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Nowhere Prophet dev: "Our opening weekend sales on PS4 were 5% of our Switch opening weekend sales"

PresetError

Neophyte
  • From the developer's perspective, if Sony can't even make time to accommodate their request for a discount, then that's a company that's not worth bothering with. They have already stated they might not bother bringing their future games to PS4. See what they said about the situation on Twitter:
  • From the PS4 fans' perspective, you should also be angry at Sony for ignoring this request. How many other developers' requests are they also ignoring? Are we missing out on other discounts? Why should PS4 owners be treated like second-class citizens here?


The guy doesn't seem too bright. Spreading on Twitter how bad your game is selling and pointing out at a single platform doesn't have any benefit but could have negative consequences in the future.
 
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Dargor

Member
That might be true as a general rule, but in the case of this particular game, the PS4 version didn't get the discount that the Switch and Xbox One versions had. (All three versions were released on the same day) The developer wanted a discount, but Sony told them they were "too busy" to apply it.

As a result, they got about 20 times more sales on Switch than on PS4. Even the Xbox One version outsold the PS4 version, despite this game being offered for "free" to Xbox Game Pass subscribers. Let that sink in: Even without considering Xbox Game Pass downloads, they still racked up more paid purchases on Xbox One than on PS4.

Instead of PS4 fans mocking the game or handwaving this issue, consider the negative implications:

  • From the developer's perspective, if Sony can't even make time to accommodate their request for a discount, then that's a company that's not worth bothering with. They have already stated they might not bother bringing their future games to PS4. See what they said about the situation on Twitter:
  • From the PS4 fans' perspective, you should also be angry at Sony for ignoring this request. How many other developers' requests are they also ignoring? Are we missing out on other discounts? Why should PS4 owners be treated like second-class citizens here?


And thats how you increase your sales, by blaming others :pie_roffles: :messenger_ok:
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
He does have a point with the fact they wanted to discount their game and were denied.

That's actually.. kinda fucked up all around.
 

Agent X

Member
The guy doesn't seem too bright. Spreading on Twitter how bad your game is selling and pointing out at a single platform doesn't have any benefit but could have negative consequences in the future.

I suppose this could be viewed as a case of the developer airing dirty laundry, over an issue that could have been addressed with Sony in private.

Then again, perhaps his avenues of communication with Sony might be limited.

If his contacts at Sony gave him the cold shoulder over a launch discount, then they might be ignoring his other communications as well. Therefore, he might have felt that he had no choice but to turn a private matter into a public one.
 

Fbh

Member
  • From the PS4 fans' perspective, you should also be angry at Sony for ignoring this request. How many other developers' requests are they also ignoring? Are we missing out on other discounts? Why should PS4 owners be treated like second-class citizens here?

I should be angry at Sony because during their massive summer sale on both big and small titles, with more and better discounts than any sale I've ever seen on Switch, this one particular game wasn't discounted?

Unless there's some sort of track record of Sony denying sales I don't see it as a big issue. Are we also certain the devs requested the sale in accordance with the procedure that I imagine is specified in whatever contract/agreement they signed to get the game on PSN?

And how am I a second class citizen on PSN because of this one game but not on Switch where sales are usually 90% shovelware + a couple of legit deals on good games + a couple of laughable discounts on 4+ years old first party games?
 

oldergamer

Member
The guy doesn't seem too bright. Spreading on Twitter how bad your game is selling and pointing out at a single platform doesn't have any benefit but could have negative consequences in the future.
Only sony fanboys would lash out at a disparity in sales between platforms. i said it before, but Sony doesn't do a great job of selling games on their systems. based on the sheer number of playstation consoles out there alone, should mean sales on that platform should be better then other platforms. Its just not a fact.
 
5% of people actually found the game on the terrible Web Server known as PSN?

I know the eShop is pretty terrible too but I would say Nintendo's simplistic store helped it sell in this case.
 

TriSuit666

Banned
I should be angry at Sony because during their massive summer sale on both big and small titles, with more and better discounts than any sale I've ever seen on Switch, this one particular game wasn't discounted?

Unless there's some sort of track record of Sony denying sales I don't see it as a big issue. Are we also certain the devs requested the sale in accordance with the procedure that I imagine is specified in whatever contract/agreement they signed to get the game on PSN?

And how am I a second class citizen on PSN because of this one game but not on Switch where sales are usually 90% shovelware + a couple of legit deals on good games + a couple of laughable discounts on 4+ years old first party games?

The fucking entitlement, man. Fomy fambois are the fucking worst.
 

InvictusBlurp

Neo Member
I tried to play this game 2 times on XBOX. First time the game didn't start, second time it crashed when i ended the first area.

The game isn't bad but my xbox doesn't like it.
 

Agent X

Member
I should be angry at Sony because during their massive summer sale on both big and small titles, with more and better discounts than any sale I've ever seen on Switch, this one particular game wasn't discounted?

Unless there's some sort of track record of Sony denying sales I don't see it as a big issue. Are we also certain the devs requested the sale in accordance with the procedure that I imagine is specified in whatever contract/agreement they signed to get the game on PSN?

Good point. We don't truly know if they adhered to the proper procedure. Assuming that they did, to be told by Sony that they were "too busy" to apply the requested discount is poor form.

And how am I a second class citizen on PSN because of this one game but not on Switch where sales are usually 90% shovelware + a couple of legit deals on good games + a couple of laughable discounts on 4+ years old first party games?

If this discount was denied because someone at Sony wasn't motivated to work with the developer, then you have to wonder how many other developers might have requested discounts and were similarly given the brush-off. This means that the entire PS4 fan base misses out on discounts like this, because of the incompetence of one or more individuals at Sony.
 
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PresetError

Neophyte
Only sony fanboys would lash out at a disparity in sales between platforms. i said it before, but Sony doesn't do a great job of selling games on their systems. based on the sheer number of playstation consoles out there alone, should mean sales on that platform should be better then other platforms. Its just not a fact.

"Lash out" :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Literally 4 days ago about Sony 2020 Q1 fiscal report:

"The software was where Sony really found a lot of its Q1 success. With over 91 million pieces of software sold in the first quarter of 2020, around 18.5 million units of this number were made by first-party software. This was absolutely driven by the amazing success that PlayStation found with the massive launches of Ghost Of Tsushima and The Last of Us Part II. "
 
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yurqqa

Member
Switch is more convenient to play games on because you could play whenever you have time - on TV, in bed or on the road. So it's an obvious choice for smaller games that don't benefit from PS4 power advantage.

For graphic heavy games PS4 is a better choice and for Sony exclusives it's the only choice.

Switch is a new indie-machine, like Vita was (but with much richer library of bigger games).

So there's no surprises. It's only surprising to see the game developer that didn't study the market before releasing the game.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Switch is more convenient to play games on because you could play whenever you have time - on TV, in bed or on the road. So it's an obvious choice for smaller games that don't benefit from PS4 power advantage.

For graphic heavy games PS4 is a better choice and for Sony exclusives it's the only choice.

Switch is a new indie-machine, like Vita was (but with much richer library of bigger games).

So there's no surprises. It's only surprising to see the game developer that didn't study the market before releasing the game.

There are various factors in play.

- Genre
- Audience size
- Target demograhics on different console platforms
- Visibility in online store
- Advertising
- Price
- Competition
- Release date

Nowhere Prohet is a game that was originally released on PC in 2091 and now got ports to Swtich, PS4 and Xbox (where it's included on game pass). The price on the PS4 is high ($25/25 euro), visbility on the PS store is low, it's been out on PC for almost ten months, it's "free" on its main competitor, the PS4 has been out almost 7 years and its online store is overloaded with indie games and older AAA games are cheap, etc. Advertising for Nowhere Prophet is non existent (I had no game the game existed).

All in all I'm not surprised by low sales for a game in a niche genre on a console platform with generally low prices on an overcrowded games store. What keeps surprising is me that indie games often do much better on Switch than any other platform (PC, Xbox, PS).
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
The amount of competition on a given platform affects sales performance, who knew?








(Everybody)
 

jaysius

Banned
I really want to love this game, I'm playing it on Gamepass, but the cards the AI gets even on "easy" vs the cards you can get are stupid unbalanced, sometimes you can just sit there, and the AI pulls out 3-4 cards in a row that buff and add extra units, while you're sitting there with a hand you can't play because of energy requirements. It drags out early fights, it makes what should be simple and quick long and boring.

Things that suck
  • Cards get destroyed after 2 deaths on the battlefield this makes me hesitant about using expensive cards or vital ones
  • AI seems to have armor buffs out the wazoo which drags on fights
  • AI seems to have more cards with buffs at early stages when it's almost impossible for you to have them
  • There is an overworld map you navigate(like Slay The Spire) but every move takes food, you can get into a position where you run out of food, because there aren't enough opportunities to get food
  • Very few opportunities to heal your leader unit(he dies the game is over)

The game has an interesting concept, but BALANCE would be a good one for the developer to learn.
 
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Agent X

Member
There are various factors in play.

- Genre
- Audience size
- Target demograhics on different console platforms
- Visibility in online store
- Advertising
- Price
- Competition
- Release date

Nowhere Prohet is a game that was originally released on PC in 2091 and now got ports to Swtich, PS4 and Xbox (where it's included on game pass). The price on the PS4 is high ($25/25 euro), visbility on the PS store is low, it's been out on PC for almost ten months, it's "free" on its main competitor, the PS4 has been out almost 7 years and its online store is overloaded with indie games and older AAA games are cheap, etc. Advertising for Nowhere Prophet is non existent (I had no game the game existed).

All the points that you made are valid, but most of these factors also apply to the Switch and Xbox One as well. It's a safe bet that the publisher and developer were acutely aware of all of these potential issues before producing the game on the various consoles.

It's not a surprise that this type of game would sell better on Switch, considering the demographics and the scope of the game (it's not stressing the hardware, so no fear of faltering performance on Switch). But 20 times better? There's got to be more to it.

  • Visibility on PS store is low? Advertising is nonexistent? It got a blog post on PlayStation.Blog, whereas Nintendo did nothing to promote the game. According to users of both PS4 and Switch, its visibility is even lower on the Switch store. Despite all of these factors working against the Switch version, it still whipped the PS4 version in sales by a factor of TWENTY TO ONE. That's not merely "beating" PS4, that's outright destroying it.
  • It's "'free' on its main competitor"? Xbox One is a system with about half the userbase of PS4 overall. Only a fraction of those users subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. So, you're probably asking why anyone with an Xbox One would bother paying for this game, if they have a great opportunity to download it for free (or get a cheap Game Pass subscription in order to do so). Yet, this significantly smaller userbase still gave the developer more paid purchases than the PS4 version.

Notice that the publisher made no complaints about sales performance on Switch and Xbox One. He only expressed disappointment in PS4 sales. He specifically pegged the fact that Sony ignored his request to apply an introductory discount on the price, while Nintendo and Microsoft both granted that request.

Just for argument's sake, let's suppose that Sony did grant that request. Would this alone have rocketed the PS4 version of the game to the top of the sales charts? No, but it almost assuredly would have beaten the Xbox One version in paid sales (where, again, it's "free" for a segment of the userbase). The Switch version would've still outsold it (for reasons described above), but it would've been much closer than the 20:1 slaughtering that it suffered.

The bottom line here is that there are some factors that you can directly control, and others that you cannot. The price was one aspect that was in direct control, and while Nintendo and Microsoft were happy to help here, Sony instead blew off the publisher with a lame excuse that they were "too busy" for him. I hope that Shuhei Yoshida becomes aware of this issue, and works on a way to improve this situation so that other indie game developers and publishers don't experience this problem in the future.
 
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