Topic: Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage 2

I only played the demo of the last game, didn't have the time to buy it back in the day.

But based on that demo, yes, it is.

I have to say I was a bit surprised by the harshness of the NL review for this, but I suspect if I hadn't done the Samurai Warriors 3 review it might well have gotten a different score.

This game series is one of those niche titles that just isn't going to appeal to a lot of people. I could rip Ninja Gaiden for having useless skill upgrades and moves you never use, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun to play. I think a demo would help people who might be on the fence.

I ended up going with 3.5/5

After seeing the other reviews of the game being quite low I look forward to the accusations that I've been "paid off" by Tecmo Koei.

They used that Pachinko money to influence your opinion didn't they.

Actually TK used its money to hire some Yakuza to suggest I give the game a good review.

I wish I had been paid off

Everyone saying that the game should be the same price as a retail version is being completely moronic. It's common sense that it's much cheaper to put out a digital only version of a game. I understand about the developer getting more money and it helps keep these guys in business, everyone who supports the ridiculous price doesn't seem to grasp that 99% of consumers don't give a toss, they just want a cheaper product and an uncomplicated service.

Tecmo Koei had a 300 per cent increase in profit in its recent financial results. That tells me that Tecmo Koei has learned that the entitled whiny gamers are worthless, from a business point of view, and it is instead focusing on the customers that support it. By that I mean the people who are actually willing to pay properly for their games. It's clearly working too.

It's not 99%. There is no way that you can possibly support that figure. By putting a game like Ken's Rage as a full priced on download only, Tecmo Koei will lose, at most 20 per cent of the customers that might have bought it at half the price. Basic reality of a game like Ken's Rage: it's niche. The only people who were EVER going to buy it were the people who are diehard fans of the manga, and those people don't mind paying full RRP for the game.

So, instead of trying to attract the masses, Tecmo Koei realises this game only applies to the hardcore Fists fans, and prices accordingly.

I really doubt you're even close to qualified enough to criticise a business that is literally light years ahead of the rest of the industry in terms of profitability right now. Your main problem is that you make the assumption that the retail prices are somehow 'fair'. Being fair implies that the developer and publisher also get a fair margin on the sales, which they don't with retail. Therefore the price isn't fair. The price you see on the eShop IS fair, as the publisher actually gets control over it.

As soon as they announced FOTNS Kens Rage 2 was going digital only and fr full price I knew it was going to sell abismal, I'll wait for figures to prove it though but I will not be surprised when it's a commercial flop on Wii U. The game is £50 on eShop when it should be maximum around £25 based on reviews.

The game is going to sell poorly on every platform. Including the PS3 and Xbox 360 where it was also released at retail. Again. It's a nice title. Your point is invalid.

I 100% agree that developers need to get a bigger cut of the pie but it doesn't need to be a situation where I feel like I'm getting screwed over as a result.

But you're complaining about a few pounds for a game you were statistically never going to buy. Doesn't sound very sympathetic to me. At all.

Lets say Kens Rage 2 was £50 at retail, which even that seems expensive considering games like Sonic Racing are cheaper and better, and lets say the digital version I feel should only be £25 due to the reasons I've given above

Is there some reason that you're comparing a game that would have been expected to sell in an order of magnitude more than Ken's Rage to Ken's Rage?

Let's say this again. Ken's Rage is a game that would have had TINY sales expectations in the first place. When it comes to pricing you can't compare it to a mainstream title. You might as well complain that a Ferrari isn't priced the same as a Scooter.

the developer still scores extra money due to cutting out retail completely which involves all the middle men like distributors and transport costs AND the costs associated with packaging/manuals.

Do you realise where the bulk of the production costs in games come from? It's not retail logistics.

In fact, do you have any idea at all how low margin publishers in modern games industry operate on? It's razor thin. A single commercial failure can sink a smaller company.

If you can any concern for the health of the games industry, you would be supporting the publishers making a couple more points margin through digital distribution. But then Che Guvera thought he was doing the right thing by the people with Cuba, too.

I think Bankai understands the argument very well as we had a lot of it on other threads where people made the same points. I'm sure we will see sales on digital downloads where the sales are such that the publisher feels it's worthwhile.

In this specific case I think it's unlikely because, as Bankai said, it's a niche title. I seriously doubt there would be many people who would take a chance - even at a low price like £25 on something they know nothing about. If you wanted to make a more apt comparison you should be checking out the sales figures for Warriors Orochi 3 which is also available as a download for £49.99 and as a disc release. I haven't looked at it myself, but I'd be curious to know how many disc sales it had at what I presume is a much lower price. If it's sold a few thousand copies then you couldn't realistically expect Ken's Rage to do much better in which case, no I wouldn't see a good argument to offer it cut-rate.

Indeed it does. Glad we can all agree.

I'm being completely and utterly serious. If you're doing well enough selling to a small, but dedicated fanbase, you really don't need to change things just to appeal to a broader audience. Doing so is more risky, and usually better once your current fanbase starts shrinking.

Also I disagree that Digital should always be cheaper. Making it cheaper implies that it holds less value than a physical object. I don't see how having the same game, but digital, in anyway devalues the product. Not only that, but as I believe Bankai mentioned earlier in this thread, there's far more profit involved in selling at full price, and you're selling to the niche of people who value the convenience of digital distribution. If you can make 3 times as much money selling to half as many people, wouldn't that be beneficial in the long run?

Would you feel bad if the prices were lower? No you wouldn't because the developers would still be making more profit than they were,

Prove it. With math.

I've already proved that the math is actually on my side. In this very thread.

Try again, Che.

The manager wanted to put the price of the coffee up to cover the loss of trade but I argued with him because it made no sense. If people weren't coming in now, why would they come in when it was even more expensive? It made no sense and seemed retarded, instead I made a deal with him to try it my way, which was to reduce the coffee down to £1 for anything, Latte, Espresso etc etc. Any additional drink if they stayed in the cafe would also be £1. The trail was meant to be for a month and to promote the coffee and cafe.

Before the trial, we woud sell about 30-40 cups of coffee a day, maybe 50 on a good day, not very good for a coffee shop. The first day we did the trial we jumped to over 100 coffees for that day alone and it continued around that sell through for the whole week.

Hahaha. Your own example works against you.

40 x 2.80 = what?
100 x 1.00 = what?

Beyond the fact that you make 12 more pounds in revenue selling 40 coffees at 2.80 than 100 coffees at 1.00, pricing things higher means less risk.

And I'm assuming your math, because you knew more than your boss and everything (people like you always know more than their bosses) took into account wages, maintenance of the coffee machine, electricity, rent, taxes, and all those other wonderful expenses that go into making a cup of coffee.

Naw, of course not.

The race for the bottom never benefits anyone. Economic fact.

But extreme lefties don't understand economics.

In regards to Kens Rage 2, there's probably a lot of gamers like myself that have never played such a title and do not even know if we'd like it, so by keeping it a title that's only going to appeal to the hardcore fan they are instantly cutting off a gigantic market of potential buyers. They do not need to sell their soul and they can still make the games they want to make, the problem is right now on the eShop it's priced so only people that are fans or people with money to burn will buy it.

"Probably"

So you don't actually know. You're making an assumption. An assumption that suggests that a company that turned a 300 per cent profit while the rest of the industry struggles to make any profit at all is wrong, and you are right.

Come back with some proof to back up your economic theories, and you'll have a point. You won't be able to, I can assure you.

I'm also pretty sure though that if you told the makers of that company that I never bought their game purely because I've never played their games before and wasn't sure I wanted to spend £50 on it, I also checked online reviews and it got average scores, as a result I've not bought it, they would 100% be disappointed that they lost my sale.

Nah. Most companies couldn't care less about people that would only buy products from them if they price themselves out of the market to sell the game to that person.

Companies tend to be more interested in looking after their actual fans and employees than entitled customers.

Another little economic fact for you - the cost of customer retention is far less than the cost of customer acquisition. You can't go on a customer acquisition campaign with every product you release.

Ken's Rage is amongst the least important of Tecmo Koei's franchises. It sells to the people it's meant to sell to, but to earn new Warriors fans based on this game? Obscenely expensive.

Tecmo Koei did a customer acquisition strategy for both Warriors Orochi 3 and Dynasty Warriors 7. Both worked and found new Warriors fans. Some of who will then buy Ken's Rage 2.

That's how you broaden your fan base - you pick the right moments to try and find new customers. You sure as heck don't do it with a product with such a bad critical reception.

I hope you realise that there's every chance that the coffee shop closed down on the basis of the damage you did to it. It closes four months after you quit? That fits the kind of time frames that would see a business fail after a spectacularly stupid decision.

It's simple really. I'll go based on my brother working at Rare many years ago where the company were making I think it was around $4 for every copy of Donkey Kong Country on the Gameboy Colour I think, can't remember exact machine. Anyhoo, that game was then published, send to warehouses to be packaged up to be sent to distributors, finally selling it to retail outlets to be sold to the customer.
I'll confidently say, cutting out the physical packaging, transport to distributors, their markup, then delivery to retail outlets for their own markup, would mean that selling a game at the same cost will bring extra revenue/profit. The only thing preventing a developer getting more would be a publisher, so it's pretty easy to surmise that the developer would make more profit from digital.

You surmised wrong. There is less margin in game development now. Larger development teams, longer development cycles. It's not sustainable. That's why studios keep closing down.

Digital downloads are an opportunity for developers to make that margin back. Simple fact. They don't owe you anything.

Are you having a laugh or something, did I once say the reduction in price of the coffe made more profit? No I said it brought more customers in that bought additional items like food. So you seem to have missed the point, the coffee made less profit but there was much higher sales of food that made up for it and additional profit. Even if it hadn't made more money it would have brought in more custom therefore increasing it's visibility to customers to return n the long term.
So I'll take your smart ass insult and laugh it off because your obviously trolling so much that you can't really grasp certain realities.

I'm laughing at a guy who clearly doesn't understand business trying to tell me I'm wrong.

What you are talking about there is 'value-adding' - loss leading with the coffee to upselling higher margin products to more people. It can work - that's how console manufacturers sell their products generally

But there's nothing to upsell with games. DLC? Less than 10 per cent of people buy that. Loss leading on a product that hasn't got anything else to sell is called, simply, selling at a loss.

I'm amazed that someone who claims to know business can't see the difference there.

You're a funny guy Bankai and I'll ignore that one on the fact you are too stupid to get it.

Try again, Che.

But Koei isn't running a store, they're selling individual products. Those idividual products have to be profitable on their own. You could argue that maybe having more customers would mean a greater chance of DLC purchases, but that's not a guarantee. DLC should be used for additional profit, not the means to make ends meet. (not to say that's how it's always used, but it's much riskier otherwise)

I'd add to the chorus, but it's already been well-said. This is a niche within a niche: a licensed tie-in based on an old manga using an established game engine from a completely different franchise. The biggest problem with your argument is the reasons a fifty quid download price won't work for most are because of things non-fans would want and that's just not the audience for this game.

The biggest risk KT is taking with this game is localising it at all; not the price.