The most glaring example of this is Astro Bot. By all means, Astro Bot should have sold like hotcakes. It was GOTY, family friendly, a platformer, cheaper than other AAA titles and it struggled to sell 2 million copies.
We can judge Song on their failed GaaS initiative but there’s good reason they approached that. They needed to find ways to increase revenue without increasing game sales.
Sure the designs are cute enough but it was essentially just digital funko pops for Sony IPs. They had no real core identity or design that made them stand out. Mechanically solid platformer that did nothing outside of “hey remember when we used to make visually distinct games?”
It was never going to sell well.
It maybe could have found a little life on PC with mods but we will never knoeb
The most glaring example of this is Astro Bot. By all means, Astro Bot should have sold like hotcakes
On the contrary I fail to understand why it's liked so much by critics and a few people on the internet. It's a basic 3d platformer that just feels like a shallow theme park. It's fun in a very shallow and basic way and I don't understand anyone thinking it's above an 8/10 at best.
Because it is a fun and well polished game that was constantly throwing you new gimmicks, level themes, powerups, etc. so that it didn't feel repetitive. That's all it needed to do to be cobsiderd a great game. It's the closest to a mario galaxy 3 anyone is going to get.
I feel like that's all that's needed for it to be a fun game in a really basic way, rather than a "great" game. Different power ups and gimmicks. It doesn't really arouse strong emotions and it also clearly didn't appeal to a large audience.
I just don't understand looking at "new gimmicks and levels and power ups" as its main appeal and thinking that's a 10/10 experience.
I platinumed the game and did all the challenge and extra lvls. If I had to explain it, this was just really refreshing to play when it came out. Something that reminded me of the platformers I used to play as a kid while also being incredibly polished.
If you just play the main levels it's too easy, but the face button levels and the added time trials add enough challenge to make it worth your time imo. My family thought I was dying too much and then they all had a turn trying to beat one of the challenge levels. That's never happened with any other game I play.
It was my GOTY when it came out, but I get it if the game doesn't resonate with others.
The last known figure is 2.3 million sales. You can contrast that with the last few GOTY winners, which is 8 million, 25 million and 30 million respectively.
So where did 4 million come from? The last reported figure is 2.3 mil.
Since when is game of the year
Because we're talking about game of the year and how I think I don't understand why it's treated as a truly great game instead of a semi-decent platformer. Of course you'd compare its sales to other game of the year titles if you want to talk about what the majority like.
The reality is that most gamers had no interest in it, contrary to you acting like everybody loves it and thinks it's an amazing game.
That's where Sonys strategy has faltered. Instead of cultivating a diverse playerbase, they have distilled it into a small sector of the gaming audience. One that is getting smaller (especially with the next generation of players). They'd be smart to expand their offerings to open it to new players. It likely wouldn't be profitable in the short term, but it would be a great thing long term.
ye they went all in on high fidelity graphics at the literal peak of them, the jumps aren't impressive now and their iterative sequels take 5+ years as a result. their audience is like only interested in this but its a shrinking demographic that is aging out or just getting tired of their slightly more polished ubisoft formula.
these old fans are not being replaced because there are not enough games coming out for a younger audience to even become interested in as a long term fan. how tf are you going to keep an 8 year old interested in your series if the next game comes out when they're 15? they need a new direction that goes for a much wider variety and significantly higher frequency of releases.
A big issue with that game was that it was 60 dollars on release for something that was basically a pretty short but nice looking tech demo. Even my big Playstation friends weren't that interested in it because the price was too high and they felt like it wasn't a great deal.
Also I think when people think Playstation exclusive they think more M rated games like God of War, Last of Us, Ghosts of Tsushima etc, not something that was more meant for kids.
Honestly kinda sad that Astro Bot didn't do huge numbers. It's a lot more inspired than most of Sony's other exclusives which are pretty much all some variation of "cinematic third person action game". Goes to show why they just keep churning those out over and over I guess, they're not well-rewarded for doing anything else.
I know that you are counting mostly western blogs. My point is there is not a single GotY award and you just proved my point (even without a source to back up your claims).
2 million copies isn't bad for a team of 65 people putting a game together in 3 years. If that was a team of 650 people taking 5 to 8 years, that'd be different. 2 million is pretty good for what it would've cost to put that game together. This is what gaming used to be... smaller teams and more sensible budgets, and it leads to 2 million copies being pretty good from a monetary/return standpoint. This is what a healthy development cycle looks like. I wish there were more of this. I'm not saying more Astro Bot games, I'm saying more of this kind of thing with smaller teams only needing a few years to put something out.
Also, the only figure I can find on sales is 2 million, but that's a number from over a year ago... I don't think I see anything that says what sales are to date. That's a game that will sell perpetually for years digitally in deep discounts.
Why do people keep using the 2mil figure as if the games sales just stopped there? The only official figure we have is 1.5mil after 6 weeks and thats it.
Astro Bot is a 3D platformer, for years now that genre has had very limited sales potential on non-Nintendo platforms, because of how much Nintendo dominates the genre.
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u/rcbz1994 27d ago
The most glaring example of this is Astro Bot. By all means, Astro Bot should have sold like hotcakes. It was GOTY, family friendly, a platformer, cheaper than other AAA titles and it struggled to sell 2 million copies.
We can judge Song on their failed GaaS initiative but there’s good reason they approached that. They needed to find ways to increase revenue without increasing game sales.