Ars Technica put together a list of the most popular games of 2014 (meaning 2015 sales don’t count), ranking games that had the most owners and how many hours the games got played. As you know, SEGA released Valkyria Chronicles, a 6 year old Playstation 3 game on Steam last year. How did it perform?
According to the post Valkyria Chronicles ranked just above Telltales Games’ Game of Thrones series with 210,299 owners and almost 2 million hours played by fans. That is pretty incredible if you ask me and further proves that Japanese games do have a place on PC services like Steam.
Even though Valkyria Chronicles was an older port, it sold comparable to SEGA’s new Alien: Isolation game which had 329,649 owners on steam and over 3 million hours played.
I think the biggest success for SEGA digitally in 2014 was (by no surprise) Football Manager 2015 which had over 850,000 owners on the service and fans have logged in over 130 million hours into it (in little under two months!).
Seeing as Valkyria Chronicles‘ PC success has shocked even SEGA, what older console games do you think will do well on Steam?
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They should released Shining series too for PC.
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Vanquish. All day, every day.
I’m not really impressed by that to be honest,
if SEGA put some effort into actually MARKETING the game it could be a lot more, a lot lot more.
Anime is super popular, Japan is super popular, the target audience of this game is a lot bigger than 200 000!
This is for less than two months of being on sale, it came out on November 11th. This is counting only sales in 2014. It can continue to do a lot more.
Wow, that is impressive!
I’m glad Sega are doing well on PC. I’d love to see more old and new games on their too 🙂
I’d really like to see a Panzer Dragoon trilogy.
Like SOUP said, a Panzer Dragoon Trilogy would be awesome. Heck, make it a quadrilogy; Orta is pretty great too. Actually, for me Orta is the biggest shame. For a long time, Saga was a holy grail kind of game for collectors, and while that is still somewhat true, the progression of Saturn emulation has enabled gamers who simply wanted to play it the ability to do so without having to spend a couple hundred dollars. Orta, on the other hand, is stuck on the Xbox until it is either ported to PC or Xbox is emulated. Hopefully Sega’s focus on digital games (albeit on mobile) will leak over into the PC market.
Going third party didn’t fix Sega.
Alien sales feel underwhelming to be honest, they don’t rise by much the packaged sales we already knew.
Ok so 200k sales are a good number for Sega for a PORT, still those are not the numbers that would move a company to make a full new sequel, at the most, those numbers will move to port other games if the cost is similar, and that does not include remakes (like VC2 and 3) or translations (like VC3 and Shining Force). That said, I really hope to see Vanquish or Resonance of Fate or any other game this year, I feel like replaying them right now but a PC version would be the best option.
This is only in less than 2 months. The game came out on Nov 11th, 2014.
What are the results in total now then?
And if you don’t have them, when are they going to be available?
Sega never makes public digital sales in their reports, so we will only know if a similar list shows again and VC is still on the list.
Even if the sales go higher in the future they will not go by much more, and not at full price / 50% off like we have seen so far.
Those sales are good news for future ports, but nothing special to revive a single franchise.
Still waiting for that Skies of Arcadia port!
So these are the miracolous sales for what they are abandoning console market, just 200k?
Valkyria passed 1 million on PS3, and world of mouth on sega forums was nowhere as strong as on steam.
1. This is less than 2 months on sale.
2. PS3 version did not pass 1 million, please don’t use VGChartz as a source or I will laugh at you.
3. World of mouth is not a phrase.
1. Valkyria dropped from top charts after barely 2 month, these are all the major sales the game will get.
2. Unlike the popular belief, vgchartz is not so unreliable, many times the differences with NPD numbers are just some thousand…
3-lol my bad, you know unlike Sega I have always the “world” in my mind…
Alien Isolation is another example, almost 2 million at retail on consoles, and barely 300k on digital steam.
In the end steam is not the new “El Dorado”, is just one platform like another, and Sega placing all their best on steam at the expenses of console gaming is just the latest of big mistakes that transformed Sega in an irrevelant company in the current market.
Actually… Alien numbers are Retail + digital, not only digital, unless people who bought the retail game have yet not used the serial key on Steam.
1. You’re absolutely incorrect, PC titles tend to have long tails and so do SEGA’s catalog games. This isn’t the console market were the first few months of sales are most likely the majority of sales a game will get, please check one of the sources (Ars Technica) below to see how year old games continue to sell a good amount in the coming years.
2. This is also completely false, I present to you Alien: Isolation http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=alien%3A+isolation&publisher=&platform=&genre=&minSales=0&results=200
We know for a fact the game only recently sold 1 million sold through to customers about a month ago, no way did it sell another 500,000 in that space. At most it would be 200,000 units and thats with severely heavy discounting (That did not occur.)
Also according to a recent Ars Technica post http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/steam-gauge-measuring-the-most-popular-steam-games-of-2014/3/
We know the numbers for PC sales 329,649 units at least, whilst VGChartz has the numbers as 110,000 units. So the difference is not a “few thousands” but a few hundred thousands and clearly demonstrates why VGChartz is a bad source.
Finally I’d argue that since 330,000 was sold via Steam and that 1 million sold to customers had only just crossed recently… The PC version of Alien: Isolation is most possibly the best selling version of the game or at the very least close to the PS4 sales. It’s not fair to say SEGA are placing all their bets on Steam, however it is a bigger market than the console market currently and we will only continue to see it grow, if SEGA does not jump in like they did, the likes of Namco and Koei would have left them behind ages ago.
Well if that’s the case, then it explains why companies continue to bother in constantly updating the firmware and add new stuff to their PC titles long after they hit retail stores.
1-Selling a game for some bucks during sales doesn’t mean having long legs, even console games continue to sells with shop discounts, this is just normal.
Besides, ther’s no way that Valkyria will double that number at the original price even in 2 years, steam gamers already forgot valkyria.
In fact digital games is even worse, at retail you always have your games on shelves, while on digital shops they disappear more easly, especially without ad banners.
Valkyria would sell a little more during steam sales, but I wouln’t count $5 sales for the success of Valkyria ports.
2-1 million were the Aliens sold to customers, the copies sold to shops were almost 2 millions.
Vg chartz says 1,5 million, from January at least another 200k is totally plausible, but the very important thing is, if you don’t have any other data to refute these numbers, than your argument is no more valid than vgchartz, that as I said, many times showed little differences with npd data.
The fact is that you all want to see Valkjyria 200k as miracolous sales, but they aren’t.
Steam is growing but like Valyria and Alien Isolation confirms, it’s the console market where the main business is for Sega.
Namco and Koei knows how make business in console market, Sega don’t.
1. This is again absolutely incorrect. Stores get rid of old games all the time, infact it’s even worse, those old games become used games and now the retailer is making profits, not the publishers. And as for success of Valkyria Chronicles, of course it is, there is no two way to spin it, SEGA is extremely pleased with the figure and its one of the best sellings ports, yet also oldest, on the platform. It is almost guaranteed to double in numbers, denying that would be fool hardy considering the sales of titles such as Total War that perfectly illustrate the tail of sales on the format.
2. Firstly your numbers is completely wrong, SEGA said 1.7 million units were sold upto December 31st 2014, not 2 million. Then they announced in January it had sold 1 million to customers. So VGChartz is overselling the title by 500,000, not just one example of inaccuracy but a range of many, many more.
Incorrect information is still incorrect, that’s what VGChartz number is. If you were stuck in a cell with a pathological liar and had to depend on him to give you the correct figure between 1 – 10 to escape, would you believe him because his the only one there? Of course not, having no alternative is not a valid excuse for believing in false numbers. This isn’t how an argument is had and without hard evidence we are not able to draw solid conclusions either way, that is to say you can not form an argument with me using VGChartz numbers and I cannot form one against you without solid numbers which thankfully, I do have.
The fact is that 200,000 is a fantastic achievement in sales and there’s no two ways about it. And finally arguing against Steam is silly, SEGA just announced the Total War series has managed over 11 million with 4 titles sold… I think its you who wants to believe things, such as the console market being the be all end all of the industry but as the past few years have proved, it is not.
Finally, Namco hasn’t seen a million seller since 2012 and Koei had to rely on Hyrule Warriors to finally land itself a million seller. Poor example, especially as SEGA has seen 4 different million sellers since 2012. Extremely poor examples.
To be honest, SEGA doesn’t deserve this. They sabotage themselves time and time again.
Thankfully gamers are still fighting to keep SEGA IPs alive unlike the suits making decisions.
Sadly, some of the successes Sega thinks it gets send out the wrong message also.
Valkyria Chronicles is well deserved in my opinion however, and I’m happy to see it did this well.
Does Sega even make their own games (in-house) anymore ?
The amount of bad, sub-par Sonic titles is a good indication of what that answer might be.
More recent titles like Crazy Taxi City Rush isn’t Sega made either, in-fact most Sega IP these days aren’t even made by Sega, they out-source development to third-parties, when they did Outrun II – they hired Sumo Digital – although strangely, Sega’s AM2 division actually did develop the Japanese version instead – which was better than the western Sumo Digital version, maybe if Sega actually developed their own IP – like they used to when they were manufacturing their own home consoles, it would raise the quality standards as they used to be, the fact Sega wastes money outsourcing is simply lazy management and shows Sega doesn’t have much respect or care for their own properties. Still Valkyria Chronicles being in-house proper Sega IP, this news is more good than bad.
Yes, SEGA does make their own games in-house.
SEGA West has several studios creating PC, console, and mobile titles: Creative Assembly, Relic, Sports Interactive, Hardlight, Three Rings Design, Demiurge Studios, and many others. They are all fully owned by SEGA, and are in-house studios making in-house games.
Crazy Taxi City Rush is 100% SEGA made, with SEGA’s Hardlight studio working with series creator Kenji Kanno. And what is wrong with SEGA working with Sumo Digital? Who cares if they are not SEGA owned? The end result is what matters, and the studio has produced fantastic games. SEGA’s work with Sumo has never been a waste of money, so I don’t know where you are getting that opinion from.
The studios of Creative Assembly, Relic, Sports Interactive and Hardlight are owned by Sega sure but calling them ‘in-house’ I would say is a bit of a stretch, what I mean is in-house as in the original and oldest in-built Sega divisions like the AM1, AM2, AM3 ect ect ect (before they all were renamed into Sonic Team, Overworks and Hitmaker ect) none of the studios seem to be producing much if anything these days, at least not outside of Japan anyway, they other studios Sega owns are more like 2nd party companies while Sega’s AM division series of studios were 1st party Sega producers, an example of this is Atlus, they are now a Sega company and studio but aside from that, they are pretty much left to their own devices along with the other 2nd party companies. I think Sumo Digital are good, they made a good job on the Outrun II port project, but they were only responsible for the western ports, the Japanese port was done in-house by Sega’s own AM2 and it was overall still a better job in fairness. It seems the more outsourced a project gets, the less cared for it is, but Sumo was a decent exception as they almost got it perfect considering they are a fully external studio.
Maybe this will finally convince Sega to bring Bayonetta over to PC.
And maybe a sequel to Alpha Protocol will be made. Sure, porting over tons of classic games and throwing them out for 20 bucks a pop might seem like an intelligent move, especially since that’s 10 dollars more than the normal asking price, but obviously it’s too time-consuming to do so else they’d have done it. I’m not the biggest Sega fan, but they have some definite gems that would be awesome to experience in the beauty of the modern PC age. As a fan, it’d be awesome. As a guy who’s messed around with engines, I know how excruciatingly difficult it would be to do so, so I’ll hold my breath.
Athough SEGA will likely do other games first – if any – i am still keeping my fingers crossed for ports of newer Virtua Fighter games with good netcode.
GIVE US A BAYONETTA PORT SEGA
Please bring Project Diva to Steam!
GIVE VANQUISH AND BAYO1