Dopass.com

So, I read an article on Next Gen today where the head of Ignition talks about how Japanese game makers are afraid to take risks - preferring sequels to new IPs... This lead to an interesting thought... well OK, first it lead to me laughing because if he thinks Japan is alone in that fear, he's grossly ill informed... but after that, it lead to a thought:

Isn't all this sequelitis riskier than they think?

Way back in the day when I worked at Blizzard, I was introduced to the trends (some would say truisms) of sequel sales. It's a tad more complicated than I've got time for, but there's a real simple fundamental principle: Sequels, on average, sell half as many copies as the original.

There are exceptions, of course, but it's true enough that now, 12 years later, I still hear this axiom from people.

So, consider: What the makes the Wii so remarkable on the "Nintendo prints its own money" front is how it "expanded the market," right?

Publishers are annoyed with the PS3 because the installed base is so small. They grumble that they should have just kept working on the PS2, in fact....

But, if sequels only sell half as much as the originals, aren't all of those "make the market bigger" lines of reasoning, totally moot? Aren't they in fact, undermining those efforts by churning out sequels and derivative IPs because each one shrinks that title's potential market by as much as 50%?

Obviously games like GTA or Halo are the exception, I'm not unaware of them as I consider this, but none-the-less... Why buy tekken 25? You've played the game a million times, right? Is the 25th sequel really going to finally push the game from "cool" to "OMG BEST F'N GAME EVAR!!!~!!1one!"?

It seems to me (especially if the bit about sequels sales is true) that each sequel rarefies the potential market (distills it, if you prefer) until by the 5th or 6th installment, you're really just catering to a niche, not the entire potential game market, right? Isn't catering to niches bad? I mean, that's why there's no adventure games or space sims out there now a days, isn't it? (Hey, that's what the people I've pitched games to have all told me...)

Maybe the Wii's remarkable ability to expand the market has nothing to do with the little Wiimote and it's motionsensationalism; maybe it has a lot more to do with the fact that the games on it are new.

- Snipehunter