The Great Mystery: Why Don’t Platinum Games Sell Well?

UM writes: "Who would’ve have thought that by 2014 the Wii U would arguably have the best next gen action game line up ? Sure PS4 has Infamous Second Son, and XB1 has Sunset Overdrive, but they do not have The Wonderful 101, Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta and the undisputed Queen of the genre in Bayonetta 2 (that’s right I’m on the Bayonetta Bandwagon). If you have not yet played Bayonetta 2, and action games are your jam, you my friend are missing out. I can personally attest to the insanely high reviews it’s getting. So why isn’t it selling like gangbusters? Well."

[ritsuka666]

The mainstream military fps poision has ruined alot of this generations playerbase perspectives on "what makes a great game". A hard working creative studio like Platinum games is doing grand things and bringing a breath of fresh air to the entire action genre but people are either to afraid or to jealous to give them the praise.

[Amigaengine]

Well said

[Tzuno]

on the other hand games that are intended for single player only need to have some replay value and i mean more than 2 runs of the game, people need to gring for something, gamers these days want games that they can play for months, replay value is the key for single player games or they don't stand a chance, sad but true, i myself i love SP games but they are killed by multiplayer mammoths .

[BullyMangler]

change title to The Great Mystery: Why Don’t Platinum Games Sell Well? <<<< . to "why dont they sell (EXTRAORDINARY" . . its obviously selling well .

and Bayo 2's first christmas aint even here yet . .

anyway . . please lets get our heads out of the boring and missleading sales figures . .

lol lame "sales wars"

[DeusEx-Machina]

Not that I really care about this stuff, but it's surprisingly quiet around how Bayonetta 2 sold here in the west.

When the game saw "bad" sales in japan, everyone was writing about it.

Whatever, for all I know in my family alone (me and my brothers live all at different locations), we bought 3 copies (2 first print and 1 special edition).

[kwandar]

Reggie has already stated it is selling well in NA.

Top of Eshop where I bought my copy, too.

[ZainreFang]

It's a Wii U game. We can't have news going around of a Rated M game selling well on Wii U. It'll ruin the perception that Wii U is a kiddy console.

[theizzzeee]

I love these backhanded complimentary articles (sarcasm). Notice how the author doesn't use sales numbers in this article. It was number one on VG Charts with only two days of sales. On a site that probably has had over 100 Bayonetta 2 articles I find it odd there wasn't an article on that. I think it's very odd almost like some don't want any sales hype on this game to help keep those on the fence from that last little bit of push to get the Wii U then this game. Hmmm

[DualWielding]

Who would’ve have thought that by 2014 the Wii U would arguably have the best next gen action game line up ? Sure PS4 has Infamous Second Son, and XB1 has Sunset Overdrive, but they do not have The Wonderful 101, Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta and the undisputed Queen of the genre in Bayonetta 2

I agree with Bayonetta, but W101 is not an action game is a RTS and Hyrule Warriors is basically Musou with a Zelda skin, no shortage of Musou games in other platforms...... Bayonetta didn't sell because it was a Wii U exclusive.... I know the first Bayonetta didn't sell well on PS3/360 but if Bayonetta 2 had released on PS4/Xbone during this time but consoles are lacking in great games I'm sure it would have sold well

[WeAreLegion]

Queen? Sure. King? Devil May Cry 3.

[Tontus]

Queen? Sure. King? God of War Trilogy. http://gamrconnect.vgchartz...

[Alinea]

have played those games, I think bayonetta 2 is indeed the best hack and slash of all time, I dont like god of war the same way I liked dmc 3

god of war didnt really gave me that much control over the combat as bayonetta 2 does and bayonetta pretty much improves on what there was for dmc

[kwandar]

I think they are selling very well to Wii U base. I'll be surprised if Bayonetta 2 doesn't hit over 500K sales ... and more.

[WeAreLegion]

They make weird games. That's ok though. The people who enjoy them are fans for life.

When many of these devs were at Capcom, they made Okami, God Hand, Viewtiful Joe, and Devil May Cry. Obviously, only Viewtiful Joe and Devil May Cry did well. Bad timing and poor marketing held God Hand and Okami back, sadly.

However, even good marketing and good timing can't make Bayonetta or The Wonderful 101 interesting to millions of gamers. You either like them or you don't. I'm a fan of Bayonetta's combat. Excellent combat. So, I buy the games. If they had an interesting story like Okami or Devil May Cry, I'd be much happier, but I'm fine with just great gameplay.

[Joydivision39]

Idk if this article is worth reading since I think it is just bs. I bought a copy of bayonetta last night, only had 2 copies of the game at the store. Plus holiday season is coming up I think sales will go up. Great Great game!

[Illusive_Man]

Never seen a Bayonneta advertisement, I only bought the first one because I heard online it was really good. Platinum just needs a good marketing push.

[TheJacksonRGN]

Marketing and target audience.

[Lofabred]

If you're a game developer and you want your game to sell well, and your name isn't "Nintendo" - don't release it on Wii U. This is a system designed by Nintendo, for Nintendo. A quick lookup of the Wii U's top 10 selling games shows they are all developed by Nintendo. Others need not apply.

[jayzablade]

I think I have discussed this many times before but here goes… First of all, we [Platinum Games] are developers and receive support from publishers by making games that they request or suggest. As for Bayonetta, we developed the game after signing a deal with SEGA. Later it was decided to also develop the sequel, so we started working on Bayonetta 2.
When development had progressed to a certain degree, in SEGA’s situation it turned into “This isn’t a good plan”, so development halted temporarily.
Without funding we didn’t have the possibility to continue development, but we wanted to get this partially developed Bayonetta 2 available to the public one way or another. So we offered it to various publishers, but as it is a big title, we couldn’t find a partner company. Finally, Bayonetta 2 was about to get terminated completely, when…
Nintendo came in and lent a hand and we were able to restart the development we so desired. Finally the game was released last week, so in five years, we were able to make Bayonetta 2 available to the public.

Your argument is invalid....

[Lofabred]

I suppose it depends on how you define 'selling well' which is really a financial goal. Financially speaking, is the goal to break even on development cost (or maybe just recoup more than would be lost if it weren't finished/released)? Hopefully it's to make some profit in a good situation. In this situation, you probably don't have the goal of acquiring funding for the next game. Maybe the sales did meet that goal - I don't know. But is it not fair to say you would have preferred it to be on other consoles as well if you had your choice? I know I would have liked to play it on PS4. Anyway, best of luck!

[theizzzeee]

It seems like the plan against Bayonetta 2 and the Wii U seems to be working. Folks believing something with no evidence merely
a suggestion. Smh