NeoPlayStation
03-05-2008, 11:02 PM
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/03/05/insomniacs-ted-price-talks-ratchet-sales-surprises-new-ips/
Multiplayer: Sony fans got panicked when they saw NPD numbers and saw it only sold several thousand in the U.S., whatever it was. [Under 75,000 in the U.S. in its first calendar month on sale.]
Price: It’s sold over a million worldwide now, so…It’s actually on par with the PlayStation 2 games now. It sold as many as the other games have at this point in its lifecycle.
We were also panicked because we thought, “Wow, there aren’t that many games on PlayStation 3 this Christmas and “Ratchet” should really be one of those big ones. But then we realized that PlayStation 3 still is in the hands of consumers who tend not to be ‘Ratchet’ fans. They’re the older consumers who are more interested in M-rated games. It hasn’t made its way necessarily to family play. And that’s the kind of game “Ratchet” is. So what we expect and what we’ve seen in the past is that it will have a long tail. … What’s cool for us is there aren’t that many family-friendly games out there [on the PS3] that provide competition for “Ratchet.”
Multiplayer: On the PS2 you guys were basically doing a “Ratchet” every year. Now, the indication is that “Resistance” is trading off with “Ratchet” every year. Is that a pattern people should be expecting from you guys?
Price: Well, we’ll continue to produce new IP, there’s no question about that. So that means that pattern won’t necessarily continue as you stated. You do see “Resistance 2″ coming out this year. One thing that has been nice for us is that instead of the one-year cycles that we had on PlayStation one, we now have two-year cycles, which gives us a chance to do really thorough pre-production and gives the team the chance to take a bit of a break — and gives consumers a break, too. We were experiencing consumer fatigue with “Ratchet” on the PlayStation 2.
Kudos to gofreak@NeoGAF
Multiplayer: Sony fans got panicked when they saw NPD numbers and saw it only sold several thousand in the U.S., whatever it was. [Under 75,000 in the U.S. in its first calendar month on sale.]
Price: It’s sold over a million worldwide now, so…It’s actually on par with the PlayStation 2 games now. It sold as many as the other games have at this point in its lifecycle.
We were also panicked because we thought, “Wow, there aren’t that many games on PlayStation 3 this Christmas and “Ratchet” should really be one of those big ones. But then we realized that PlayStation 3 still is in the hands of consumers who tend not to be ‘Ratchet’ fans. They’re the older consumers who are more interested in M-rated games. It hasn’t made its way necessarily to family play. And that’s the kind of game “Ratchet” is. So what we expect and what we’ve seen in the past is that it will have a long tail. … What’s cool for us is there aren’t that many family-friendly games out there [on the PS3] that provide competition for “Ratchet.”
Multiplayer: On the PS2 you guys were basically doing a “Ratchet” every year. Now, the indication is that “Resistance” is trading off with “Ratchet” every year. Is that a pattern people should be expecting from you guys?
Price: Well, we’ll continue to produce new IP, there’s no question about that. So that means that pattern won’t necessarily continue as you stated. You do see “Resistance 2″ coming out this year. One thing that has been nice for us is that instead of the one-year cycles that we had on PlayStation one, we now have two-year cycles, which gives us a chance to do really thorough pre-production and gives the team the chance to take a bit of a break — and gives consumers a break, too. We were experiencing consumer fatigue with “Ratchet” on the PlayStation 2.
Kudos to gofreak@NeoGAF