Yet Another Thread About That Company That Published That Game By Tim Schafer.

[Redwall]

Majesco Entertainment today reported an almost $3 million increase in sales recorded for the quarter ending April 30, 2005. Citing the release of the Tim Schafer-designed Psychonauts (for the Xbox, released just 10 days before books closed on the quarter) as well as brisk sales of the $19.95 TV Arcade product line of plug-and-play games, the company took its quarter-on-quarter financials from a net loss of $49 million last year to a profit of $189,000 this year.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/07/news_6127085.html

[Chris]

I suspect it's more that they're trying to put a good marketing spin on the situation in regards to Psychonauts. NPD sales reports for Psychonauts are pretty abysmal...

[Udvarnoky]

NPD sales reports for Psychonauts are pretty abysmal...

Have you seen any beyond April?

[Lechimp]

Maybe it's because majesco sucks at shipping out copies of the game. When I went to best buy, I saw 3 copies of the game for PC and no copies at all for the x-box, and I really doubt that it was because they sold all their copies. Although I did cover up a bunch of of EA's games with the copies of psychonauts that they had, forcing people to be surrounded by (three copies of) the excellent game psychonauts.

[Chris]

I suspect that's not all Majesco's fault. I mean some of it is but also game retailers are fucking retarded. The amount of games they order is in large part proportional to how many preorders they receive for it, and in some cases a store will literally order either zero or one copy of a game if they don't get any preorders. It's pretty idiotic. It basically means that for a game like Psychonauts, they only way you're going to buy it is if you are specifically looking for that one game and nothing else. My friend who bought it had to drive to three entirely separate stores to find it. Someone who is just looking to buy a game, maybe Psychonauts, maybe something else, is guaranteed going to end up with something else because when they don't see Psychonauts on the shelf they're not going to drive all over town to find it.

[polytope]

PSM scored Psychonauts a 9.0 and rated it a "Buy or Die"

"Psychonauts is hands-down the most refreshing, must-play, re-invention of the platform action game since at least the first Ratchet & Clank."

[MrHoatzin]

"Buy or Die"

I tried that approach at my local EB Games. Customers didn't like it. The management asked me to leave.

[Karimi]

This is horrible , Psychonauts doing poorly is just another blow to the industry.

PLEASE DON'T KILL TIM PEOPLE ! DON'T !

[Lechimp]

I suspect that's not all Majesco's fault. I mean some of it is but also game retailers are fucking retarded. The amount of games they order is in large part proportional to how many preorders they receive for it, and in some cases a store will literally order either zero or one copy of a game if they don't get any preorders. It's pretty idiotic. It basically means that for a game like Psychonauts, they only way you're going to buy it is if you are specifically looking for that one game and nothing else. My friend who bought it had to drive to three entirely separate stores to find it. Someone who is just looking to buy a game, maybe Psychonauts, maybe something else, is guaranteed going to end up with something else because when they don't see Psychonauts on the shelf they're not going to drive all over town to find it.

But game retailers are only 10-20% of the game market (which is still a large amount), what about stores like Walmart and Best Buy that really don't do the thing where they use preorders to predict how many copies of the game they should buy. Best Buy doesn't seem to be too selective of which games they have at their store, they have tons of crap there. So it can't be Best Buy or Walmart's fault that copies of the game aren't there, can it?

Psychonauts isn't doing that horribly is it? I mean it was on the top ten selling games for at least a week. And the game has only been on two platforms so far, one of which is considered a niche industry (pc gaming). Hopefully doublefine will make a lot of money when the games comes out on ps2.

[Redwall]

1. PS2 is the most popular console.

2. PS2 has many successful crazy platformers.

3. People buy anything that looks like one of their favorite games.

Conclusion: Many people will buy the excellent game in question.

Hopefully.