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A Xeno Metaseries Community

Hello, this forum is in read-only mode. There is another forum at https://godsibb.net.

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    Xenosaga rights

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    answerawake


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    Post by answerawake Sat Nov 30, 2013 2:44 pm

    Hi there! First Post!

    I absolutely love the design of this website. It is very clean and beautiful.

    I was wondering now that Nintendo owns Monolith Soft as a first party developer, and that they they are running the developer in full production mode working on multiple titles at once, who actually owns the Xenosaga rights?

    When Namco sold the their share in the company, did they retain ownership of the Xenosaga IP assets or were these transferred to Nintendo as well?

    In addition to that, does anyone know how much of a voting stake do the founders have with their 4%~ish share in the company? In the stock market, many times the owners while not conatining a mjority of the stock can retain voting rights and so they can oversee and influence major decisions in the company. I beleive this is the case with companies such as Facebook and Google. It appears that Monolith is shifting more and more to being just an assistance company to help Nintendo complete existing titles they have in development. I was wondering what kind of power the owners of the company actually have. There is also to consider the Japanese nature of the company. Japanese companies tend to have a different management structure that can be open to influential decisions made by small stakeholders (namely the founders of a company). Just look at Nintendo in that regard, some of their recent decisions have been due to them sticking to their "winning stragety" mindset that they have been using since the beginning. Other investors do not want to challenge that mindset, thus their current direction.

    I read somewhere a while back that the creaters of Xenosaga do not want to even think about returning to the series for at least 10 years. Well it is nearing that time now. So you never know,  Smile

    It all depends on who owns the rights.

    If any of the above is incorrect or if you have contradictory claims, please feel free to respond. I would love to have a friendly discussion with anyone and everyone here.
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    Post by katimus_prime Sat Nov 30, 2013 3:04 pm

    Welcome! :D Thank you for the compliments re: site design. This is a really cool thread! I myself probably know much less about who currently owns Xenosaga at the moment. My understanding was that Monolith could never make a return to Xenogears without making some sort of deal with Square-Enix. I'm not so sure the same is so with Xenosaga and Namco, what with KOS-MOS' appearances in recent Namco fighting games after and simultaneous with the release of Monolith's works with Nintendo (Soma Bringer, Xenoblade). This probably seems exceedingly dull of me, but I would love to take a look at the contract between Namco and Monolith, myself.

    If we're not due for another Xenosaga for 10 years since they last touched it, that would indicate a start date of production of around 2016. That's only 3 years away, though not particularly guaranteed. It seems to me that Xenosaga is pretty near and dear to the creators' hearts, but also carries with it a lot of production heartache.

    I wish I could provide more insight as to the Japanese stock market, but I don't really understand the American one to begin with. Hope this topic draws a few people who do know. :3
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    Post by kare_reiko Sat Nov 30, 2013 3:08 pm

    Nah, Namco own all rights, that's why, even if Takahashi or Soraya would like to write some novel, want remake something or anything they can't.

    Well, japan have this kind of "we publish you story and now don't think you have any rights to it"
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    Post by Yikari Sun Dec 01, 2013 2:00 am

    Welcome!

    You'd know much better than me, honestly.

    The only thing I can add is that KOS-MOS and a (very) small selection of other Xenosaga characters do show up in mega-crossovers between Namco, Capcom and Banpresto ala Super Robot Wars from time to time - about four games to date, if I remember right - but their roles in those games have next to no relevance to Xenosaga's plot.

    Some curious character interaction maybe (for example, in my current playthrough of the first one, there was a scene that specifically pointed out to Shion being the least affected by facing genuine undead out of the whole 20+ character party chock full with action heroes), but those games have effectively their own continuity and put noticeably different tones and themes to the few scenes they do borrow from Xenosaga Ep.I-III.

    I can only assume Namco is willing to sell some more KOS-MOS figures but doesn't want to touch the actual setting and plot parts of the franchise.
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    Post by answerawake Sun Dec 01, 2013 11:07 am

    katimus_prime: No...Thank YOU!(and whover else helped work on this site)

    After seeing this site design I am thinking of making a desktop theme in the same vein but I have to think about how I am going to lay things out. I really like this black on neonish green text, and the borders..man they are so awesome. I really want to see how I can incorporate those borders in a desktop theme...maybe it looks better in my mind then it might in real life. Wont know till I try.  Razz

    katimus_prime wrote:what with KOS-MOS' appearances in recent Namco fighting games after and simultaneous with the release of Monolith's works with Nintendo (Soma Bringer, Xenoblade).

    Can you elaborate more on this? I apologize, I am not too familar with what Namco is doing these days. Were Xenosaga properties actually in recent games?

    katimus_prime wrote:This probably seems exceedingly dull of me, but I would love to take a look at the contract between Namco and Monolith, myself.

    You know, I bet this infomation could possibly be in their financial statements around the time that they were sold to Nintendo. As they are a public company they are required to disclose anything and everything to shareholders and the public for investment purposes, it is just a matter of digging through their financial statements. The issue is that this documentation is probably in Japanese only. While Google translate does an amazing job translating many languages, it is not soo good in Japanese unfortunetly.

    This reminds me of a recent story. When I became absolutely obsessed with Xenosaga a few months ago, I went to Monolith Soft's website and started to traverse through everything. I landed on their jobs page. I saw some programming positions that seemed quite intriguiging. One thing that suprised me a bit was the following rule:  Rejected applicants can reapply after 1 year. If applicant is rejected again, applicant must never apply again.
    I felt that was a bit harsh but they are probably very busy and do not have time to go through many resumes. I dont know, thats just my opinion. It just seems harsh. Since I dont know Japanese I wouldnt qualify anyway Razz

    katimus_prime wrote:..that would indicate a start date of production of around 2016

    That would be awesome! It feels less and less likely to happen as every day passes. I just feel very saddened as to what has happened to Nintendo the last year. They made a conscious decision to design the Wii U as they did but I feel that they missed out on a big oppertunity that the other two console manufacturers took advantage of. The whole point of the PS4 and the Xbone design is that developers are fed up. Games are getting too expensive to produce and anything that makes it easier and cheaper would be embraced. By not only making it as easy as possible to make games but also giving them all the performace they wanted, both sony and microsoft will hopefully see some unique games from third party developers this generation. And it will be super easy to port games between the two systems and the pc. Three sources of income for essentially one development budget. The Wii U does not have this advantage and so others may skip over the Wii U.

    Nintendo has to now deal with the cards they played and I hope that means Monolith Soft will be allowed the budget to create some amazing experiences this generation. My worry is that if Monolith does not produce sales and Nintendo continues to suffer, Monolith and others may get the boot. I dont know what that would entail. It could mean they get sold, shut down, or forced to stop production on new titles and just focus on assisting nintendo teams with game development such as what they are doing at their kyoto studio now.

    kare_reiko: Hmm that is interesting. Do you have any source on that? Nintendo and Namco seem to be on good terms, I am sure if there was a desire to do some collaboration, Namco would be willing. I don't think Nintendo has that will these days. They have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

    Also, do you know if Namco owns 100% of the rights? If so, then they could theoretically have another developer pick up where Monolith left off. This many not make Monolith happy though....

    Yikari: Thanks for the heads up. Upon looking up Super Robot Wars, it seems like they are still making sequels for this game? Do you know when was the most recent time a Xenosaga IP was involved in this or another game?

    Were these guest appearances on Nintendo Consoles or some other consoles? This could help explain who has rights as if Nintendo has any stake in Xenosaga then they would only want to license it for Nintendo consoles(or not?)

    Can anyone explain what exactly happened between the development of Xenosaga 1 and 2? It seems like there is a huge back story of all parties having a falling out and people quitting and getting fired. What actually happened? None of this seems to be documented anywhere?

    Thank You for keeping this conversation going. It is really enjoyable!
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    Post by BlueMetal Sun Dec 01, 2013 11:51 am

    I'm not super knowledgeable on the whole thing myself, but most of what I know has been said already or is easy to find.

    Nintendo and Namco definitely are on good terms. I believe it's been often said that Namco are the ones developing the newest Smash Bros game (Though Sakurai is still overseeing the project), as well as the games that feature KOS-MOS making appearances in non-Xenosaga games being on Nintendo platforms. She is in Namco X Capcom (A PS2 title), Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier (DS), that game's sequel with Exceed added to it (Also DS, but Japanese only), and most recently Project X Zone (3DS). All of these games have Namco and some Xenosaga characters involved, so it's pretty much concrete that they are the ones that hold Xenosaga's rights.

    Monolith however is working on a Wii U title that we only know of as 'X', still a working title though. Definitely check out the trailer. It looks sick. :2thumbs: It could be another Xeno game, though I don't know much about Xenoblade and who owns the 'Xeno' franchise, but I do at least know that Namco holds Xenosaga.

    And yes believe me, literally everyone who likes Xenosaga would love to have more sequels so that the story can actually be finished like it was intended to be after Shion's arc. We got three games instead of six, with KOS-MOS and chaos supposedly being the recurring characters all the way to the end. Must. Have. MORE. :shaking:
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    Post by answerawake Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:21 pm

    Hey BlueMetal. thanks for your reply and for the additional information on games that KOS-MOS has been in since Xenosaga 3.

    The list you provided does not give concrete evidence that Namco owns the rights to Xenosaga.

    The reason for this is that every game you listed has Monolith Soft listed as a developer. If Monolith holds the rights to Xenosaga they would have no obstacles to placing Xenosaga characters in games that they develop.

    In order to get evidence that Namco holds the rights, we need to see Xenosaga IP appear in a game developed by someone else other than Monolith Soft. That would be a clear indication that Namco holds the rights.

    Although after looking at the games you listed, it is clear that Nintendo will most likely not allow Monolith to develop any games for non-nintendo platforms. If you look at their list of games developed since Nintendo bought them in 2007, they are all Nintendo platforms which makes sense seeing as Nintendo holds a majority stake.

    The only non Nintendo game (Namco x Capcom) was released in 2005, two years before the Nintendo acquisition.

    I wonder how many of original Xenosaga developers are left at Monolith? The company looks as if it has doubled in size since Xenosaga 3 was released.

    Still does anyone have any information on what exactly caused the falling out during development of Xenosaga 2? The events during that time seemed to have caused the mess that we are in today.

    I mean isn't Soraya Saga married to one of the co-founders of the company? Must have been something serious going on over there... :huh:
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    Post by kare_reiko Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:36 pm

    As for source, porimac (Japanese parson who helped me with translating Xenosaga Freaks) said once on Godsibb that Takahashi itself said that he can't even write anything for fans because of rights.
    Second is pied piper, it can't be even ported because on one side rights are owned by namco, in other side game was done by Monolith Soft that is own now by nintendo, It's problematic situation...
    Well if Xenosaga was popular game it would be worth for both companies to talk about it. But it isn't...

    Rights for story in japan it's problematic too, once you start doing it, all right have company.
    Why Soraya who wrote story was pushed away? Because Namco decided and she didn't have anything to say, she quit and her husband stay but he didn't have much to talk, you see what happen in Ep2, story was theirs and it was taken from them.
    Mangakas have their problems too with rights... but it's long story too.
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    Post by katimus_prime Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:50 pm

    It's also my understanding that Ms. Soraya had a death in the family occur during the production of Xenosaga. I'm not sure when it happened, though. From the translated interviews from Gwendal over in the Translation Central thread here and the ones over at the currently defunct XenoTen forums, it looks like there's an emphasis in Monolith's current hiring policies to employ a lot of females. This may be some sort of backlash against Namco's treatment of Ms. Soraya? I can only speculate, though.

    Since all of that public shareholder information is in Japanese, it would be an ordeal to even find the file in the first place, but still a worthy search.
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    Post by BlueMetal Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:53 pm

    Sadly I still don't know much about the whole development difficulties that happened between the games. The most I found on that was some posts and translated interviews from GameFAQs boards. But others here should know more than me on that.

    The other bits of evidence that I completely forgot about, is that KOS-MOS has 'costume' cameos in Soul Calibur 3 as pieces to create her with, and a DLC costume in the Japanese PS3 version of Tales of Vesperia. She also appeared in Tales of Hearts, as well as a costume in Tales of the World. (All of the info of her appearances were found in the Xenosaga Wikia.)

    Though again those are just bits, but that is Xenosaga property being used on non-Monolith developed games right? Two of those Tales games were released after the Nintendo acquisition as well, but funny enough is that a couple of them were also on Nintendo platforms, before and after acquisition. :laugh4: I dunno if those are considered concrete, but they are Namco releases with no Monolith involvement, unless they made agreements? I dunno how that stuff works exactly so I could be wrong there as well for all I know.
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    Post by answerawake Sun Dec 01, 2013 2:02 pm

    Wow kare_reiko thanks for the insight!

    So it appears that Namco caused the internal struggles at Monolith? Do I have this right? Were they not suprised when this resulted in a poor title(Xenosaga 2)? Very interesting....

    Well if Xenosaga was popular game it would be worth for both companies to talk about it. But it isn't...

    I wonder how much it would cost to purchase the rights for Xenosaga? I bet for a specific price, Namco would be interested.

    Let me ask you this question. I know Nintendo and squaresoft can be extremly strict and harsh about fan made projects.

    If Namco owns the right, have they given you any troubles over any of your xenosaga work?

    Does anyone else have any stories of running into Namco,Nintendo or Monolith soft regarding fan made works?

    Do you oy anyone else know why Namco even sold the company to Nintendo? Were sales that bad? What was the main reason?
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    Post by answerawake Sun Dec 01, 2013 2:30 pm

    Hi katimus_prime, hmm I think you have a point. When i was looking over Monolith's blog, I seem to recall several pictures showing all the employees together. A great percentage of the employees there are female and I think there is a fairly even distribution although I have no hard numbers to back that up.

    I am not sure how much influence Ms. Soraya has over the company. She is married to one of the founders and was quite heavily involved at least in the early years (and probably today as well) so it is certanely plausible.

    Side question: so what is the story behind this site? What made you and others want to develop this site? Was it just out of love for Xenosaga or did some other forum close down and needed a replacement?

    BlueMetal:

    Hmm you make a good point regarding the newer games.

    Regarding Soul Calibur 3: I got the following from the Soul Calibur 3 wikia: "no promotional material regarding her "inclusion" exists, and she possesses no official story in the series". I dont know if there is some formal agreement regarding things like that or if that is even considered usage of the IP.

    Regarding Tales of Vesperia, this seems more plausible as it is at least indicated of her existance in the DLC but do they actually replace the character's name as KOS-MOS or is it just a costume? I have not played the game so I am not sure.

    All of this seems to indicate that Namco has some right to use this material. All of this also introduces a third theory: Maybe Monolith Soft and Namco have joint rights? Maybe Monolith retains some portion of the IP and Namco retains other portions.

    After all of the evidence you and kare_reiko have proided, it is looking more and more that Namco does indeed own at least a majority of the rights. I guess it makes sense, Namco did own 96% of the company after all.  Razz
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    Post by BlueMetal Sun Dec 01, 2013 3:55 pm

    I have the Xbox 360 version of ToV, but like I said, the DLC costume is only for the Japanese version on PS3. So couldn't tell you that. :frown3: Joint rights could be a possibility, but yeah I don't know much about all of that business stuff. I'm still pretty much convinced that Namco owns the rights to the series, and that Monolith coincidentally developed most of the games Xenosaga characters appear in. Who knows, though.

    I do at least appreciate that they're throwing us a bone here and there by giving us some cameos and such in games, just we can only hope that there will ever be legitimate sequels. The market is there for merchandise like figurines, but I can imagine sequels wouldn't do so well these days considering how sub-par Japanese games sold this generation outside of their homeland.

    Aside from the past development problems, I can see the low number of sales being another reason they may not do it. :blank2: Or keeping the games there and not localizing them. The fanboy in me will always hope.
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    Post by answerawake Sun Dec 01, 2013 4:24 pm

    Do you or anyone else here know of any past instances of Namco getting agressive with fans and any fan made projects?

    I have an interesting fan project idea that involves the CastAR system shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25llHeB7GUo

    Still looking into the feasibility of what the SDK will allow me to do though.
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    Post by kare_reiko Sun Dec 01, 2013 4:49 pm

    For your question to Kat, our site/forum was made after Godsibb site was infected by virus and we lost most of our database, second reason for changing site is that Jessi who with Katimus was making Godsibb, didn't want to continue it any longer after virus attack. Rest people are almost the same as on godsibb...

    Well rights for Xenosaga would be money we will never see xD (at last me XD).
    I saw once article about cost of making games, I think ps2 was like 10-20 millions $ (wii was like 8 - 15 millions, ps3 is like 15 - 30+ millions)
    I had a dream to remake whole xenosaga but I would need to win a big lottery first XD.

    As for my question, I didn't have any problems with my works, we simply translate some things, I Xenosaga Freaks game, others Xenosaga Drama cd, mangas etc... and it was ok.
    No one made me problems with my fan animations too, well they are poor XD, nothing big etc, and they had like hmmm 300-400 views on YT, well Xenosaga is dead, fandom almost too XD, we are last standing XD, Namco don't give a single mind about Xenosaga itself, they only use KOS-MOS because they can still make money out her, nothing else don't mater to them...
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    Post by katimus_prime Sun Dec 01, 2013 5:52 pm

    I think Kare's pretty much got it. Though not proud of it, I left Godsibb's staff after personal differences arose between Jessi and I while the site was still hacked, and Jessi's general inaction when we got hacked. While the domain belongs to her, she didn't seem to have much of an interest in continuing the community, or a site at all. When Sibb got hacked, I facilitated a temporary forum that eventually just developed into the core of XU.

    As far as I know, when Godsibb was launched in 2009, I received no negative contact from Namco during its run, despite co-hosting a lot of scanned books and rips, but aside from the re-translations of XenoComi no full scale game was ever presented. Since XU's launch, we haven't heard from Namco or Nintendo either. I always just figured we were under the radar, even at our prime. I think the biggest Xeno fan project went over at XenoTen before it went down, which was the translation of the XSI ODM and several other projects. I wasn't close with their staff, so I don't know if they ever heard from anyone from Namco. I also have no idea what sort of Japanese fanprojects have come and gone.
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    Post by answerawake Sun Dec 01, 2013 9:28 pm

    Thank you kare_reiko, Katimus_prime, BlueMetal and Yikari for all of your excellent answers.

    I guess it looks like we have established some evidence to indicate that the rights are owned by Namco but we are not 100% certain. Hopefully there is a way that they can work with Monolith Soft to maybe bring back Xenosaga in the future. One can hope right?

    It is great to see that there are committed fans to this game more than 10 years later! How big would you guys say this community is? Some of you have alluded that it is not that big anymore. Smile
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    Post by katimus_prime Sun Dec 01, 2013 9:38 pm

    There has been a bit of shrinkage over previous years, but just before Godsibb was hacked, we were seeing a slight increase in members. When XU went up, we were active for a few months before settling down. It's a little quiet in the Xeno sections sometimes, but thanks to some brand new users such as yourself, we're actually seeing a pretty decent increase. :3

    Here's hoping for more Xenosaga sometime in the future. I generally just creep on Soraya Saga's twitter sometimes because she tends to randomly put out fanart for it at least once a year. I know there was a small push for a PS3 PSN port, but I never saw an end result to that. I've often wondered if Namco were to contunue Xenosaga without its original creators if it would have the same soul or even be worth playing. It would kinda be the T-elos to the original KOS-MOS. Sometimes I think there's an epic JRPG story just in the drama of getting/losing the rights to a series. Sagasaga? /crawls off back to her cave
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    Post by Yikari Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:35 am

    ^
    With intermissions between chapters right after a disc swap that are showing the process from outside perspective through fansites' POV Very Happy
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    Post by Neosmith Tue Dec 03, 2013 12:33 am

    We should also recall that Namco is now NamcoBandai. So that might complicate the rights issue further.
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    Post by katimus_prime Tue Dec 03, 2013 12:31 pm

    Was it Namco or Bandai that was going under that a merger had to happen?
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    Post by Neosmith Tue Dec 03, 2013 7:16 pm

    Namco I think. Bandai is the bigger company.
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    Post by answerawake Wed Dec 04, 2013 5:40 pm

    Wow I did not even think about that.

    The Namco Bandai merger timing is too close to the announcement of Monolith discontinuing Xenosaga. This explains a lot! Now I really need to dig into Namco's financial statements. Depending on how the situation was financially, looks like they had no choice but to pull the plug. Looking at their financial statements will reveal the hard truth once and for all.

    Great now I HAVE to dig them up....  Smile

    I dont know if you guys have heard of VGChartz but they do a pretty good job of compiling video game sales information for years that are not the current fiscal year. They are a little iffy for the current fiscal year because they have a habit of constantly updating their numbers with no notice but the old years are very consistent.

    Seeing as Xenosaga has been out for a while now, the following info is probably correct(although the financial statements will reveal the complete truth). VGCartz usually get their info from financial charts.


    Xenosaga 1:

    Xenosaga Episode I: Chikara e no Ishi : Retail Date: Febuary 28 2002

    Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht : US Retail Date Febuary 26 2003

    Total Units

    North America:     0.63m 36.3%
    Europe:             0.49m 28.3%
    Japan:             0.45m 25.9%
    Rest of the World:   0.17m 9.5%
    = Global 1.74m


    XenoSaga 2:

    Xenosaga Episode II: Zen'aku no Higan : Retail Date June 24 2004
    Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse : US Retail Date Febuary 15 2005
    Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse : Europe Retail Date Novenber 4 2005

    Total Units

    North America:      0.28m 49.0%
    Europe:              0.22m 38.2%
    Rest of the World:    0.07m 12.8%
    = Global 0.58m


    XenoSaga 3:


    Xenosaga Episode III: Tsaratusutora wa Kaku Katariki  06th July 2006
    Xenosaga Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra   29th August 2006
    (No release date europe?)


    Total Units

    North America: 0.09m 25.3%
    Europe: 0.07m 19.7%
    Japan: 0.18m 48.4%
    Rest of the World: 0.02m 6.6%
    = Global 0.37m


    Man the Xenosaga 2 Numbers are bad but the third game numbers are soo sad...it was such a good game  :'(


    When Namco had the merger, their accountants probably took a look at everything and probably had no choice but to drop poor performers.  Sad
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    Post by kare_reiko Thu Dec 05, 2013 3:45 am

    I don't know why they had information about sales of Ep1 and Ep3 in Europe since those part were never relased in our place, all copies that people have here are from importing so I'm not so sure if it's count as something that was sold in Europe :/.

    I don't know how merge Namco with Bandai "helped" taking down Xenosaga, but I think it was more what they done with Ep2. Ep1 sold very good, they made Drama CD, Xenosaga Freaks, they had in mind two side games and then ep2 happend.
    All was fall down after it, I don't know why they trow money in Ep1 animation (that I like... well drawing style is awfull sometimes but still it was what brings me to Xenosaga) then puting those money in ep2 or MY, or anything T_T...
    BlueMetal
    BlueMetal


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    Age : 32

    Xenosaga rights Empty Re: Xenosaga rights

    Post by BlueMetal Thu Dec 05, 2013 10:46 am

    I wasn't into Xenosaga during the time Episode 2 was being made and such, but did the game even get much advertisement? A game's sales can be hurt quite a lot if it didn't get squat for exposure. There could've been quite a lot of people that didn't know Episode 2 was even out. :frown3: And then possibly the people who did know of it and had the game may have also affected it's sales performance by word-of-mouth, saying the game was very different and not that great compared to the first. Same with review sites.

    Another thing that could affect that is if there was another big release that was right next to it. Did a major Final Fantasy game, for example, come out close to it?

    There could've been a switch in general gamer mindset at the time, like most people these days care about mainly shooters and s00per realistic graphics (Everything being brown, gray and green. Woohoo) with the arrival of the previous generation consoles. (360, PS3, and Wii. The Wii sold the most, but most 'gamers' seemed to just talk about the other two and pass the Wii off as kid's console. Shame, but an example of a gamer mindset shift)

    Lack of exposure I feel like would've been the biggest cause, but I didn't know what the advertising campaign for that game was like at the time. It's sad that there can be many factors to how a game performs on the market even when you exclude the actual game's content and quality. confused

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