It wouldn't have been a magic fix because sales also depends on how desirable a product is. But it would have made sense. No reasons to doubt the game will arrive sooner or later, though.
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UK Charts - Crash 4 claims #1, sold only 1000 more copies than SW Squadrons (physical only)
- Thread starter Raigor
- Start date
It wouldn't have been a magic fix because sales also depends on how desirable a product is. But it would have made sense. No reasons to doubt the game will arrive sooner or later, though.
I'm just waiting for them to actually talk about the next gen releases. I just dropped $500 this past month on a PS5, and another $140 on launch titles. I want to pick up Crash 4, would have loved to at launch - but with no news of a PS5 patch or anything I'm to believe it will be a repurchase scenario, so it just makes more sense to wait for the next gen version.
At £35/£40 this would have been a day 1 buy for me, but Activision gonna Activision, so I'll be waiting for a sale before picking this up.
Crash 4 is an amazing fun full of good contents game that's totally worth the wait and deserves all the success it's getting.
Why wouldn't a new full game filled with decent contents and high quality deserve less than the full price of regular games?
£35/£40/£45 is generally the price you're able to get new releases for in the UK when you shop around. I'm not trying to devalue Crash compared to other games here.
This is where I'm at. I have a PS5 coming in a month, so I may as well wait to play Crash 4 on that.
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Not necessarily. It's a lot less work to get it up and running on xbox than switch.
Because games don't actually sell at that price here, unless you're going into GAME. I got TLOU part 2 for £45, why would I pay more for crash?
I think charging full price for a Crash game isn't a good idea. I paid the €70 because I'm a huge fan but that's a massive price increase from €40 for N-Sane trilogy and Nitro Fueled.
I guess they thought after the successes with the previous crash games that people are willing to spend money on full price for Crash games
As somebody who is admittedly biased as a giant fan of Crash Bandicoot --
I do have to say I disagree pretty hard with the "it's 1 game for full price when we had 3 games for cheaper, so it objectively has less value" line when I'm nearly 30 hours deep in Crash4 and have less than 50% completion, and in that same amount of hours you could pretty much 100% the entire trilogy three times each. This game has a huge amount of content in comparison to N.Sane Trilogy.
So far I'm at those hours having only done the main story (accounting for 10 hours of my time) and unlocking and completing the side campaign (Flashback Tapes). I haven't even done my first run through the optional side character stages, and have barely touched time trials or tried to 100% anything I didn't already on my first run.
The production value on this is also far higher than NST/NF were, for that matter.
However, I don't feel like they've done a great job of conveying all this to people. There are more than twice the amount of levels in this game than a Trilogy game had (across normal stages, timeline stages and flashback tapes, not counting the N.Verted and Boss stages) and they don't make a point of it on the box or in the marketing.
I do have to say I disagree pretty hard with the "it's 1 game for full price when we had 3 games for cheaper, so it objectively has less value" line when I'm nearly 30 hours deep in Crash4 and have less than 50% completion, and in that same amount of hours you could pretty much 100% the entire trilogy three times each. This game has a huge amount of content in comparison to N.Sane Trilogy.
So far I'm at those hours having only done the main story (accounting for 10 hours of my time) and unlocking and completing the side campaign (Flashback Tapes). I haven't even done my first run through the optional side character stages, and have barely touched time trials or tried to 100% anything I didn't already on my first run.
The production value on this is also far higher than NST/NF were, for that matter.
However, I don't feel like they've done a great job of conveying all this to people. There are more than twice the amount of levels in this game than a Trilogy game had (across normal stages, timeline stages and flashback tapes, not counting the N.Verted and Boss stages) and they don't make a point of it on the box or in the marketing.
It's sad that AAA platformers are not worth full price according to some... anyway I'm happy that it managed to claim the first spot.
I've played Crash since 1997 and just instinctively think they are dreaming putting €70 next to a relatively traditional-looking follow-up. Those remakes contained a ridiculous amount of content and were predicated on affordability. Nobody is accustomed to that barrier of entry for this series.
they are but not Crash.
nobody complains that Odyssey is $60.
why do you think that is?
regardless of quality, i don't get why people think platformers are less worthy of being full price, or why only mario can get away with it. it's not like in other genres only the top tier games from the top series are full price and everything else isn't.
if Crash looked like Odyssey i'd pay $60 for it too. i think Crash 4 looks super dated which is why many like it but it's also the reason why it doesn't look like it's worth $60 for many others.
But why does it deserve to be higher than most games too?
This point keeps getting glossed over; most games are £50, but Crash 4 was £55-60
I'll trust you Cortex Vortex Visited by Knack Member. You seem impartial.
Haha don't get me wrong I enjoyed Odyssey and when it's good, it's really damn good but overall I prefer Crash 4 a bit more, mainly cause it's just way more challenging.
How challenging is it compared to the original games? Namely the first.
That's disappointing. Thought for sure digital would be better
Full breakdown:
Crash N'sane trilogy (physical + digital) : 156k
Crash Team Racing (physical) : 57k
Crash 4 (physical + digital) : <48k
Crash N'sane trilogy (physical + digital) : 156k
Crash Team Racing (physical) : 57k
Crash 4 (physical + digital) : <48k
not surprised. it never struck me as the kind of game that would do amazingly well in digital sales.
People have to understand that digital won't 'save' games that had 70-80% drops compared to their predecessors.
It was never going to do big numbers digitally at £60.
And it's a shame it's not selling really well, because it's excellent.
But as a platformer, unless you're Mario, full price (in this case, and then-some) is a tough sell nowadays sadly.
And it's a shame it's not selling really well, because it's excellent.
But as a platformer, unless you're Mario, full price (in this case, and then-some) is a tough sell nowadays sadly.
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I wonder how many people decided to hold off for next gen versions, or just because new systems are coming, etc. I finished Crash 4 last night and despite some nitpicks, I loved it. Very happy Crash is back. I am excited with what they do for a "Crash 5" (or maybe another spinoff/successor to Crash Bash before next gen Crash 5?).
Dang, I know people have their opinions on what they prefer and all but you sound off about Crash 4 being received well?
Maybe you should get off your high horse and stop being a soreass?
How can you devalue something that has been dead for years at this point ? They needed that cheaper entry point to reach the masses with that IP.
Should have developed and launched Crash 4 with that price target as well. Or if you go for 60 at least have it ready for next-gen as well because that audience is more likely to spend full price on new games that take advantage of their systems.
People always tend to overestimate the pull of certain ln IPs and products when they are sold below the standard price. It often results in unrealistic expectations.
This game had the perfect oppotunity to be a PlayStation 5/Xbox Series X launch title.
Yeah, it really was a strange decision to launch the game that close to next-gen - at that price nonetheless - without a clear upgrade path.
I know it's a boring, easy excuse... but I'm gonna assume this was just a result of 2020/COVID... wouldn't be surprised if it was meant to come earlier in the year and launch got put back due to WFH changes etc.
Yeah, those numbers aren't great.
Activision and Sony are probably scratching their heads at this one, as all the online metrics for this look strong. The announcement trailer was something like the #6 trending video on YouTube when it launched and is one of the most liked videos on the PlayStation channel. All of the follow-up gameplay videos have huge views and there was a GI.biz article mentioning that it was doing well on Facebook/Twitter, so I'm not sure if these first week sales numbers reflect a lack of enthusiasm or if other factors were dominant.
You do have to wonder why Activision decided to release this one month before next-gen, especially without any next-gen enhancements currently announced. Unless they have some sort of strategy whereby launch sales are moot, that just seems like a bad misread of the market. It does look like a missed opportunity to not have this as a timed PS5 exclusive title - having the sequel to the original Crash trilogy help launch your new PlayStation just seems like low hanging fruit to me.
As for the price, I don't think it's unreasonable for the game to be full price. The game has clearly had a lot of money put into it and is larger than all of the original trilogy combined. That said, this is going for about £50 to £55 physical and £60 digital. In comparison, Cyberpunk 2077 is going for £45 to £50 physical and £55 digital, TLOU2 launched at around £50 physical and is £55 digital; even Super Mario 3D All-Stars is currently £45 physical and £50 digital, and that's Mario, the largest and most prestigious platforming series. I'll give Activision credit for releasing Crash 4 at a higher price than all of those: that was a big balls move, but I'm not sure if it'll work out, at least at launch.
And to be honest, I'm not sure if a major price cut before Christmas (say, it drops to £40) will help them in the long term. When Spyro 4 likely comes out next year, they're going to have the same problem with customers balking at the price, and the same goes for the CTR sequel and should they decide to make a wholly new Tony Hawk game, that too. People became a bit too comfortable paying £30 to £35 for Crash/Spyro, and Activision are going to have to somehow retrain them to accept paying full price. There's not a rulebook to follow because there hasn't been a AAA non-Mario traditional 3D platformer in what must be over a decade, outside of Portal 2 I suppose. I'm guessing that other publishers are watching closely to see how Crash 4 performs, and whether there still is a market for this sort of game at full price.
Aside from those two major factors, I think there are various other minor reasons as to why the numbers are lower. NST was thought to be a PS4 exclusive at release, as opposed to Crash 4 where people are waiting and expecting for the PC/Switch versions to come. The microtransaction kerfuffle from CTR is likely causing some to hold off for now, despite the devs telling otherwise that they won't be coming to Crash 4. They addressed the latter in the State of Play video, so the initial reports of microtransactions appearing must have spooked them. Some of the younger demographics have perhaps moved over to Switch since 2017, the parents are starting to feel the financial crunch of the pandemic and kids are no longer sitting at home and have gone back to school.
I don't think it's all doom and gloom though. The legs on this title will be interesting, especially around Christmas, and upcoming DLC appears to have been datamined from the demo so the game does look like it'll have post-launch support. If Activision have managed to secure Crash in Smash, I think it'll do well on Switch whenever that launches as well.
I still think this is fairly simple, it's too expensive.
When your game is more expensive than every other upcoming/released AAA then folk won't be buying in droves.
Being nearly £10 more expensive than everything else out there was a dumb thing to do
When your game is more expensive than every other upcoming/released AAA then folk won't be buying in droves.
Being nearly £10 more expensive than everything else out there was a dumb thing to do
I'm not saying they are meaningless but people put too much stock into those kinds of metrics. Just look at the social media metrics for pretty much any Nintendo content; they are paltry compared to how those games actually perform. I think the highest viewcount for one of Nintendo's Animal Crossing videos on Youtube is only 4.4m.
The UK physical figures are so minuscule generally, it's hard to draw any real conclusions.
They are so minuscule that even the Playstation UK people on Era buying the game on playstation would be enough to create that ratio difference.
Also, the crash games always had super long sales tails, so once the casuals and kids are buying it as Christmas approaches, that difference will become more in line with what you'd expect
