Of course they did not get the same marketing the sales potential was not the same .
Who is going to spend GOW money marketing on DD games .
It was under new leadership because they could not get there act together .
They had to many teams doing to many things that did not work out and that is why they get new leader ship in the PS3 gen .
You can read all about that when it happen and this was during Kaz and Jack time .
You using Day gone but a vita team grew enough to make a 5 million seller while Japan studio had that number of people for years and could not make a IP that sell 1 million.
This is the very point that I'm making though. Japan Studio was primarily used as a collaboration developer in the PS3 and PS4 era, they were heavily in the PS1 and PS2 era also, plus they strongly supported the PSP. Very, very few of their games were made However if you look at their own offerings, you have to remember they get assigned a budget with these things. Someone somewhere signed off on these budgets and it wasn't until we really looked into it and said, oh shit, something isn't adding up here that they brought someone in to streamline and get back to some semblance of sense as to where they fit in the business.
Gravity Rush, great game, barely got any advertising to the point that people didn't know that it was coming out. The size and scope of their projects still varied because Gravity Rush was a much bigger undertaking than Tokyo Jungle, Rain or Puppeteer and I use those examples exclusively because they're some of the very few that they actually made all by themselves. Ape Escape Move and Kung Fu Rider is another example of not giving studios a proper chance. They made fringe games for an add-on that while I loved was slated by the media for being too derivative of Nintendo despite Sony demoing that tech originally in 2001.
Look the studio was managed. Under Kaz Hirai, it changed it's direction. Under Andrew House. It changed again under Shawn Layden and seems to have changed again with each iteration of management. That's four CEO's in ten years. Allan Becker was doing a great job there and Sony Japan fit the Layden model of first, must, best. Apparently they didn't meet Jim's criteria. I mean you only have to look at the talent there. They gave Kojima more support that than and SCE Japan had some industry titans in their ranks who could have used some support but never got it. Ultimately a lot of Sony closures have been either through mis-management or poor decision making.
The way to solve this is what they've done bringing SIE into one umbrella, but the problem is, that umbrella is incredibly focused on European and North American produced content. That's been evident from their treatment of their Japan talent for some time now. That's a management issue. They did the same thing with Sony London, so it's nothing new.
And yet here we are where none of this mistakes are being made. We have a competitive console at a fair price with a cheaper digital sku launching with strong day one games and a strong first year and you saying it is all going back to the arrogant days... I mean cmon are we serious with this?
Even if I don't like the 80€ games this not even close to be in the same ballpark as the PS3 days.
Again, time will tell. The ripples from their actions won't take seed right away. The price increase is just one of the factors but in my humble opinion, I can see Sony having to do a bit of grovelling to win back consumer trust in the next two to three years. Microsoft is going to make great progress in the market and they'll have to eat some humble pie but I don't wholly blame Jim for that, Sony itself seems dead set on pumping money into Sony Music and Sony Pictures despite PlayStation being their best bet. When PlayStation makes over 20% of Sony's income and Sony Pictures and Sony Music are making multi-billion dollar acquisitions where it looks as though there is a lack of investment in Gaming and Network Services you can see the thinking. On the flip side Microsoft just took a major publisher out of the market and if you think that's where they will stop or they won't prioritise their products on XBOX then I would say think again.
I can confidently say you were living under a rock if you didn't know Legend of Dragoon existed lol. There was a sweet ass CG commercial that was constantly playing on tv. That game was EVERYWHERE and got a ton of hype. Even wound up selling a million copies. I'm actually not really sure why it never got a sequel.
It depends on your experience though doesn't it? It sold on average in Japan 350,000 units LTD which is about what the average Yakuza title sold in it's launch week in Japan. The major sales were in the United States but the title was barely advertised here in the UK. It wasn't released in Europe until 2001 when people were looking forward to the PS2 and the big RPG was Final Fantasy IX. It came out a month before that and barely got a look in which is why they never restocked it. Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II on DreamCast got more advertising than that. I think the big PS1 RPG's that year were Vagrant Story and Breath of Fire IV?
In fact in between posts I've gone into my bookcase and looked at my PS1 demo discs and surprise surprise, I found an FMV demo on UK Official PlayStation Demo 64 which is November 2000. The cover art is Driver 2 and it isn't even mentioned on the cover. It isn't mentioned on the following demo's either and it released here in January. It mentions Crash Bash, Spyro 3, Buzz Lightyear, some PS2 stuff but nothing about Legend of Dragoon. My magazines are in storage though so I can't go and see.
