MS drops the ball on RSG and new Treasure game, gives us....

CStarFlare · Post by **CStarFlare** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:17 pm

It's reasonable to assume Treasure would've sold more copies had they sold Ikaruga on a standard Xbox disc with more content or options -- for example, bundled with RSG or even Appreciate-style replays (although the leaderboard is pretty damn sweet). They'd make a killing because of the media used and the higher level of accessibility.

It's an interesting theory, but selling the game for a higher price would drive away people who are slightly interested but not interested enough to pay full price, not to mention those who already own the game twice (or three times if you're the kind of person who bought the GD ROM). Adding to that the increased production costs of the medium and the additions you suggested, I'm skeptical to say the least.

Wikipedia says that the DC version only had 50k copies made, so it likely didn't sell more than 100k. The Gamecube version apparently sold ~25k before falling off the charts in Japan, and I'm skeptical they've doubled the sales of that since then. No clue how it did outside of the US but I'm assuming not as well in Japan. I'm not able to find concrete sales for the GC version, but I wouldn't be surprised if the XBLA port has outsold both of them, not to mention the fact that it's still actually for sale.

(Wiki indicates that the Gamecube had more units sold by the end of its life than the 360 currently has so I don't think the choice of console hurt it terribly.)

But again, how many resources are being tapped to port an old arcade game to one of the most developer-friendly consoles out today?

Enough that Treasure doesn't have the resources to throw away for minimal returns?

According to wikipedia they're a 30-40 person company that is apparently broken up into three teams. Assuming they're evenly divided, they have about ~13 people per team. It's probably safe to say that they're not overflowing with people looking for something to do.

Taylor · Post by **Taylor** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:34 pm

brokenhalo wrote:simple numbers. developers get a 70% take on all sales from xbla

Do they? That doesn't sound right. I recall everyone being up in arms when they reduced the cut developers got, or was that just independent games?

I wasn't aware Ikaruga had cracked 100,000 sales, last I heard it was much lower and that is a fair number. But I still don't think this makes RSG a license to print money and that it’s a significantly lesser known product.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:36 pm

independent devs get a 35% cut

"preferred" indies and studios get a 65% or 50% cut, respectively

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:29 pm

How do we know this game is coming in place of another RSG? Perhaps Treasure's still working on it.

Zero Gunner · Post by **Zero Gunner** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 8:14 pm

dave4shmups wrote:How do we know this game is coming in place of another RSG? Perhaps Treasure's still working on it.

It's not that this game "replaced" RSG....but Treasure just announced that both RSG and the new shmup they were working on are no more. The same week that Treasure confirms their 360 projects are no more MS unveils this (Power Up Forever) at TGS as a new XBLA title. The point of my thread is that clearly MS has lost their minds. We've lost two brilliant games from Treasure and yet a game that looks exactly the same as the half dozen other forgettable, nameless, game-school-projects that are already polluting XBLA gets ushered right onto the service.

MS is basically relegating XBLA to irrelevance with this kind of behavior. They've turned away Ketsui and Dodonpach for XBLA, lost two Treasure games....yet they think dumpster juice like Power Up Forever is actually in demand by gamers. It's a real shame that they don't even have a clue at how to manage their own service.

gennss · Post by **gennss** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 8:34 pm

Zero Gunner wrote:
dave4shmups wrote:How do we know this game is coming in place of another RSG? Perhaps Treasure's still working on it.
It's not that this game "replaced" RSG....but Treasure just announced that both RSG and the new shmup they were working on are no more. The same week that Treasure confirms their 360 projects are no more MS unveils this (Power Up Forever) at TGS as a new XBLA title. The point of my thread is that clearly MS has lost their minds. We've lost two brilliant games from Treasure and yet a game that looks exactly the same as the half dozen other forgettable, nameless, game-school-projects that are already polluting XBLA gets ushers right onto the service.

MS is basically relegating XBLA to irrelevance with this kind of behavior. They've turned away Ketsui and Dodonpach for XBLA, lost two Treasure games....yet they think dumpster juice like Power Up Forever is actually in demand by gamers. It's a real shame that they don't even have a clue at how to manage their own service.

vote with your dollar.

Zero Gunner · Post by **Zero Gunner** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 8:57 pm

Square King wrote: Also agreed. It's common sense from an economics standpoint. But again, how many resources are being tapped to port an old arcade game to one of the most developer-friendly consoles out today?

Good point, which is why I think we can all presume that there is some measure of falsehood in the way Treasure is representing the issue. Sure Ikargua wasn't a massive success on XBLA. But at the same time they sold more copies on 360 (at least 64,000 copies based on the leaderboards as of today) than they did of the DC version and this is the third release of the game...so there was only so many copies that Ikaruga was going to sell anyways. Not to mention the insane difficulty making Ikargua much less mainstream consumer friendly than Treasure titles like Guardian Heroes, Wario, etc...

Setting aside RSG there's however no reason for the cancellation of the unnamed Treasure project for 360. The idea that it wasn't going to sell because the 360 market is so small in Japan is just idiotic. You can't tell me for a second that The Behemoth has more recognition than Treasure....and Castle Crashers is currently at a minimum of 392,972 copies sold (based on the current players on the leaderboards)....and that's a game that was inspired by Treasure's Guardian Heroes!

So Treasure expects me to believe that they can't find a market for their new 360 exclusive title but a Flash game developer can sell a Treasure-inspired game to almost 400,000 consumers in just over a month? Right.....

More likely this has everything to do with Treasure's sudden love-interest with Nintendo, which is perfectly fine. But I don't believe for a second that they can't sell a brand new, exclusive title on the 360 via retail or XBLA while Sin & Punishment 2 is somehow able to find a market on a system selling almost entirely, by Nintendo's own admission, to "soccer-moms" and "casual" or "non-gamer" consumers....

Zero Gunner · Post by **Zero Gunner** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:01 pm

gennss wrote:vote with your dollar.

I certainly do. However sometime the odds are stacked against you no matter what and you don't even have a chance (ie Death Smiles and such likely never getting western releases).

MathU · Post by **MathU** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:24 pm

Zero Gunner wrote:More likely this has everything to do with Treasure's sudden love-interest with Nintendo, which is perfectly fine. But I don't believe for a second that they can't sell a brand new, exclusive title on the 360 via retail or XBLA while Sin & Punishment 2 is somehow able to find a market on a system selling almost entirely, by Nintendo's own admission, to "soccer-moms" and "casual" or "non-gamer" consumers....

Sin and Punishment 2 will without a doubt sell better on the Wii than another XBLA exclusive.

Zero Gunner · Post by **Zero Gunner** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:49 pm

MathU wrote:
Zero Gunner wrote:More likely this has everything to do with Treasure's sudden love-interest with Nintendo, which is perfectly fine. But I don't believe for a second that they can't sell a brand new, exclusive title on the 360 via retail or XBLA while Sin & Punishment 2 is somehow able to find a market on a system selling almost entirely, by Nintendo's own admission, to "soccer-moms" and "casual" or "non-gamer" consumers....
Sin and Punishment 2 will without a doubt sell better on the Wii than another XBLA exclusive.

Why? I'm sorry but S&P 1 was a relatively obscure game even in Japan...why is the new Nintendo consumer who plays WiiMusic/Fit/Sports/Play going to run out in droves and buy S&P 2? Why is that any more likely to occur than a Treasure exclusive (be it a retail release or XBLA title) selling well on 360? It's not like S&P 2 is going to sell like Treasure other Wii game (Wario).

Furthermore Treasure has yet to even give the 360 an exclusive! Ikaruga had 3 releases (Arcade, DC, GC) before it appeared on the 360! So you can't even argue that the 360 was the target market....because it wasn't. There's only so many copies the fourth version of a game is going to sell. That's an entirely different scenario than S&P2....it's an exclusive that's never appeared on another format before...so yes, it's going to sell a hell of a lot better than Ikaruga did on XBLA. But to say than a new exclusive on the 360, which has shown itself to be far more friendly to "hardcore" gaming that the Wii has...to say that such an exclusive 360 game wouldn't have done well is just asinine and ignores the fact that Treasure is basically abandoning all formats that aren't Nintendo simply because of their new love interest with Nintendo.

I'm completely fine with Treasure going Nintendo-only, but they should at least have the integrity to admit that is what's occurring, rather than stabbing fans in the back and making idiotic excuses about the Japanese market share on a console they knew would be shunned by the bigots in Japan from day one.

Again I reference my point about Castle Crashers....if a flash game inspired by Treasure's work can find a consumer base of 400,000 on the 360 then you can't honestly say that a new, exclusive Treasure game (or for that matter Guardian Heroes HD) can't do well also. Unless you're actually saying that Treasure can't compete with a flash game designer, which seems to be what you're getting at...

RackGaki · Post by **RackGaki** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:54 pm

MR_Soren wrote: Because 100,000 sales at $10 a copy is pretty weak when a game like Gradius V sells 400,000 copies at a higher price. All other shmups on XBLA can be expected to sell fewer copies than Ikaruga, so Treasure cannot justify tying up their developers on another XBLA port when they can make more money doing a new retail project.

Could it have anything to do with familiarizing their team to a new console that they have never developed on before? No, that makes too much sense to be the real reason.

And like everyone else has pointed out, the cut on XBLA is 35% (it was cut in half in the past year), more significant than the industry average.

No_not_like_Quake · Post by **No_not_like_Quake** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:54 pm

Never mind the Bullocks.

lgb · Post by **lgb** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:21 pm

Good lord, make your own game, get it approved by MS and on XBLA, and THEN come back bitching. Better to be a Jeff Minter than a clueless.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 11:18 pm

Zero Gunner wrote:
MathU wrote:
Zero Gunner wrote:More likely this has everything to do with Treasure's sudden love-interest with Nintendo, which is perfectly fine. But I don't believe for a second that they can't sell a brand new, exclusive title on the 360 via retail or XBLA while Sin & Punishment 2 is somehow able to find a market on a system selling almost entirely, by Nintendo's own admission, to "soccer-moms" and "casual" or "non-gamer" consumers....
Sin and Punishment 2 will without a doubt sell better on the Wii than another XBLA exclusive.
Why? I'm sorry but S&P 1 was a relatively obscure game even in Japan...why is the new Nintendo consumer who plays WiiMusic/Fit/Sports/Play going to run out in droves and buy S&P 2? Why is that any more likely to occur than a Treasure exclusive (be it a retail release or XBLA title) selling well on 360? It's not like S&P 2 is going to sell like Treasure other Wii game (Wario).

Furthermore Treasure has yet to even give the 360 an exclusive! Ikaruga had 3 releases (Arcade, DC, GC) before it appeared on the 360! So you can't even argue that the 360 was the target market....because it wasn't. There's only so many copies the fourth version of a game is going to sell. That's an entirely different scenario than S&P2....it's an exclusive that's never appeared on another format before...so yes, it's going to sell a hell of a lot better than Ikaruga did on XBLA. But to say than a new exclusive on the 360, which has shown itself to be far more friendly to "hardcore" gaming that the Wii has...to say that such an exclusive 360 game wouldn't have done well is just asinine and ignores the fact that Treasure is basically abandoning all formats that aren't Nintendo simply because of their new love interest with Nintendo.

I'm completely fine with Treasure going Nintendo-only, but they should at least have the integrity to admit that is what's occurring, rather than stabbing fans in the back and making idiotic excuses about the Japanese market share on a console they knew would be shunned by the bigots in Japan from day one.

Again I reference my point about Castle Crashers....if a flash game inspired by Treasure's work can find a consumer base of 400,000 on the 360 then you can't honestly say that a new, exclusive Treasure game (or for that matter Guardian Heroes HD) can't do well also. Unless you're actually saying that Treasure can't compete with a flash game designer, which seems to be what you're getting at...

Plenty of Wii owners will download Sin and Punishment 2; Nintendo mentioned the high numbers of downloads of the original on the Virtual Console as part of the reason for bringing this to the Wii. I think it will do just fine.

Think what you will about XBLA, but I'd rather play this new shooter or Galaga Legions then Pain, or an installment of Ratchet and Clank: Future Tools of Destruction that could easily have been included on the original disc. The PSN does have some great shooters, but not nearly as much content as XBLA.

Erinu · Post by **Erinu** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 7:46 am

ArmoredCore wrote:
Erinu wrote:Lol! I played this the other day and it controls SO fucking poorly. The way it controls reminds me of this dodgy Megadrive shmup that had 8 way movement and direction. Not fun..

NEXT.
uhh how did u get to play this, i wanna try

There was a trial version on the Japanese Marketplace.. I dunno if it got it before the US or w/e lol. I think everyone has forgotten about the game already.

ChurchOfSolipsism · Post by **ChurchOfSolipsism** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 10:27 am

brokenhalo wrote:
MR_Soren wrote:
Kiken wrote: How is ~100,000 units considered "meh" sales?
Because 100,000 sales at $10 a copy is pretty weak when a game like Gradius V sells 400,000 copies at a higher price. All other shmups on XBLA can be expected to sell fewer copies than Ikaruga, so Treasure cannot justify tying up their developers on another XBLA port when they can make more money doing a new retail project.
simple numbers. developers get a 70% take on all sales from xbla. so 100,000 copies x $10 x 70%= $700,000.

so for doing a port which should only take a few months (they say they wasted 2 years on the xbla ikaruga port. must have been a lot of time jerking off) they can cash in on an easy $700,000.

and if they wanted to, they could do a fancy redone version and release it as a disk based game and make even more money. maybe treasure just doesn't like money.

I have to tell you that it's completely obvious to everyone but yourself that you don't know shit about this. Your post is so full of nonsense that it would be a waste of time for me to point out its flaws.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 2:02 pm

brokenhalo wrote: RSG hasn't shown up yet because treasure doesn't know if they would make any money on it.

Treasure has always developed games for the under-dog console. I'm sure if they wanted to make money they would have ported their games onto the PS2 but they chose to stick with the Dreamcast and Sega Saturn back in the days. I don't think it's a money issue here.

Though they did say before they were tired of making sequels and we've been seeing plenty of that recently as well.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 2:07 pm

SockPuppetHyren wrote:...What am I looking at now? No really, I want to know. I can't make heads or tails of anything in that picture except for the HUD.

1+

Is this even a Shmup?? lol

MR_Soren · Post by **MR_Soren** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 2:49 pm

dave4shmups wrote: Plenty of Wii owners will download Sin and Punishment 2; Nintendo mentioned the high numbers of downloads of the original.

The sequel will be a retail release.

gs68 · Post by **gs68** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 3:08 am

Welp...all we can do in the mean time is BE PRAYING, BE PRAYING, BE PRAYING...

antares · Post by **antares** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:58 am

I just played the trial version of Power Up Forever. Don't waste your time on it, it's awful...

BBH · Post by **BBH** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 12:41 pm

Hahaha this is such garbage

it just made me want to play Geometry Wars 2 instead

PepsimanVsJoe · Post by **PepsimanVsJoe** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 1:38 pm

I'm really impressed by the conclusion the OP has come to.

Then again if you're still operating on the ridiculous idea that MS cock-blocked Ketsui and Dodonpachi XBLA because they're arcade ports I really have nothing else to say,

Drascin · Post by **Drascin** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 1:45 pm

MR_Soren wrote:
dave4shmups wrote: Plenty of Wii owners will download Sin and Punishment 2; Nintendo mentioned the high numbers of downloads of the original.
The sequel will be a retail release.

Still, the main point stands - Sin & Punishment came back to light with the Virtual Console release (it even got an Assist Trophy in Brawl as well), and it remains one of the most downloaded games in the service. Many of those who downloaded it will most likely be willing to buy a new, improved one.

Of course, this makes me happy, because S&P is severely awesome.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 2:24 pm

PepsimanVsJoe wrote:I'm really impressed by the conclusion the OP has come to.

Then again if you're still operating on the ridiculous idea that MS cock-blocked Ketsui and Dodonpachi XBLA because they're arcade ports I really have nothing else to say,

Uhh, the lead guy for XBLA basically came out and said they wanted to focus more on new games rather than arcade ports. This was months ago, but it happened.

PepsimanVsJoe · Post by **PepsimanVsJoe** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 2:50 pm

Udderdude wrote:
Uhh, the lead guy for XBLA basically came out and said they wanted to focus more on new games rather than arcade ports. This was months ago, but it happened.

Yet didn't we just see a release of Banjo Kazooie on XBLA(which is not an arcade game but it is more or less a straight port of an N64 title) and SSF2T HD(a full-on remake of an arcade game)? Hell we've got R-Type dimensions coming soon.

I figure if 5pb put forth the effort to develop a port closer to Ikaruga(online co-op, excellent leaderboards, tons of other options like replays and such) than Triggerheart Exelica(well it has leaderboards but absolutely no way to compare your score with people on your friend'slist..what?) there wouldn't have been an issue in a first place. Something as simple as online multiplayer(a huge feature the vast majority of XBLA games try to promote) would have done wonders for Ketsui/DoJ's chances on XBLA.

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 3:12 pm

ikaruga as a download is doing fantastic and yet they dont want RSG

how they argue with numbers i dont know. if someone wants to put out a game on XBL ive no idea why MS say no. its just more potential revenue afterall, and they let all the other shite thoughl

dmauro · Post by **dmauro** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 3:35 pm

Lordstar wrote:ikaruga as a download is doing fantastic and yet they dont want RSG
how they argue with numbers i dont know. if someone wants to put out a game on XBL ive no idea why MS say no. its just more potential revenue afterall, and they let all the other shite thoughl

There is a huge constituency of people that love Ikaruga, but probably don't even know about RSG. Of course if they billed it as Ikaruga 0 or something, they would probably see good sales.

CStarFlare · Post by **CStarFlare** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 6:02 pm

Lordstar wrote:ikaruga as a download is doing fantastic and yet they dont want RSG

That's not why RSG isn't coming to XBLA.

Yet didn't we just see a release of Banjo Kazooie on XBLA(which is not an arcade game but it is more or less a straight port of an N64 title) and SSF2T HD(a full-on remake of an arcade game)? Hell we've got R-Type dimensions coming soon.

These titles have name recognition, which is something DOJ and Ketsui do not have a whole lot of. Except maybe R-Type, which is ironically the only shmup on that list. I'm not too familiar with how well-known R-Type is.

Something as simple as online multiplayer(a huge feature the vast majority of XBLA games try to promote) would have done wonders for Ketsui/DoJ's chances on XBLA.

Do people play shmups with other people? It's a serious question; I've never heard anything say they do.

Taylor · Post by **Taylor** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 6:13 pm

Firstly, the games were not heavily into development when they were told "We are going to cut down faithful arcade ports." Secondly, from all we've seen they are ambitious ports. Online multiplayer is NOT an easy feature for a twitch game with a lot of entities as it requires tight netcode and the game to be deterministic, and is not even an attractive feature.

And I'm pretty sure Triggerheart does have friends scoretable...

The notion that the statement was lies, we're sheep, and 5pb simply presented Microsoft with a shit game the first time is rather fanciful, but I don't see it myself.