a) There are three things I know about VGChartz. One, the name is stupid. Two, they are independent, so I’d trust their word over somebody else, where it’s in their interest to make people think they sold a lot of something. Three, they could be off, but not by 600%. They would not be in business otherwise.
b) We’re just gonna have to disagree on this one. The sales of just about every other game show this to be the case, however, and in any event, the fact that you bring this up as a reason shows that VGChartz probably isn’t a joke.
It’s only been out for a short time, so I think it’s currently in the sales doldrums, where it’s not new enough to have a big sales push, and not old enough to really justify slashing the price. But it does seem to be selling slowly. On Amazon, for example, it’s ranked in the top 600s, behind much older (and dated, as in not currently supported) titles, and just a notch above vanilla MvC3 and vanilla SF4.
I’m sad too, I didn’t want this game to flop in the wider marketplace.
Here’s my take (that I expect many people to disagree with, which is fine):
UMvC3 was a sales failure. Capcom screwed up and they know it. I know that a lot of people here don’t want to hear it, but much like politics, you have to appeal to the middle of the road - the casuals. Now, I don’t necessarily mean dumbing-down the game, just giving them perceived value. Capcom always had the hardcore community on their side as a guaranteed sale. The new version is THE version, period, for those folks. Casuals need to be sold on it. And the message that casuals got was that they had been tricked. That may or may not have been true, but they felt that way, and Capcom did a pretty terrible job of convincing them otherwise.
This means a few things to me. For one thing, Capcom needs to handle this sort of thing better. Like, a lot better. Convincing your casual gamer to drop over $100 on a niche game in one year is craziness (especially one that requires hours of practice - not playing, practice - and a high tolerance for getting your ass handed to you on a consistent basis by people who will make you helplessly sit through 2-minute combos). How about not letting those casual fans (which far outnumber the hardcore fighting crowd, truth be told) feel like they’d been had? How about an incentive to get the next game, other than a small price cut? Savvy shoppers typically get new releases for around $40 anyway, after preorder rebates and credits. The additions to Ultimate were a hard sell anyway. Most casuals would take one look at it, see a few new characters and a few “new” stages (re-skins of existing stages that aren’t fooling anybody), and wonder why they weren’t included in the game they could’ve sworn they just bought.
And speaking of the characters, most people don’t recognize half the cast. I realize that they want to dig a little deeper, or showcase some up-and-coming characters, but give me a break. Spider Man and Hulk are some obvious sells, but I can’t imagine the average fan getting excited about some of these players. Here’s something to try: Go into your average Gamestop/Best Buy/whatever with two sets of cards. Approach an average customer and show him the first set, with MODOK, Dormammu, and Rocket Raccoon. Then show him the second set, with Gambit, Venom, and Rogue. See which set gets a better response. This argument has been done to death, yes (and before you ask, I don’t give a shit about Mega Man one way or the other), but this sort of thing does matter to the average gamer. Why bother with the Marvel name if you clutter the roster with B-and-C-list characters that most people don’t care about? I know I know, Gambit and Venom and plenty of others don’t make sense, given the current state of the comics. But come on. This is a game where a guy from Resident Evil fights 60s-era Thor by punching him 50 feet into the air then throwing a rocket at him that he pulled from his trenchcoat. And then they get up and continue fighting. Come on - this is fun and goofy, who cares if it fits with a certain continuity? People are more willing to say “Cool, I can play as Venom!” than “Cool, I can play as a creepily huge head with too much lipstick.”
And lastly, expect the fallout from Ultimate to carry over to Street Fighter X Tekken. The wider market (again, outside the relatively small hardcore fighting game community) will take one look at that and say “Nope, not foolin’ me again. I’ll wait for the next version. Or the one after that. Or…” etc. Capcom has trained gamers to think that way, however unintentional or well-meaning they might have been. It doesn’t matter that there might be benefits to their business model. They make a lot of people feel like suckers. And nobody likes to feel that way.
Slashing the prices of games while they’re still new is not unprecedented and I’ll even say is the new thing in retail. i.e., Portal 2 last year was selling for 40 or 30 dollars just weeks after its release. SSF4 dropped to $20 on Amazon about a month after release, and that game apparently sold well.
I’ll believe that when I see it. With as many characters that are missing from SF and Tekken there’s no way they aren’t going to have a 2nd disc version. There’s no way in hell they will do another 10-12 characters for DLC especially when Seth said they were not happy with the Jill and Shuma DLC’s and if they do have additional characters that they want everyone to have them and not just some. They WILL do a 2nd version of this game. If you believe a “promise” and don’t go by recent history capcom game facts (SF & marvel) well then you are as gullible as they come.
EDIT: p.s. While I was one that wanted the 2nd version of marvel, as much as I could not stand the vanilla version. I kinda wish now that they had just patched the DHC glitch and let that game go longer. Nitsuma himself said the reason ultimate came out so quick was because of Marvel’s (the company) time conflicts. It was either come out when it did or it would have been at least another year BUT we would have had more characters. As Nitsuma stated he wanted to have 58 characters in the game.
I would have gladly waited a little longer and had a bigger 2nd version of the game. Hell if that was so right now we would all be doin those guessing and theory posts. I loved readin rumors everyday on who we were getting. But now it’s almost non-existent, who knows if we will ever get anything else for marvel in the near future. Now unless a arcade version in Japan shows up with 8 more characters we can only hope for a ultimate marvel AE 2013 version but the chances are that as close to successfully navigating through an asteroid field.
A few others beat me to it, but yeah, Capcom has absolutely not earned the benefit of the doubt. This is how the wider marketplace perceives Capcom, and you can hardly blame them. But as an aside, I won’t be jumping on SFxT anyway. I’ll be honest, it doesn’t look that great. It seems more like a MUGEN-ized SF4 with poor art direction than a full, major retail release. I’ll try to reserve final judgement until I actually play it, but if it’s anything like what was on WNF, I’m not interested.
How so? It’s been proven that Capcom shipped a lot of copies, but evidence suggests that customers actually purchased only a small fraction of those copies. Whether or not that proves that the game isn’t a sales failure is up for debate.
But in the end, who cares, right? Even if it’s a failure, but you like it and can consistently find good opponents, then that should be good enough, shouldn’t it?
If UMVC3 is a sales failure, it’s Capcom’s own fault.
There is no reason why Ultimate should’ve come out a mere 9 months after the original, especially after all of the hype that went into Vanilla. Sure, you can say the content was worth it, but it doesn’t make it any less of an “F- You” to enthusiasts who bought the original, especially if you were like me and bought the collector’s edition. The game was incomplete and they said there would be DLC. Then we got this. You can go with the whole “Earthquake caused problems and it was necessary” excuse, but I call bullshit. They planned this to begin with.
I bought UMVC3 and I like the game and all of the extra content, but I’m still not happy to have bought it.
So true. People say suck it up and buy it. The Casuals HATED this and thus ignored this game. Not even given it a year and selling the original at full price. Also there wasn’t much of a bonus obtaining the original.
The funniest part about this entire sales saga is Sven (I think) typing with a straight face that this is on track to outsell Super, fuck outta here community manager. Super alone sold 250k month 1 in America, that’s sold not shipped.