[fov]

What I find neat about DS adventures (Phoenix Wright in particular) is the wide appeal to tons of people who wouldn't be caught dead playing an adventure game otherwise. Go to any mainstream gaming forum -- Something Awful, NeoGaf, etc. -- and you find people talking about how much they liked Phoenix Wright. They don't see it as a (lame) adventure game... just as a cool game that's fun to play. That's a great thing.

[Jake]

we must have PURITY in our gaming! we mustn't dilute our PRECIOUS SACRED ADVENTURES with the UNWASHED CONSOLITES.

they've GONE TOO FAR! it's TOO MUCH!


Actually DS is a great platform, they make a zillion great games for it including a growling library of well made adventure games. Why are you fighting it instead of embracing it? A DS costs half as much as a new video card for your PC for cripessake! There is realistically very little wiggle room for argument in this situation.

Originally Posted by fov

What I find neat about DS adventures (Phoenix Wright in particular) is the wide appeal to tons of people who wouldn't be caught dead playing an adventure game otherwise. Go to any mainstream gaming forum -- Something Awful, NeoGaf, etc. -- and you find people talking about how much they liked Phoenix Wright. They don't see it as a (lame) adventure game... just as a cool game that's fun to play. That's a great thing.

so what you're saying is they have no taste and therefore can't appreciate the nuanced beauty the adventure genre brings to the table? that they have no sense of the history of the genre? you're saying they don't deserve to play adventure games? i couldn't agree more.

[bpfinsa]

Originally Posted by Jackal

Bah. A cameo, yeah, but he's not the head prosecutor.

Well, considering this is the new prosecutor, it may not be too bad of a swap for a main rival...



And if she's anything like her dad from the first Phoenix Wright, its gonna be a looooooong game....and yes, she carries the whip in the courtroom...

BTW, mobile phones definitely have one good adventure game on the way. Phoenix Wright 1 coming in September for those who skipped out on the DS version....
http://www.capcommobile.com/
http://www.gamespot.com/mobile/adven...ml?sid=6150233

Overall good rankings. I'm looking forward to both Phoenix Wright 2 and Sam and Max.

--BPF

[Jackal]

Originally Posted by fov

Go to any mainstream gaming forum -- Something Awful, NeoGaf, etc. -- and you find people talking about how much they liked Phoenix Wright.

Exactly, this is what I meant by the popularity of DS adventures not being measured by the PC adventure hardcore. It's possible for adventures to be popular in among totally different user bases.

Originally Posted by Jake

a growling library of well made adventure games

Indeed. Look at all the growling it's creating already.

[wilco]

Hey! I was already prepared to complain about the Phoenix Wright 2 position in H-O-M, but you whippersnappers went ahead and put it in its rightful position... No fun in that!

[Karmillo]

You can still complain that its not number one if you want

[Stalin]

I hope The Sacred Rings/Aura2 will be on the list soon
Stalin

[AdrianWerner]

Originally Posted by Jackal

How many PC adventures sell well enough to generate sequels? Do you think Capcom is generously operating at a loss just so we few 5% PC/DS owners can have another game? Or is it possible that Phoenix Wright was a widely popular adventure that simply wasn't played by much of the PC adventure hardcore?

Actualy PW sold like utter crap on DS(10K in first month, by DS standarts it's very low). THat's why I'm happy that Capcom decided to bring PW2 to US anyway.
Also aren't there already like 3 or 4 PW games? THey're just released in Japan only. AFAIR the first three PW were originaly released as GBA games and only PW4 will be DS-based one from the start

and for PC-only fans..PW is very nice game, I wouldn't put it that high, but it's definitly loads of fun. In the end you can always just buy the game and then play it on emulator. THere is an ongoing english translation project for PW3.

It's just a shame Capcom didn't make english version of PC PheonixWright

[jp-30]

I hope Cassius Pearl makes the list sooner or later. I guess there's very little buzz about the game yet, but from the screenshots, trailer, and interviews I've read, this is the most excited I've been about a non-LucasArts-alumni adventure, well, ever.

And also hoping what with Bill Tiller's imminent announcement, that Vampyre Story will begin production proper soon and make the list (again?) in the not too distant future.

[fov]

Originally Posted by AdrianWerner

Actualy PW sold like utter crap on DS(10K in first month, by DS standarts it's very low). THat's why I'm happy that Capcom decided to bring PW2 to US anyway.

Um... that could have something to do with the fact that it sold out almost immediately upon its release and Capcom didn't bother to reprint it.

In any case, it must have met or exceeded Capcom's expectations for them to be releasing a sequel. And due to the supply issues that plagued the first game, I suspect a lot of people who are going to buy this one sight unseen the day it comes out. Almost makes you wonder if they planned it that way...

[Jackal]

What does "DS standards" have to do with anything? Do PC adventures sell well by PC standards? So then let's not hold Phoenix Wright to higher relative standards than any other. In any case, there's a whole rest of the world that doesn't really care whether it sold well in the US or not, let alone in the first month, even if your so-called stats are to be believed. As I said, if the game lost money for Capcom, you can be sure they wouldn't be doing anything more with it internationally.

I have no clue where you're getting the notion that the second game will be "for PC-only fans", since that clearly couldn't be more wrong.

EDIT: I won't comment on AVS until there's something official to say about it.

[AdrianWerner]

Originally Posted by fov

In any case, it must have met or exceeded Capcom's expectations for them to be releasing a sequel.

I think Capcom expected much more, considering the popularity of the series in Japan. Still, they already have the games made, they just need to be translated it's not like they're risking a lot by giving the sequel one more chance

[AdrianWerner]

Originally Posted by Jackal

What does "DS standards" have to do with anything? Do PC adventures sell well by PC standards? So then let's not hold Phoenix Wright to higher relative standards than any other.

Well..10K is low even for PC game. And on consoles you still have one more mouth to feed from sales(Nintendo) plus carts are many times more expensive to manufacture than CDroms. Which is why the sales must be higher for a game to be considered a "Success". It's the same problem like with SNES games. Carts mean that publisher is taking huge risk if the make many copies. CDroms are cheap, even if you don't sell all of them it's not a problem. if you make to many units of cart game, the loss from this can eat all your profits from the units you actualy were able to sell

Originally Posted by Jackal

I have no clue where you're getting the notion that the second game will be "for PC-only fans", since that clearly couldn't be more wrong.

You've misunderstood me I meant that "PC-only fans" should give it a chance, despite it being not on PC.

[dazsin]

I ignore the hype-o-meter now - I feel it is unfair. To say "Phoenix Wright" has more hype than Broken Sword 4 is absurd in my opinion.

[Kurufinwe]

Originally Posted by dazsin

I ignore the hype-o-meter now - I feel it is unfair. To say "Phoenix Wright" has more hype than Broken Sword 4 is absurd in my opinion.

I'm not sure why. Almost all the people who've played Phoenix Wright were very happy with it, and are eagerly awaiting the second game. On the other hand, lots of people were disappointed with BS3, and the unpolished BS4 graphics that have been released so far haven't been tremendously exciting either.

I don't plan on buying a DS, so I'm personally more interested in BS4 than in Phoenix Wright. But I don't find it illogical for it to be ranking higher (and not a lot higher, just one spot higher) in the current HoM (but maybe BS4 will go up if/when more exciting stuff about it is released).

[Jackal]

Originally Posted by AdrianWerner

Well..10K is low even for PC game.

Sure, and if that's all the game sold worldwide, you can bet we wouldn't be seeing another. But since we ARE seeing another, obviously it was lucrative enough for Capcom overall to invest in it again. It's no secret that Capcom did an atrocious job of North American distribution, as Emily pointed out above. Here's hoping that supply actually meets demand the second time around.

Originally Posted by dazsin

I ignore the hype-o-meter now - I feel it is unfair. To say "Phoenix Wright" has more hype than Broken Sword 4 is absurd in my opinion.

You could just ignore the #2 slot. Seems a shame to punish the other 9 positions.

But as Kurufinwe said, there's a whole lot more ambivalence towards Broken Sword 4 among PC gamers than towards Phoenix Wright among DS gamers.

We COULD have dropped PW down a couple notches just out of some arbitrary sense of platform prejudice, but we think that is unfair. At last report, there were 16 million DS units sold, and that number is only getting bigger by the day. And if people actually played the games instead of complaining about the attention they get, maybe more of them would be adventure gamers.

[Karmillo]

Originally Posted by AdrianWerner

Actualy PW sold like utter crap on DS(10K in first month, by DS standarts it's very low). THat's why I'm happy that Capcom decided to bring PW2 to US anyway.
Also aren't there already like 3 or 4 PW games? THey're just released in Japan only. AFAIR the first three PW were originaly released as GBA games and only PW4 will be DS-based one from the start

and for PC-only fans..PW is very nice game, I wouldn't put it that high, but it's definitly loads of fun. In the end you can always just buy the game and then play it on emulator. THere is an ongoing english translation project for PW3.

It's just a shame Capcom didn't make english version of PC PheonixWright

Like Fov said, its not that it didnt sell more than 10k, its that it couldnt sell more than 10k cause there wasnt that many made.

This story explains more

And yeah theres 3 games already out in japan with a 4 in the making, but the first 3 games were originaly GBA games so its not just a translation but a complete port aswell, the first game actualy had an extra case made just for the port.

But what are the sales figures of PW now? Capcom Released more copies so it should have went up. IMO Capcom went more by the demand for PW than how much it has sold at the moment...

[bpfinsa]

Discussions of game sales are kind of a hard thing to analyze. It's easy to assume that 100 copies of game X sold would make more money than a game that sold 50 copies of game Y, if the cost of Game X and Game Y were the same, but that's not really the case.

Phoenix Wright was a port of a Japanese game that was already in the books, so really only the text needed translating (although I will admit, there was a heck of a lot of text), so as a project at large, Phoenix Wright made a lot more profit per sale than most games do....so really, this game doesn't need to sell as many copies as a lot of games to break even. Yea, there are hardware costs for the cartridge, but software development costs are always very, VERY steeper than the cost of the cartridge in most cases. In this case, other than the translation, the hardware cost was probably the game's ONLY cost, since they sure didn't spend much in marketing....

As far as any raw numbers of sales, I can't find any "decisive evidence". However, NCSX is pretty good about communicating with its customers on the status of games, and kinda confirm what Karmillo is saying about releasing the game in small spirts, as opposed to most companies flooding the game into stores as soon as it comes out. They did re-release it in March, but they already are sold out everywhere...again....Sounds like Capcom is re-releasing it again in late May....making it the 3rd release for this game. Maybe they intentionally releasing it in small numbers to increase demand, but it definitely ain't a flop.

http://www.ncsxshop.com/cgi-bin/shop...ml?id=ZdmCLUqs

--BPF

[Karmillo]

Originally Posted by bpfinsa

Phoenix Wright was a port of a Japanese game that was already in the books, so really only the text needed translating (although I will admit, there was a heck of a lot of text), so as a project at large, Phoenix Wright made a lot more profit per sale than most games do....so really, this game doesn't need to sell as many copies as a lot of games to break even. Yea, there are hardware costs for the cartridge, but software development costs are always very, VERY steeper than the cost of the cartridge in most cases. In this case, other than the translation, the hardware cost was probably the game's ONLY cost, since they sure didn't spend much in marketing....

Again it wasnt already in the books, It was already there for the GBA but they had to re program it or what ever when porting to the DS. So it wasnt just hardware costs...and the translation wasnt a small thing since they had to pretty much rewrite all the jokes

Also the english translation was actualy included with the Japanese version of the DS game....I wonder if it will be the same for the 4th game

[bpfinsa]

Yea, since the JP version of the DS version was released a month before the NA version, I kinda assumed this was the main audience, but I can't say for sure that they'd had made the DS version in JP if they weren't intending it to go overseas. Nonetheless, I'm glad they did bring it over.

Originally Posted by Karmillo

Also the english translation was actualy included with the Japanese version of the DS game....I wonder if it will be the same for the 4th game

Hopefully. At E3, IGN reported seeing a teaser, showing footage that wasn't shown on the promo video on their website...probably a teaser for the fourth game in the series, but apparently with a new protagonist, which has kinda been the rumor for a while. Usually the stuff they show at E3 arrives in the states eventually...and that would explain why the new logo shrunk the name "Phoenix Wright" and increased the size of "Ace Attorney"...You can't call the series "Phoenix Wright" if it isn't always gonna have Phoenix Wright in it...Hopefully "Ace Attorney 4" will make #1 on the Hype-A-Meter soon enough

Concluding the trailer here on the show floor was something of a surprise -- the video suddenly cut to words saying that "Another new attorney has passed the bar", and then shows a brunette fledgling attorney much younger than Phoenix. Could there be yet another Phoenix Wright in production? Capcom Japan's website has recently been updated with news of an official fourth in the series, so hopefully America will also be getting this new ace attorney sometime after Phoenix Wright 2 -- no objection here!

http://ds.ign.com/articles/708/708061p1.html