Valkyria Chronicles

But Osy, another thing to look at...

Sales of Valk Chronicles beat... Tales of Vesperia, BOTH PS3 and 360 versions of Eternal Sonata combined, and both versions of Enchanted Arms combined. The only thing that they didn't beat were the Mistwalker JRPGs, though it's likely it'll match Blue Dragon. All of these games were better advertised than Valkyria Chronicles. Mistwalker RPGs had the full backing of Microsoft and HUGE advertising budgets and the general "'Microsoft wants you to get this game' Hype" which gave them massive press coverage and the giant link to Final Fantasy thrown in everyone's face.

So I think the point is that a Sega RPG with a new IP and no advertisement could have sold a lot worse.
 
Firestreak said:
But Osy, another thing to look at...

Sales of Valk Chronicles beat... Tales of Vesperia, BOTH PS3 and 360 versions of Eternal Sonata combined, and both versions of Enchanted Arms combined. The only thing that they didn't beat were the Mistwalker JRPGs, though it's likely it'll match Blue Dragon. All of these games were better advertised than Valkyria Chronicles. Mistwalker RPGs had the full backing of Microsoft and HUGE advertising budgets and the general "'Microsoft wants you to get this game' Hype" which gave them massive press coverage and the giant link to Final Fantasy thrown in everyone's face.

So I think the point is that a Sega RPG with a new IP and no advertisement could have sold a lot worse.
Click to expand...

I dont think you are factoring in the game sold 100k since dropping 50%. Thats not really great sales and we can no longer get a real number. But if you want to just say units moved is units moved then i see your point. But i think its kinda silly.

I could not be pleased my product had burst in sales after it was reduced 50%. I guess if you are looking at it positive though you could say the hell with profits from the first installment... At least the people who picked the game up after it was 50% reduced are potentials to pick up the sequel.

And the point a while back you had about the sequel being a great profit game is very true. Thats why i can not compare VC in the light of Disgea yet as Strid wants so hard. Disgea is never going to sell well but i am sure the profits are high because its the same recycled sprites over and over and over... On every single console.. VCs sequel could go that route for sure.

I dont know what we are getting at now.

Are the gasmes sales bad? Yes. Add to it there wont be many more sales as i believe EB games reported they were out of stock... And the game is discontinued. Sega has cut the legs off a niche rpg that they are turning as you said into a franchise due to manga, anime and others? Again its just silly in so many ways to me.
 
Osy, why are you treating a price cut for an awesome game like it's bad news? It's made Sega happy that the game is selling much better now, despite it being cut in price, it's made gamers happy (Especially the Valkyria Chronicles Faction over at Gametrailers, which I am a part of) that the game is getting more attention, and it's no doubt making the development team over in Japan extremely happy that more Western gamers are now getting this, which may mean a sequel could be in the works.

This is all good news, why must you find fault with it?
 
Gerry let me explain something to you. Some of the most horrid games would have sold over a million if the price was cut 50%. No company is pleased their product is selling at a 50% discount.

Now as gamers sure its great news for us the game was reduced.
 
Well I guess the point is... what JRPG did better than V.C.?

VC is just under 400k, I think the closest behind it is the PS3 and 360 versions of Eternal Sonata combined for about 300k. Blue Dragon is at 500k, and Lost Odyssey is at 800k, B.D. I think VC is going to catch, and let's be honest here... Blue Dragon has been sold at $20, trying to squeeze out the last remaining huge overstock of it for a long, long, time.

What I'm talking about here is equal footing. You act like every other JRPG out there has their sales based on $60 a pop games. These are games that were $20(and still in stock) before VC even came out. If VC is running out of stock already, after so short a time at a discounted price, that means the expectations Sega had for it were low, based on the sales of the other JRPGs.

And yeah, at the end of the day, the customer picking up VC at $30 is probably someone who can get VC2 at $60, because that's the advantage of putting out a great game, you can be confident you're going to get some repeat business. Sega didn't put the investment they did, and put out the low shipments they did, because they were intending to make a single game. They created a whole engine for VC's art style and they made the easily best looking cell-shaded type game out there period. Keeping up to par now is the easy part - tweak the balance, add some classes, up the graphics a little - throw in new environments, script new battles... and ADVERTiSE the next game. I say it gets 600k and generates a spike in VC1 sales.

And no I'm not saying being negative about the sales means you're being negative towards the game in general. I wish the sales were much higher myself, because it's a quality game that deserved to be in the 500k+ range even as a JRPG. I'm just saying I think Sega knew what they were getting into coming in, but the first month sales of VC were abysmal. The point being it had legs, even before the price drop. Great word of mouth kept the sales going. Sega was real negative when it looked like it was going to wind up selling like 60k in NA total.
 
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Just my 2 cents on the whole thing around this game.

It's been said before and it'll be said again but the timeframe where the game got released was bad, really bad. With all the freaking blockbusters that were released back to back to back between the beginning of september and the end of december. I personally worked for EBGames for that 3 months for the christmas period and amongst the titles that got "lost in the cracks of the floor", you could find Valkyria Chronicles. Now, for an average gamer, especially for that period, you need to set yourself a priority list because people dont have a 500/750$ budget to buy every game that gets released for every console and unfortunately most of the time the customers sets blockbusters/sequels with big buzz > everything else (including new IPs, in this case VC, Mirror's edge, etc.).

Add to that that SEGA didn't put as much advertisement as they should have do. It's been said too in the past but, again, who would like to do advertisement when all the big guns are doing their show on every medias available to the public. Of course new IPs will get the shaft, especially in the christmas period. I'm just thinking about Gears of War for example. Gears of War got an early opening day, banners all over the place, posters in the windows, front page in the flyer, the whole x360 wall covered in GoW2 regular/ltd edition hell I even had to wear a fcking GoW 2 T-Shirt and a GoW2 neck name tag (I don't know the exact term for that, I'm sorry xD) while VC got 1 spot at the bottom of the "newly released" wall on the playstation dpt. Even worse, it was in the last row of stuff behind the counter behind other stuff because of his alphabetical order, the game was screwed off from the beginning lol.

When I picked up the game personally and I saw the potential I started recommending it to people I knew would like it. Even though, it took me a while to convince the majority of them because they had to make a choice between games like Fallout 3 and Fable 2 just to name a few. They were reluctant to go for VC because they knew they would probably have a good time right off the bat with other games considering their past history and legacy and I understand them perfectly. I wouldn't drop 60-70 bucks on a game I didn't hear about until 5 mins ago from the RPG geek behind the counter while I can get Fallout 3 for the same price and I know everyone is hyped about it around me. I would put it in my "games to get eventually after the rest" list if I heard something good about it in the near future. That's what I would have done.

I still don't understand why you guys are debating over numbers actually. Even if they sold 100 000 copies at 50%, it's still 50 000 copies at full price. Sega didn't do shit marketing wise and, from my perspective, they were not hoping for high numbers anyway with how they treated the game in NA. I can say that from the 8 copies we had between launch day and christmas, I moved 7 out of the 8 copies we had in store. 3 of them are people from my work (including myself) that I convinced, the other 4 were my friends and my RPG type regular customers. Yet I had to elaborate ALOT more than I would have done normally to the customers to convince them to buy it. Let's face also that RPG/SRPG does not necessarily fits the taste of everybody either. It's not necessarily helping to move copies either. Add also to that that RPGs are usually something that sales almost just on the day of release (at least here in NA)while other type of games (GoW, GH, The sims, etc.) usually sells a large qty on opening day but still continues to perform well even a couple of weeks after. Of course games that appeal more the general public will sell more than something as specific as SRPGs that are focused on SRPGs fans more than anything else lol.

SEGA should thank his new fanbase more than anything for the extraordinary support they got from them in term of word of mouth. I'm pretty sure we would still be sitting on 5-6 copies of VC at work if I didn't run my mouth in a good way for that game. I'm pretty sure SEGA already achieved their objective anyway and are satisfied with this "test" anyway. More VC is on the way, I would bet my copy of VC on that. They teased the RPG community with the first one, things can only get better from here especially if they can just put a tad more effort in the marketing, don't screw up launch date and that they know now that the game can perform well and have attention from the gaming community in general.

(P.S.: The same circus will happen around End of Eternity if it's as good as VC watch out lol)
 
Dude.. You are late and that conversation has ended allready. Not to mention you may not have read far enough back to see what the original argument was about sales. Everything you wrote is a nice opinion and all but it was all said earlier.
 
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I find a lot of the story to be anime cliches but it is kind of cool how its an alternate universe WWII with Darcens being an analogue of Jews and Valkyria being an analogue of Aryans.
 
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