Seven-Minute KH: Birth by Sleep Trailer Features Japanese Mickey
- Thread starter John Funk
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They're not cutting out portions of their fanbase, they're enlarging it. That's the whole point of spinoffs. Rather than just try straight ports of KH and now KH2 on handhelds, they chose to use them to expand side-stories, with slightly different, mission-based systems that fit handhelds better. They're not crippling the franchise any more that they crippled it with the DS game, which sold 1.56 million units.HyenaThePirate said:
And it's nothing like a gamble. Those games are cheap to produce, reusing lots of assets from the PS2 versions (yes, even for the DS game), on platforms that are cheap to develop for and have a wide userbase, guaranteeing good base sales (something they know from Dissidia and FF7CC, for the PSP).
Releasing such a thing on HD consoles, however, would indeed be a gamble, nobody wants a graphically identical rehash of a PS2 game on that, so they'd have to redo everything from scratch, it'd cost a lot more and for a smaller target audience. That's why they're not doing it until KH3, which couldn't come before they were done with FF13. Which is not only using the smae creative team as KH, but also the template for their HD production pipeline.
I'm sorry, but I have to ask...Bobby_C said:
Do you even PLAY Kingdom Hearts? Seriously? Because um.. you're talking about a MAJOR franchise with a HUGE Fan base, not Sonic the Hedgehog...
Secondly it's arguably the second or third most POPULAR Square Enix RPG series.. outside of Japan, I would say it's actually MORE popular than the Dragon Quest series.
They don't HAVE to reach a larger audience, any more than Final FANTASY XIII is trying to reach a "larger audience" by ignoring it's current fans.
Worse, your argument falls apart when you talk about how nobody would want a "Graphically identical rehash of a PS2 game on the new HD Console" So people would want a graphically rehash of a PS2 game on a console that graphically hovers somewhere between the PSX and PS2? Certainly enough people are still playing PS2 games on the PS3, so that excuse flies out the window.. I can play KH2 on my PS3 and still have a GREAT experience. It's not THAT graphically dated. I could CERTAINLY enjoy what I saw in that preview on my PS3. After all, I would have a nicer, larger screen to play it on instead of hunching over a tiny psp screen with my hands cramping up from what is BOUND to be an ackward and unintuitive control scheme.
Lastly, can you name a Square Enix game that was "cheap to produce?" Really, name ONE. You think that Kingdom Hearts is "Cheap to produce"? They take like 5 YEARS between freaking chapters, plus Disney is pretty damn hardcore about the use of their licenses. They lovingly and painstakingly craft most of their RPG's and never let it be said that Square Enix does not at least earn respect for the consistent level of quality of their titles, even if the games themselves are boring or less than fun. They at least WORK, and usually work WELL.
actually, you bring up a lot of good points marketing wise I hadn't considered! "econ major" Though I still feel like their putting a significant amount of time into development, I had'nt thought about how much effort is saved by using the old models and engine. Seems to follow the trend of some franchises "Half life episodes, Halo ODST, pokemon " I tip my hat to you sir.Bobby_C said:
At its best-selling point, the first game, KH sold about 5.5 millions worldwide. That's the level of a "badly performing" FF game (FF9, FF12), the ones that got their development teams removed from the franchise. Helps put it into perspective.HyenaThePirate said:
The second game, KH2, sold 3.76 millions worldwide. That's an almost 30% drop right there. So the franchise was actually waning with the second game already. And that means KH2 sold less in the whole world that DQ9 sold in japan alone (4.10 millions). That it's ahead if we discount japan (why is hardly surprising for DQ9 since it hasn't been published outside) is a moot point if japan outweighs the world. And so DQ8, the first DQ to receive a good international release, does better in total than KH2, though still half a million less than KH1. Incidentally, it also did better in japan alone than KH2 worldwide.
They do, simply because of escalating costs and the smaller market (PS3 user base is one quearter of what it was with the PS2), and FF13 is really trying hard to do so (notably why the first 20 hours of FF13 are fiercely dumbed down and the game only shows its true freedom after that). As I said, they were unhappy enough with FF12's results that the dev team got taken off the franchise. In HD they need even higher numbers to continue, lest they pad their revenue with, well, handheld spinoffs and wii games (which is why DQ is moving to wii).HyenaThePirate said:
Incidentally Sonic's best, Sonic 2, is above KH at six millions, and back then there were much fewer genesis/megadrives than there are PS2s (in fact, the PS2 market is more than four times bigger). It's true the sonic franchise has mostly died since, but then something like Sonic & Mario at the olympic games reached 7.39 millions which, once again, put KH back in perspective.HyenaThePirate said:
Yes, that is in fact the whole rationale behind BBS and one they know to be valid because Dissidia and FF7CC did pretty well for PSP games.HyenaThePirate said:
They're accepting it because it's clear to them it's games from the previous generations. But try to sell it as a PS3 game and suddenly they don't accept it anymore, and in fact use "PS2 graphics" as a derogatory term. I've seen several sites call BBS the most beautiful PSP game, when they'll in fact call some parts of FF13 ugly. Different platforms, different expectations.HyenaThePirate said:
I can name tons, pal. All their DS and wii games, in fact. You seem to misunderstand cheap as effortless when I in fact mean it as the "inexpensive" meaning. That's the very defining characteristic of a DS game, for one, that they cost at least ten to twenty times less than HD games to produce. And the KH spinoffs even further. The DS game is a terrific example, because most of its assets are downgraded versions of the PS2 game's assets, including sounds, levels (there's only a handful of rooms that are original), characters, etc. Even the only one new character, Xion, has been decribed by Nomura as being handy because they just took Kairi's head model, changed the hair and stuck it on a resized org 13 body, and her boss form is a reskin of Sora recycling a lot of his old animations. No new theme song, only a few new music tracks, no new world, the list continues.HyenaThePirate said:
Or take My life as a dark lord, which also directly reuses a number of assets from the other FFCC games.
Even an new-content-filled game like DQ9, their boldest DS creation yet, reuses the 3D engine common to all their recent DS productions. And that's normal, that's their strength.
I am considering using all my money (after I've bought starcraft 2 that is) so I can get a psp for this game.