Ben-DutkaSquare Enix has recently revised its fiscal forecasts; they've slashed their profit expectations due to an under-performing "major HD title."
That title is the well-received Sleeping Dogs , which apparently didn't meet internal sales predictions for the publisher. However, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada recently addressed this topic and clarified that in fact, they have very high hopes for the future of the new IP.
"At the announcement of forecast revisions last week, we talked about Sleeping Dogs (SD) as an example of a Western title that started out slow, which seemed to provoke misunderstandings that it was suffering poor sales. Let me clarify that SD is an exceptionally remarkable title that came with very high expectations and aggressive sales targets for the First Six-Month Period. Our goal might have been exceedingly high, which is what we see here in the difference in actual versus forecast sales."
Wada likened Sleeping Dogs to Just Cause 2 , which released in March 2010. "In contrast to games in Japan," Wada said, some Western titles like JC2 "show a steady increase in unit sales long after launch." In fact, sales for JC2 doubled in the first year and doubled again in the next year. So although the original shipment was less than 1 million units, they're going to reach 2.5 million very soon. Therefore, they expect Sleeping Dogs to follow this line. Finished Wada:
"I am confident that SD would grow to be one of our ten strong IPs, and I am very optimistic for great results in lifetime sales. Just to reiterate, we expected greater revenues from SD in the Firt-Six month Period planning, and what we are seeing now is simply the difference between actual and aggressive projections."
Sleeping Dogs is well worth your time, if you were wondering.
Related Game(s): Sleeping Dogs
borrowed it from a friend of mine for a few days in november played though the story and really loved it so great getting a good open world old school GTA style game like this haven't been enough this gen. definitely one i wanna spend more time with.
this'll be one i'll be looking for on boxing day sales (along with RE6)
Last edited by TheCanadianGuy on 12/12/2012 12:18:21 PM
Kind of off topic but did anyone else hear that SE admits, FFXIV failure/delay is what is delaying the HD remakes.
I am very confident that a CEO referring to a 2012 product as a "Major HD Title" is a bad thing.
You know, some of us even have color TVs now.
"Sleeping Dogs Sales Should Increase With Time"
Especially when all the used copies hit the shelves. The sales should increase then…
Another example of a great game that I bought D1 that was lost in the shuffle. I will be going back and renewing relations with this great game! My New Years resolution is to be more patient in buying D1. My backlog is tremendous and it's a shame. I could stop buying in 2013 and be fine for the whole year it's sad.
With that said I am buying Ni No Kuni D1!!! 🙂
not really surprising it saw low sales.
released in quite a busy time, new IP, not so popular developer from a not so popular publisher.
it was a ok game, the combat needs allot of work.
the story was pretty decent, nothing compared to mafia 2, but not bad.
they need to make the combat system allot more complex, i was really expecting to go in finding a fighting game but what i found was a simplistic button masher.
they need to get allot more creative with the environments too, they get repeated ALLOT!
they need to make the cop missions allot more fun too, i actually finished the story doing just the gang missions the cop ones were boring me to hell!
id be nice to see a sequel, but they really need to work on the combat, make it a complex fighting game in a open world.
i was expecting it to be allot like yakuza, but its not yakuza has a WAY more in depth complex fighting system!
need to work on that, and the repetitiveness.
once thats done should turn out to be a awesome game!