complain about Dead Space is a truly sad ting :(

Is it unfortunate that it's a rail shooter? Yes. The original is a damned masterpiece.

Is it still one heck of a game and even betterfor those already familiar with thesource material? Absolutely!

I wished for another 3rd person action game as well, but man Extraction still is a killer title. And a great amount of effort and love went into it that's easy to see from it's production value and great reviews. PLEASE give the game at least a chance. I promise you it'll be worth a look. Totally worth my day one $50 purchase.