Maddening: NPD data shows weak Dead Space, Mirror's Edge sa

[News Reader]

Maddening: NPD data shows weak Dead Space, Mirror's Edge sales
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360


It's a tough road that EA has chosen, one illustrated by the above graph from Gamasutra's recent analysis of November's North American sales results. Reliable and storied football franchise? Selling millions. New IPs and ambitious sequels? Not so much. Though Spore is a notable exception with upward of 2 million copies sold and the Valve-developed Left 4 Dead saw respectable sales on console (both are new IPs), EA's fresh ventures in Mirror's Edge and Dead Space were not rewarded by consumers nearly as much they were by reviewers.

Still, does it smack of having "failed miserably," as Gamasutra so bluntly notes? Or did these unknown quantities simply get lost in holiday shelves packed with highly anticipated, highly praised and highly recognizable properties? Highly likely. If EA's smart, it'll follow the Burnout Paradise (which, excluding PSN sales, racked up a surprisingly low 600,000 copies across two platforms) route and re-release those titles in a less deadly period.

Maddening: NPD data shows weak Dead Space, Mirror's Edge sales originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/


Author: Ludwig Kietzmann
Category: Burnout-ParadiseDead-SpaceEAMaddenMirrors-EdgeNPDSales
Publish Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:50:00 EST
Read more...

Source: Joystiq
Description: Joystiq

[HereComesPete]

Stop porting console stuff to the pc with the crappy controls. Ask more questions in the betas, or actuallu have betas.

Mirrors edge is an amazing game but the execution of the view systems is a nightmare and makes me slightly ill when lots of stuff is happening.

Dead space I was looking forward too as well. I like survival horror where I feel weak and puny and cry like a little girl at the noises in the dark, but the controls suck.

Both of them look nice but it needs more than that to do well. Ubisoft have adopted this method for assassins creed and the new prince of persia, and look what happened/is still happening to their sales.

[spoodie]

Dead space I was looking forward too as well. I like survival horror where I feel weak and puny and cry like a little girl at the noises in the dark, but the controls suck.

I'm assuming you're talking about the PC version using keyboard and mouse, because otherwise the controls are fine. Does it have joypad support?

[HereComesPete]

I've not checked because I've never got around to buying a wired 360 controller (never really got on with the shape of a ps controller).

No doubt it would feel better given the obvious aiming assist that I fought for a few minutes before giving up, but I shouldn't have to plug a console controller into a pc to play the game* properly. They should make it work or not bother porting it.







*yes, that's right, THE GAME, ahahaha!

[shot2bits]

Both of them look nice but it needs more than that to do well.

ahem, i wouldnt really say mirrors edge looks nice, yes it has very nice models, but the textures....THE FUCKING TEXTURES

all through the game all i was thinking was shit like "oh look a tree, but its completely fucking white" it wouldnt have bothered me so much if the game didnt consist of pretty much 5 colours and the whole game still managed to be about 90% blinding white

[spoodie]

but I shouldn't have to plug a console controller into a pc to play the game* properly. They should make it work or not bother porting it.

For a third-person shooter you would expect decent k&m controls, but I'd guess you could use any old joypad solution. I use a ps2 pad and an adaptor I bought years ago, when needed.

Just because a game is on a PC doesn't mean it has to fully support k&m, that seems like PC snobbery to me. As I've harped on about before; some games just aren't suited for k&m. For a shooter like Dead Space the tension level could benefit from the reduced accuracy of a joypad.

[Dog Pants]

For a shooter like Dead Space the tension level could benefit from the reduced accuracy of a joypad.

I'm going to stop short of disagreeing with you, because I can see how that might work, but it sounds awfully like upping a game's difficulty by making the controls wank, like Resident Evil.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Just because a game is on a PC doesn't mean it has to fully support k&m, that seems like PC snobbery to me.

Sorry, but no. Just. No.

There's nothing snobby about preferring a control system. Am I an xbox snob because the controllers are actually (just about) big enough for my hands?

I don't consider it snobby to get pissed off at having to buy a different controller to play a game, it's just poor design. (there are a few exceptions to this, but none relevant to this rant)

Would you buy a game for the PS3 if every review said "you really need to buy xyz controller to experience this without getting the rage"?

If you release a game on a platform, it should fully support the main control system/controller on that platform.

I wouldn't expect an xbox game to need me to buy a PS controller to enjoy it. nor do I expect a PC game to require me to use a controller to play a game that should work better on a keyboard and mouse.

[buzzmong]

Those sales figures are interesting, but of course Madden 09 will sell loads of copies, it's my understanding they promote the video game at the physical game and on tv (in the adverts) around the 'merkin football game.

And it'll also get bought by the people who only care about Merkin Football and not "proper"* gamers that would buy the other titles, which skews the figures.

Against one another, the non sports games will be selling a resonable amount and offer a much truer view of the market rather than the overinflated clusterfuck that is the latest edition of a sports game that's the only game that'll get bought by said sports fans.

Oh, and I concur with Berk, the mouse and keyboard is the standard PC controller, has been for nearly 20 years now, there's no excuse to horse another control method upon you unless that control method is included as part of the game.
Halo suffered from a bad port, the controls were very much geared towards a controller imo, and made the weapons far too accurate yet harder to use.


*Sounds elitist, really more of a "these people like football and football games, and only play football games" and the "proper" games are the people who'll play nearly anything else.

[HereComesPete]

Editz, it's not that epic actually Epic post go!

Expecting a game to work properly on the primary control method of any gaming system isn't snobbery imo. It's a perfectly legitimate expectation that regardless of the media you indulge in, you will be able to interact and immerse with it as seamlessly and easily as is possible given the system constraints.

I can understand in-game techniques to change the difficulty, the sudden need to alter your plans in fc2 due to malaria was inspired. It annoyed me, but it drove me to find a safe house and do a job to stop the fever rather than exit the game and tell it to get to fuck.

Max payne's drugged nightmare was great for sluggish controls and mind bending levels design, it needed the controls to feel as they did to help immerse you in the experience. I found that you still moved across the keyboard/mouse/gamepad at an almost subconscious level, forgetting it in your brains frantic attempts to adjust to the screen and the changes in movement. Letting your brain work on the visual and audio cues built into the game allowed you to regain control, moving you and the character forward. I feel that if that had been the control input itself, it would have frustrated me, because I cannot gain a tactile response from a keyboard and mouse and adjust because of that. If I was reliant upon it then mastering the variables would have bettered me and I would have given in.

Using the controller itself as a source of retarding the ability to integrate with the game you want to play strikes me as creating a barrier too great to overcome. If you fight with the very input method then enjoying the product will be an impossibility because you involve yourself with a tool designed to play a game, rather than the game you intend to play.

/epic.

[spoodie]

I'm going to stop short of disagreeing with you, because I can see how that might work, but it sounds awfully like upping a game's difficulty by making the controls wank, like Resident Evil.

This is what I had in mind when I made my comment. I don't really like Res Evil but many people love the games. Dead Space is not as restrictive.

My thinking was that perhaps a game like Dead Space is not going to benefit from super-accurate, twitch targeting (et la CS:S, etc.) that is allowed using a mouse+keyboard.