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"It frustrates me somewhat..."

Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia and XIII were all titles released by Ubi-soft that failed to set the world alight. The Prince made the most money out of the 3 but ultimatly they can be classed as flops.

Can Ubi-Soft be blamed? Hell no. They not only willingly commisoned such risky franchises but they actually advertised them aswell. As the sales caused concern Ubi-Soft then cut the prices of the games or offered free gifts worldwide to increase sales.

Worked for a degree with Prince of Persia. Sadly the £20 Beyond Good and Evil just didn't do it. One of the finest games I have enjoyed this year.

Isn't it about time that the big guns in the industry just lent a hand to the little guys? I'll have to give credit to Sony, they tried a little. But not enough. Yep they wanted the game exclusive to their system so they bundled Prince with the PS2 and got a Christmas exclusivity deal. Now I dunno about you but if I was Sony and had two superb titles exclusive for Christmas I'd really advertise them. Especially as Microsoft hadn't much to offer and Nintendo, for the first time, looked in the better position.

Sadly Sony did nothing bar the occasional poster ad and in the end making the game exclusive to the PS2 did more harm than good. Look what Microsoft did with Splinter Cell the year before, the games mega success can be put down to how well Microsoft marketed the game. It is now a successful franchise in itself, Ubi-soft can continuing making Splinter Cell games and thanks to the helpful hand gifted it by Microsoft will keep the company in the money for times to come.

Sony can do it, they did it with Timesplitters. The exclusive launch title got much hype from the Sony camp, because of which the Timesplitters brand is one of the biggest that emerged from this generation.

I could put Nintendo down as well but to be fair they try. Yep Crystal Chronicles and Twin Snakes came and went in March but Nintendo did produce adverts and did try. Just they can't pull it off like Sony. Although if I were Nintendo I'd make a little more out of games such as Geist.

Nintendo didn't help Ubi-Soft at all though. Maybe it was because of the early release on the PS2. Nintendo put some effort into advertising their month long exclusivity with Rayman 3 the year before. Surly a company that prides itself on original software could sympathise with Ubi-soft. They were releasing 2 fantastic titles at a combined price of £50. If Nintendo want to stop the industry going stale they should have held out a hand to the struggling games.


But the real villains? GAME and GAMESTATION. I'd bring up Gametron but they pride themselves on imported goods. GAME and GAMESTATION do stock a lot of products but this is where you buy games from. If I walked into GAME and saw Beyond Good and Evil sitting on the "new release" shelves, not just in the corner but covering a 3 shelves for all 3 formats at a price of £19.99... as a casual buyer looking for a new game I'd pick that up and have a read.

Instead it was Sonic Heroes that lined the shelves, a game that was hardly new at all.

I also have a problem with the current release of Pikmin 2.

Those who work at GAME, I have been into 5 GAME shops since friday. Please tell me why Pikmin 2 has taken up 2 places on the Gamecube fixture (which is of course at the back of the shop) and doesn't even appear on the new releases???

There were a lot of releases this Friday yes, I can understand that. But walking into the huge GAME store in Cambridge (1 of 3) and sitting a new release shelf with 8 copies of FIFA 2005 lineing the first half of two shelves for the PS2, 6 copes for the X-box and 2 for the Gamecube sitting at the bottom. And on the other half there is exactly the same but this time the game is Tony Hawks Underground 2. Granted games I'd normally be interested in. But isn't this overkill???

I walk around the back and there are more copies of FIFA, THUG 2 and a few copies of FABLE for the X-box. The GAMESTATION was a little fairer, equal copies of THUG and FIFA for each system and Fable. But they didn't have Pikmin 2 at all. I assume they may have sold out. I am a fan of this shop because there is so much Gamecube and Nintendo in general. But there wasn't even a space for Pikmin 2.

Now not being funny but Pikmin was a pretty big early release for the Gamecube. It is almost sneaking out for the Gamecube.

I have not seen one advert for the franchise... the only hype for the game i've ever witnessed was before the American release.

The good news is that Pikmin 2 has sold out of many stores, Nintendo had a low allocation and most of these have sold. Maybe that's the reason.

Nintendo are lucky they have a fanbase that know when their games are released and know where to go to pick them up.

But titles like this need help to sell because they are the future of the industry. I was delighted to see how much effort went in by Codemasters, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony and the various game shops to sell copies of Second Sight. That game was splashed everywhere upon release and thankfully a game that was predicted to do badly hit the middle of the top ten. A far higher position that rival PSi-ops ever managed to reach.

They maybe rivals, FIFA may be an appealing reason to go into GAME. But if there is to be a future in this industry it is the original gems that need advertising. And not a football sequel that can barely be called a sequel.

FIFA 2005 swamped the Gamecube, PS2 and X-box section... it swamped the new releases and special offer shelves... and the other special offer shelves featured FIFA 2004, which GAME are keen to get rid of. Tony Hawks was the closest thing to it. The sixth edition of a game now in its sixth year.

So for those that work in your gaming stores. When you set up those Christmas shelves, by all means flood it with copies of GTA: San Andreas and Halo 2. But also, try sneaking the occasional copy of Paper Mario 2 and Tales of Symphonia besides it.

Because they really do deserve the attention.

Dringo.

lcarus wrote:
> Na, it's the branch manager who decides what goes on, the workers just
> get told "shove these boxes on the shelves". Higher up the
> chain of command, publishers pay however much to get a certain amount
> of shelf space.


No, as an ex-employee of that shoddy overpriced company (who are still better as an employer than Gamestation), the manager doesn't decide what goes on at all. In head office, deals are made with the publishers as to where games go. Every store has to follow a set format with their gondolas otherwise the company could get fined and/or lose out on future deals. I don't know whether it is still in place, but every store at one point had an "EA Tower" - a round cylindrical unit specifically designed to show off EA games, EA Sports, etc.

The New Releases on the walls are also set by head office, as are the charts. Most of the time, the charts are completely made up by head office. You'll find that a new release will be put as '1' in the chart just because it is a new release. It might not even sell well!

The console bundles are set too. The amount of space taken depends on the size of the shop. However, where the back catalogue and pre-owned go is up to the manager and regional manager to decide between them. When I worked in the Debenhams Game, I set up a spare gondola end to promote budget GameCube and Xbox games to match the Platinum end set up for PS2 games. The regional manager wanted rid of it because he wanted to put game guides or something there. I protested because of the lack of notice the games normally get due to them being placed on bottom shelf zig-zags and actually showed him the interest gained in them since they were put there. For my entire employment there, that end stayed. It isn't there now, but that's probably because the regional manager hasn't got staff that really care for games like I do there to keep things as they should be.

Anyway, back to the point, shelf space is bought, not given away.

Tomoose wrote:
> Dringo wrote:
> But I really want XIII 2 and Beyond Good and Evil 2... especially as
> they both had cliffhanger endings.
>
> I think we'll see them, but whether or not they appear on the
> Gamecube, we'll have to wait and see...

Well if they leave them too long any general interest in them would shrink over time.

Dringo wrote:
> But I really want XIII 2 and Beyond Good and Evil 2... especially as
> they both had cliffhanger endings.

I think we'll see them, but whether or not they appear on the Gamecube, we'll have to wait and see...

Depends on how stubborn Ubisoft are.

I think they're pretty stubborn and we'll see sequels.

They've got some new 'non-licenced' stuff coming out too. Haven't had a look yet though: DAMN YOU LICENCES! :D

Hedfix wrote:
> According to some financial table Ubisoft are in the top 10/20 games
> developers and are apparently rakeing it in.
>
> They aren't the little guys.

Not saying they were, successes in the Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell franchises would ensure that.

But I really want XIII 2 and Beyond Good and Evil 2... especially as they both had cliffhanger endings.

Being Nintendo fans, this is just something we have to learn to live with. ;-P

As annoying as it is, there's nothing we can do.

According to some financial table Ubisoft are in the top 10/20 games developers and are apparently rakeing it in.

They aren't the little guys.

Na, it's the branch manager who decides what goes on, the workers just get told "shove these boxes on the shelves". Higher up the chain of command, publishers pay however much to get a certain amount of shelf space.

There was an article on this in Edge, which went into quite some detail about it. I think it even mentioned that Ubisoft refused to purchase this space on GAME shelves as it was too expensive, hence missing out on the "star treatment". It's wrong, but money is made from it. havign said that, GAME still reported a 6 month loss in turnover.

I won't be getting PoP 2 cos there's too many stuff out next month :\

It's also because those at GAME think the following:

GAME-Worker 1: "Ah, the punters won't mind if we squash the Gamecube games into a REALLY small gap in the back of the shop!"

GAME-Worker 2: "Excellent!"

*They laugh uncontrollably!*