Michael Pachter has set the news services alight again but this it isn’t because of this less than stellar predictions and is more for letting slip that Max Payne 3’s sales are simply not good enough.
According to a tweet he sent out yesterday
Without divulging too much NPD goodness, I can tell you that Max Payne 3 sales were less than 50% of L.A. Noire’s. 8 years in development!
He hasn’t answered any question sent his way yet so we don’t know if this means that Max Payne 3 sales were less than L.A. Noire’s launch sales or total sales to date but either way it’s not great news for Max or Take Two who piled a lot of money into this.
There are many reasons why the launch sales could have suffered, it could be because gamers have lost interest in Max or that the previews of the title didn’t drive enough excitement or that the game itself didn’t live up to the hype.
And yet all of those would be lies, the game is excellent, all the previews were glowing and every gamer knows who Max Payne is and is interested in this title.
The reason Max Payne 3 hasn’t sold as well as expected can be summarised in one word.
Diablo
I pointed out before the game was released that its sales are going to get slaughtered due to it releasing on the same day as Max Payne 3. Moment after that story went live I received a phone call from someone in the industry kindly telling me I’m an idiot and that they are wildly different games and there is no way one will cannibalise sales from the other.
About a month later that same person phoned back and admitted I was right.
So how could I, and most other sane people see this problem and the distributors, publishers and developers couldn’t?
Well it’s industry blindness, the person who called from the industry was 100% correct. The game is totally different from Diablo 3 and didn’t even release on the same platform at that time, BUT what they forgot was that there is only so much retail and marketing capability in the industry and with Diablo being a sure fire sell all the retail marketing was pushed towards that single title.
Leaving a AAA title like Max Payne 3 with no hype or excitement.
So does media and marketing make a difference to sales or am I being blind as well coming from a purely media perspective?
Last Updated: June 15, 2012
JDOGSPIKER
December 1, 2013 at 02:48
no its not cause of media its cause max payne is not some bodyguard or whatever down in brazil thats out of his element hes the kickass cop who cleans the streets of the city thats max payne i hated max payne 3 for that reason they killed him