Posts by Izuno

  • Bungie + Microsoft calling the quits?

    The whole quote from gamedaily is:

    Quote

    A Microsoft spokesperson has told us, "There's been no such announcement. We continue to celebrate the tremendous success of the global phenomenon that is Halo 3."

    The little redirection at the end strengthens the "...............................can we talk about something else cause we don't want to talk about this" undertone.

  • Halo 3 - No Spoilers Plz K Thnx

    got my copy at the comic book store..and man there were like 2 other customers looking at various manga and Magic cards but it was otherwise :yawn: I suppose the local Best Buy will be nutty around midnight...or not.

    Anyway, played it until i got my first achievement. Yep, pretty nice graphics and it plays pretty well so far. Haven't gone online yet. Will refrain from any depper analysis until a proper thread on that gets started.

    Oh yeah the Bruce Willis cameo in the first 10 minutes was so awesome...especially the love triangle romance thing that gets started... move over Pearl Harbor!

  • Halo 3 - No Spoilers Plz K Thnx

    Quote from Erratic

    Me neither, but I've got nothing else to do on a Monday night anyway

    Actually over lunch today I pre-bought my copy at a local comicbook/video game store near my house rather than the Best Buy. That way I can understand the supernerd mindset when I pick up my copy later tonight. (also it's a shorter walk than to Best Buy!)

  • Halo 3 - No Spoilers Plz K Thnx

    doh sorry to hear that, Mojo. Don't go to long without a 360! :)

    meanwhile, I didn't even bother to preorder a Halo3 but who am I kidding, I'm going to play it and I might decide to just buy this one, especially since a month ago Best Buy opened a store within walking distance of my house, tho my wife not want me out there at midnight tonight to do that.

    Yeah...I may actually be one of those geeks who gets to the store at midnight for a frakin' video game. Never done it before so might as well see what it's like.

    :roll:

  • Game reviews as predictor of sales.

    I have run almost every regression around game rankings to review scores possible, as well as many other models for my clients, and on the whole there is general positive correlation...however using aggregate game review scores is not a reliable method to accurately forecast actual sales for any individual product. There are many more factors. So on the whole Activision is right, but they and every other publisher knows that waaaaaaaaay more goes into forecasting sales than just critical game quality.

    Thus, as a general corporate strategy for a developer or publisher you want to make games that are of higher quality than of lower quality. Pretty much every publisher at least gives lip service to that notion.

    The WSJ article does make a good point that stock analysts do pay attention to review scores because they generally can influence overall sales of a product, but ultimately that influence is not entirely predictable. Suppose a highly high hyped game sequel got a metacritc scrore of 60% when the original got a 90%. Will sales of the sequel be significantly lower than what the publisher or stock analysts were expecting? Suppose the forecast was for 1 million unit sales in first 3 months of the product being on the shelf, and suppose the forecasted review score (by Wall Street) was in the 85 to 90% ranges. What would the actual 60% score mean?

    Unfortunately, it's really hard to predict. We can model it using historical sales data (and other data...) which I have done about 50 billion times and the degree of error is still really really wide. For a game that was expected to sell 1 million units in 3 months, the forecast error standard deviation is hundreds of thousands of units wide. That could mean that your game sells 600,000 units when you were expecting it to sell 1Million, for example. That's a huge margin for just 1 product. So in other words, when you are factoring in review score into your forecast models, the actual results may vary widely from what the model predicts.

    Anyway, this is always a great thing to talk about....glad you posted it.

  • It was a good August in the US...

    Quote from Bl1tz

    14. Two Worlds—360—Southpeak InteractiveGood for them. It's nice to see a new/indie publisher have some success in a tough market.

    Izuno is it possible for the general public to look up sales numbers on say, any game released within the last 5 years? Do you have to pay for the data or something? I'd love to be able to take a look at games' sales figures.

    You have to subscribe to NPD data...it's not cheap but they've got the data. Several of my clients are subscribers and I help them analyze and work witih NPD data in helping them developing strategies...so I pretty much know the NPD numbers inside and out.

    I would love to share results with you every month, but I am under NDA not to so I can't. Any time I find publicly released information I am more than happy to repost here because I think people here would benefit from knowing more about what sells and how much etc.

  • The CoD4 beta is letting loads of people in soon

    Well i'm definitely not ranked on the leaderboards, but my time with the beta has been generally positive. First reaction was "this reminds me of CoD2 MP on 360" but I liked that (ok i'm a bit biased whatever)....i know CoD2 and CoD4 are totally different settings and weapons etc...but something about it just takes me back to CoD2 mp.

    Anyway...it satisfies my console MP FPS itch pretty well. I don't expect huge changes between now and launch given they gotta RTM in October but it's definitely fun.

    I'm feeling like I'm going to have more fun with this than Halo3...but maybe that's the sour taste Halo2 left in my mouth compared to Halo1? Hard to make it very concrete because the Halo games are good products, no doubt...they just don't make me weak in the knees.

    so gj IW. Way to bust out of WWII.

    (Ahem...yeah i'm still gonna play both Halo3 and CoD4...)

  • Time to move on..

    let me give you a run down of a conversation I had with potential client once. This isn't word for word but it's pretty damn close:

    Client: "What we really want to do is pick up on market synergies to maximzie brand potential."

    Izuno: "Ok. So what does that mean for your marketing plan, specifically?"

    Client: "...................huh?"

    Izuno: "Well, what do you mean by 'pick up on market synergies to maximize brand potential'?"

    Client: ".......uh....you know, we want to...leverage synergies between our brand value and current market trends."

    Izuno: "What brand values specifically are you talking about?"

    Client: "..................well, gamers will resonate with our core brand focus."

    Izuno: "Ok, so what is your 'brand focus'?"

    Client (excited): "We deliver a visceral cinematic combat experiece of an elite team in intense online battles."

    Izuno: "...........Ok. So if that is the your 'brand focus' what do you intend to do with it?"

    Client: "Well we think it will synergize with the market, and um..."

    Izuno: "No, see, that's the problem. You need to be specific. You need to know what your game is about. Don't think about 'brands' and 'synergies.' This is a new game not based on a license. You have no brand. You need to think about how your game is original and delivers a fun gameplay experience. What's fun about your game?"

    Client: (scoffing) "Who cares? This about building a brand!"

    Izuno: "...................................................................Ok let me think about this and get back to you."

  • Time to move on..

    Quote from FrieChamp

    Thanks Daniel, you are right, it certainly wasn't easy..

    Need somebody to make coffee for you Izuno?

    Not quite there yet but one day I'll need smart people to work for me who know games...I can get my own coffee.