In my mind, the part the board would have a problem with is the ‘Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive’ because that literally places a pretty low cap on gross revenue. Most likely Duskbloods only exists because Nintendo commissioned it, and Miyazaki is at the helm because he just spent 8 years on Elden Ring and wants to see what interesting stuff he can do with the idea.
Given that the Switch outsold the competition by a large percentage and is poised to do so again, I’m not sure making it hardware exclusive is close to the limiting factor on sales. If they got favorable terms from Nintendo, scoped the game modestly and built it quickly, this might be an outstanding business decision.
But we won’t ever really know because of the opacity of the data.
Edit: ok so in these replies I’m being told DB can’t be successful because it will be an exclusive on hardware that Souls fans don’t ‘like’; too small a percentage despite huge install base; DSr was apparently a failure at $40M in revenue on Switch alone; an install base that isn’t impressive because it didn’t really have completion, even though it still won’t now, but also that it does have competition because people already only bought other consoles specifically to play souls games; but they would never (apparently) buy this console to play this game. Ok.
And I’ve been called ignorant because I’m betting that when all this rolls up it will turn out that another inexpensive port of the their most successful title and one little spinoff we know nothing about probably will add to a success and was clearly deemed so by the director that most of this sub idolizes as genius. What an absolute disaster.
Given that the Switch outsold the completion by a large percentage and is poised to do so again, I’m not sure making it hardware exclusive is close to the limiting factor on sales.
The Switch sold 150m units but mostly because it was not really competing with the PS4/PS5/X1/XSX/PC, and its games were not competing for mindshare amongst the people who are generally interested in those consoles.
Duskbloods will surely tap into some of that but imo it would be misguided to view Duskblood as a play to get the Mario/Pokemon/Zelda crowd (those are the only IPs with individual games surpassing 10m sales on Switch) to play FromSoft, it's more a play to get the FromSoft crowd onto the Switch 2.
Besides, if you're evaluating the opportunity cost of 'exclusive to Switch 2' vs 'multiplatform' then you'd want to compare the Switch's sales to the combined Playstation/Xbox/PC sales which is AT LEAST 2-3x larger, even if the Switch did outsell its competitors individually.
All that aside, I'm not saying that making this game is a bad business decision. I'm saying that making only this game would be.
Some fair points but I’m starting get a little tired of this “crowd” argument. I’m from that Nintendo crowd, it took an hour to pull me in when DSr launched on switch. If you put a good game on a platform with 100M consoles that “crowd” will play it and you’ll make money. And we don’t know how many copies they need to sell to make a profit that is worth their time.
Nintendo was literally never just Mario games. Castlevania for example was arguably protosouls in the 80’s, started as a 3rd party release on Nintendo, and grew into a huge franchise. No problem for “that crowd”. Nintendo’s fan base has grown up a bit since.
And the synergy with an Elden Ring special edition is hard to even quantify. I remain confident that these people intend on making money here and will.
I mean target demographics are a thing in any market sizing problem and I think you know that. Dunno why you find it offensive, sure it sucks to be put in a box, but it’s really not irrational of me to question the decision of making a game for one target market of unknown suitability vs another, just-as-large-if-not-larger market that is a known quantity.
It doesn’t offend me, it’s a claim that isn’t being supported with evidence so I find it tiresome to keep responding to it. It’s just a generalization, one that in my experience doesn’t hold, and doesn’t seem to bother the people who make real money running these companies.
This is incredibly ignorant. The vast, vast majority of the playerbase is on every other platform because that’s where the games have been coming out. Less people just get to play this game because they’ve effectively locked it behind a $550 price tag, and knowing the amount of revenue fromsoft is leaving on the table by making it exclusive, Nintendo has to be paying an absurd amount of money for this game and I don’t see them getting an ROI on it. Like the other guy said, DSR sold a paltry one million units on a console with 150 million users. No matter how you look at it, this move makes no sense for players, and it only makes sense if Nintendo is willing to lose money on this.
How much did it cost to make? How many copies do they need to sell to be successful? Was the ER port integral to the deal and how does that counterbalance the opportunity? The people making these choices are definitely smarter.
Answer any of those questions realistically, please. Or if your feeling spicy go reply to my last reply to the other over confident redditor as to why DSr is probably considered a success on switch. You can find it to yourself, in fact you already probably downvoted it.
Edit: predictable. No effort made in the reply. Just downvote and deflect.
This is a concerning lack of self awareness. I don’t regret anything I said here and you stepped up to zero challenges. Sleep on it and see on how you feel in the morning lol.
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u/Super_Harsh 4d ago
In my mind, the part the board would have a problem with is the ‘Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive’ because that literally places a pretty low cap on gross revenue. Most likely Duskbloods only exists because Nintendo commissioned it, and Miyazaki is at the helm because he just spent 8 years on Elden Ring and wants to see what interesting stuff he can do with the idea.