Suikoden Revival Movement

[TMan]

Most people like the idea. The only info I can find on the cost of porting a game is that modern games tend to cost ~$1 million to port across systems. If Suikoden 2 is going to cost that much to get onto 360, I'd say it's almost as good as hopeless. Even if it's only $300K, I don't see how we can get it to work.

Basically, I've compared Jet Set Radio, which was re-released for 360 Arcade recently. I used only the North American sales numbers since they were the only ones I had all the info for, but basically, JSR Arcade release sold 16.3% the number of copies it did under its original release. Granted, that's only for the first month of its release, but in subsequent months, it wasn't even in most top 20 lists I looked at.

Let's say S2 sells for 10 bucks or 800 MP. S2 originally sold 150,000 copies. 150K*.163= 24,450

Let's say Konami gets 70% of each sale (I think that's the standard for Arcade divvys). That's 7 bucks per sale. 7* 24,450= 171,150.

So unless I'm doing something pretty stupid here, total expected sales for S2 can't be much more than $200,000. And even then, with Microsoft phasing out XNA, none of the Arcade and Indie stuff is going to work for the next Xbox system, since rumors say they won't be using XNA or DirectX. That means that on already low sales, the shelf life would be pretty short, even for online.

Meanwhile, you look at, say, a Steam release and think it might be a viable option except that everyone willing to play S2 on PC has likely already pirated the iso anyway.

I'm not saying that SRM should give up, I just think that some other strategies might need to be considered. We need to ask ourselves, how can we convince Konami that re-releasing S2 would be profitable?

[Rooks]

If there's any way we could find out what the estimated cost of porting a game would be- especially a PS1 to 360 game- we would be a lot closer to figuring out if begging for game releases on Arcade is a reasonable tactic.

I mean, from the numbers I have been trying to run, it doesn't look very promising for Suikoden 2... If anyone is interested in going into more detail with me on this, I'd really like someone to find flaws with my methods.

Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions (Psychonaughts) said that patching a game on XBLA costs $40,000 USD up front. This is by no means the cost of posting a new game, but we can assume that the costs are similar, plus XBOX gets a fee for each sale, likely 25% off of the top. Extrapolating from these numbers at the equivalent of $10 USD per unit, they would have to sell 6,000 copies to make a profit. This is not unreasonable.

Also, Nintendo has been rumored to be waving initial fees and allowing Publishers and Devs to name their own price. This means that Konami could take advantage of this and make a Nintendo eShop version. Sony is rumored to have much lower costs, but much stricter standards for its PSone Classics, meaning that the game must be completely unchanged from its PSX release, while adhering to Sony's modern trademarking policies. This is what has likely kept Breath of Fire III off of the NA PSone Classics lists.

[TMan]

$40,000 to submit a game. It actually varies game to game, but it is, from what research I've done (I am devving a game for Xbox after all) it is in the ten(s of) thousands. But that's just to get the game into Arcade. That doesn't even touch the actual cost of porting- having a guy go through all of the old PS1 code and update it to be readable by the Xbox. Not to mention all the old PS1 graphics would look like crap on an Xbox, especially for the 3d games.

So we're talking, minimum, 40 grand for the release of the game (Xbox may waive this with more accomplished companies like Konami, I don't know) and then whatever the cost of porting it, which again, seems to be QUITE high.

And the per sale share for Microsoft is 30%, not 25%

Like my previous post said, if the cost of releasing and porting and licensing is less than 150 Grand, then we would have a chance.

[Rooks]

I do not see porting costs being too much. There are already mobile device ports, which were likely built from a PC port, and XBOX runs a (heavily) modified version of DirectX, so I do not think it would be more than $50,000 USD. The Problem is that -like Sony- Microsoft claims to have strict certification guidelines, so some bugs may have to be fixed, like the random untranslated text.

The 25% margin is more or less the average that stores like Walmart and Best Buy take off of the top, so, I guess Microsoft is a bit different. Not as bad as Hollywood, though, they take about 60% off the top from box office grosses, which is why your popcorn costs $5 at a movie theater.

[TMan]

Well, when you're selling hard copies of a game, the publisher is supposed to get 45%, or $27 on a $60 game. But for online sales it's a little different. As there are apparently only two company's sharing the dough, the split changes to 70/30.

Seems reasonable.

50K seems a little optimistic based on the limited research I've done, but I'll remain hopeful. That would be an absolute minimum cost for an Arcade release to be 90K, with 24,450 sales at $7 each= $171,150. It looks good there.

Too bad we can't get a better grasp on porting costs. I try to imagine a programmer being paid 80 grand a year going through the game and making the necessary changes. I don't know.

[Twilight Sky]

The runes made by people looks really nice. I will crap my pants if Suikoden VI is ever announced.

[TMan]

Yeah they look fantastic! I tried making one based on that little leaf moment in the opening to Suikoden 2, but it looked terrible so I scrapped it.

[Rooks]

The runes made by people looks really nice. I will crap my pants if Suikoden VI is ever announced.

Yeah they do. We are rather overwhelmed by how amazing they all look. I do not think there is a single bad entry out of all of them, once again proving how talented Suikoden fans are. The problem lies with choosing one, as at this point it would be like choosing between my pets or my children (if I had any).

In other news: I wrote an article that kinda blew up over at Operation Rainfall's website. It doesn't have anything to do with Suikoden directly, but is an editorial about Nintendo's strategy for the coming console generation. It was their highest-viewed article in recent memory, so check it out:

http://operationrainfall.com/nintendos- ... the-wii-u/

Essentially, this is just one of my Weekend Specials, which will be on OpRain from now on, aas they are so much easier to read and so much prettier over there.

[TMan]

32%
48450
339,150

Hey guys, just thought I'd update this. Looks like they've released total 2012 sales for JSR on XBLA. Sales totaled 32.3% of original sales (up from my original 16%.)

This means Suikoden sales might be closer to 48,450 on Xbox. At 10 dollars a sale with a 7 dollar share for the publisher, that's $339,150. In my opinion, that's enough to warrant a re-release of Suikoden 2. I doubt the cost of porting would be over 80 grand. XBLA has some steep licensing fees,but I don't know how those apply to a big publisher like Konami.

[Warcrown]

In my opinion, that's enough to warrant a re-release of Suikoden 2. I doubt the cost of porting would be over 80 grand. XBLA has some steep licensing fees,but I don't know how those apply to a big publisher like Konami.

Let the campaigning continue then! If we hit them hard enough through various channels they might eventually start to consider it.

[TMan]

I'm actually really impressed with how well it's going so far. Konami has actually taken notice, which is pretty amazing. At the very least, I believe the SRM will be enough to convince Konami that releasing a new canon Suiko game could actually be profitable for them.

[Warcrown]

I'm actually really impressed with how well it's going so far. Konami has actually taken notice, which is pretty amazing. At the very least, I believe the SRM will be enough to convince Konami that releasing a new canon Suiko game could actually be profitable for them.

Well, a new canon game would be good for me. Remakes could come later if they actually went through with a new game. They really shouldn't need us to tell them it would be profitable Just take a look at Ebay/Amazon/whatever and you could see the prices Suikoden is going for these days.

[Piisuke]

I think getting Suikoden I and II released on the PSN for all regions and potentially port it to XBLA should be step one. It allows people to get to play Suikoden I and II and spread the name.

[TMan]

Well I'm sure they won't be releasing any remakes for either console until at least after the new systems come out and we can see what kind of online services they have available and whether or not they are backwards compatible

[Warcrown]

Well I'm sure they won't be releasing any remakes for either console until at least after the new systems come out and we can see what kind of online services they have available and whether or not they are backwards compatible

I say they should release them for all systems. Hell even a Suikoden VI on the PS2 would be perfectly fine with me even though such a thing is not at all profitable right now since they were discontinued. Not like I play Suikoden for the graphics or anything.