I’ll just point out you need to change your zip code to a local one for the Amazon website you are viewing to get a real idea of stock. Amazon has started blocking other regions, just not consistently.Looks like game is selling out on Amazon worldwide...
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PlatinumGames // Strategic Bomba Command // non-stop climatic bloody minded self-publishing action. // P* Origins: Clover & the Lost Okami sequel.
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Just checked and turns out, it's not sold out on Amazon UK, France nor Japan. Only on Amazon US it says it's not available but that's probably just because of my region. It's ranking at #39 so selling out at that placement would be kinda weird.Looks like game is selling out on Amazon worldwide...
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The boycott is limited to people who don't own a Switch and wouldn't buy the game anyway and a few switch owners from some forum bubble
The rest of the world doesn't care, especially about someone crying wolf over refusing a contract
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OPs updated with latest retail sales information, support team details, poll reopened for those who still wish to vote, or anyone wish to change their decision based on previews/reviews & ongoing developments. Late reply, been drafting a response to the full interview with VideoGamesChronicle, however now its best to wait & see what happens during the week ahead.
Great to see lots of discussion here, not quite what I expected mind (no cross-site drama please). Pay disputes are far too serious for tweets & forum posts, time for the adults in the room to intervene & work things out. As things stand, all parties are coming across badly, ultimately an independent review of the contract negotiations with evidence provided by the complainant & the defendant are what's needed as this could prove important going forward for other cases in future. Even if resolved in private, better than what has been going on these past few days. Not much to add except that I've always had misgivings about Hideki Kamiya behaviour on twitter with regards to PlatinumGames (excluding personal tweets within reason), but now he's Vice President, past time to rethink how to engage with the general public. Takao Yamane sure got his work cut out for him reforming/professionalising the studio as depending on how it plays out, this could have implications for self-publishing. Cannot think of any tactful segue-way, so here's the latest preview & key art for the NieR Automata Ver1.1a TV series;
Great to see lots of discussion here, not quite what I expected mind (no cross-site drama please). Pay disputes are far too serious for tweets & forum posts, time for the adults in the room to intervene & work things out. As things stand, all parties are coming across badly, ultimately an independent review of the contract negotiations with evidence provided by the complainant & the defendant are what's needed as this could prove important going forward for other cases in future. Even if resolved in private, better than what has been going on these past few days. Not much to add except that I've always had misgivings about Hideki Kamiya behaviour on twitter with regards to PlatinumGames (excluding personal tweets within reason), but now he's Vice President, past time to rethink how to engage with the general public. Takao Yamane sure got his work cut out for him reforming/professionalising the studio as depending on how it plays out, this could have implications for self-publishing. Cannot think of any tactful segue-way, so here's the latest preview & key art for the NieR Automata Ver1.1a TV series;
It's like everyone decided at once to stop beeing professionnal
I was a bit surprised by it because he usually shys away from giving numbers or data to games with low physical sales because the digital data might be missing and he don't want to label new releases a bomba without the full picture.
Guess in this case it is okay for whatever reason.
PS. He is also saying that like 150 people worked on B3 ? That's a actually quite a bit more than I expected.
Either way calling a potential 2m seller on single platform in a non mainstream genre a bomba seems unnecessary. Not in general or for everyone but in this instance because he usually doesn't resort labeling games like that.
There's no way Nintendo is letting Platinum burn their money away. Bayonetta's budget has to have been kept in check.
Yeah, especially considering the development time. No way the had 150 people working on it for 4 years or whatever.
Seems more of a justification for the bomba label because people brought up the game being a million sellers on Switch.
Mostly joking. I don't think it'll flop flop, will certainly cross a million, but I don't think it'll be a huge success like some expect
Really curious how he's quantifying that. If it's a straight credits list, that seems kind of low. A quick glance at Moby Games Credits for Metroid Dread has 220 and it had controversy about people not receiving credit whereas something like NMH3, an admittedly smaller action game, has 299.
It's odd... when a typical A/AA game is selling like 1-2M on a Nintendo console and people think that its a failure or underperformance.
At the same time everyone is happy when Nier or Tales of devs announce 1 million sales. But there is always something "wrong" with Nintendo and these types of games.
I remember some people were saying that 1 million is not enough for Astral Chain (although the developers were happy), but somehow 1 million is a win for other typical japanese A/AA games like Scarlet Nexus or Code Vein, which launched on multiple consoles/PC and reached its 1 million sales with discounts / Game Pass promotion. I don't remember seeing Chris Dring label their sales as a flop or underperformance.
If Nintendo had released a game like A Plague Tale: Innocence, people would probably also call it "AAA" and label it as bomb or underperformance.
But Focus Entertainment released it, it was not an AAA game, reached 1 million copies in 1 year with deep discounts and considered a great success. Now we're getting a sequel...
The idea of "it's impossible for a [not an indie] game to be successful with a 1-2 million sales" is strange and contradicts the reality. For Call of Duty, God of War and The Last of Us those sales for sure would be not enough.
But A/AA games exist. There's no need to label every game from a respectable publisher like "AAA game".
I see. Thank you.
At the same time everyone is happy when Nier or Tales of devs announce 1 million sales. But there is always something "wrong" with Nintendo and these types of games.
I remember some people were saying that 1 million is not enough for Astral Chain (although the developers were happy), but somehow 1 million is a win for other typical japanese A/AA games like Scarlet Nexus or Code Vein, which launched on multiple consoles/PC and reached its 1 million sales with discounts / Game Pass promotion. I don't remember seeing Chris Dring label their sales as a flop or underperformance.
If Nintendo had released a game like A Plague Tale: Innocence, people would probably also call it "AAA" and label it as bomb or underperformance.
But Focus Entertainment released it, it was not an AAA game, reached 1 million copies in 1 year with deep discounts and considered a great success. Now we're getting a sequel...
The idea of "it's impossible for a [not an indie] game to be successful with a 1-2 million sales" is strange and contradicts the reality. For Call of Duty, God of War and The Last of Us those sales for sure would be not enough.
But A/AA games exist. There's no need to label every game from a respectable publisher like "AAA game".
I see. Thank you.
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Bayo 1 sold more than 1M in its first quarter but apparently that wasn't enough to meet Sega/Platinum expectations (it ended up selling over 2M on PS3/X360, and over 400k on PC).
Bayo 2 was limited by WiiU so obviously it didn't come close to Bayo 1 numbers, though Switch gave it a nice boost later.
I think Bayo 3 can do good. Will it make a huge profit? Probably not, since I imagine it's a more expensive game to make when compared to the first, but I doubt it'll be a flop.
Bayo 2 was limited by WiiU so obviously it didn't come close to Bayo 1 numbers, though Switch gave it a nice boost later.
I think Bayo 3 can do good. Will it make a huge profit? Probably not, since I imagine it's a more expensive game to make when compared to the first, but I doubt it'll be a flop.
Bayonetta 1 was massively overshipped on PS3/360, and it's price dropped pretty fast. Some shops even gave it for free with Vanquish (another Sega/PG game) pre-orders just a few months from launch.
It was?
It opened with 200k in Japan. It was at 1.1M shipped on December 2009 (game only launched at the start of January in the West but this number should include their first shipment, it sold over 100k in US during the launch month on X360) and shipped another 250k between January-March. Seems reasonable to me.
How is it going to be profitable to have a development of 5 years with 80 people, for example, than 3 with 150
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Some thoughts I've thinking on this whole thing, but I was wondering: If Helena Taylor released her videos at game launch instead of around 2 weeks before, would it have done more damage, so to say?
Here I feel being done earlier has its risk of not being as fresh in the mind-space by the time the game and reviews launch. And probably would need constant updates or shoutouts from the relevant people to satisfy our short social media attention spans. But nothing is certain when trying to predict social media sometimes.
Being done at launch, I could see it having a much more immediate impact on how the game is perceived. Like people's immediate reaction would be review bombing it on Metacritic. But this is based on how I perceived the last few big controversies for specific video games, which are no way comparable since many of those had the game itself be the problem, and the timeline of how they went isn't super clear to me.
Here I feel being done earlier has its risk of not being as fresh in the mind-space by the time the game and reviews launch. And probably would need constant updates or shoutouts from the relevant people to satisfy our short social media attention spans. But nothing is certain when trying to predict social media sometimes.
Being done at launch, I could see it having a much more immediate impact on how the game is perceived. Like people's immediate reaction would be review bombing it on Metacritic. But this is based on how I perceived the last few big controversies for specific video games, which are no way comparable since many of those had the game itself be the problem, and the timeline of how they went isn't super clear to me.
Assuming a big part of it is to hurt the reception or launch of the game, i still think the goal was to have this kind of statement post release - especially if the reception was negative and people kept asking about it or mention it in the reviews.
Then we got the very positive previews as well as trailers showing off potential justifications for a smaller role for her or the replacement in Hale, so its very likely that most reviewers or gamers wouldnt have cared too much about her being replaced if the final product still ended up being great.
So it was kinda a now or never situation, because last week after the positive previews it felt like momentum is starting to grow for the first time in a long time after many being sceptical initially.
Its kinda fucked up even to discuss it from this angle because she raised some legit complains and issues that would need some kind of clarifications to fully evaluate, but a) the timing b) calling out Hale as a succesor c) rallying fans to boycoott not just B3 but also potential spin-offs she has nothing to with d) the 500m revenue number for the IP.
Just shows that this wasnt just about stating facts but a hurt person somewhat trying to return the "favor."
If you think about it she hasnt been part of the Bayonetta games for nearly a decade, yet want people to boycott a game 60-70 devs worked their asses off for the last 4 years and is paying their bills to ?
Personally speaking, i would have appreciated her message much more without the boycott and Hale statements.
Then we got the very positive previews as well as trailers showing off potential justifications for a smaller role for her or the replacement in Hale, so its very likely that most reviewers or gamers wouldnt have cared too much about her being replaced if the final product still ended up being great.
So it was kinda a now or never situation, because last week after the positive previews it felt like momentum is starting to grow for the first time in a long time after many being sceptical initially.
Its kinda fucked up even to discuss it from this angle because she raised some legit complains and issues that would need some kind of clarifications to fully evaluate, but a) the timing b) calling out Hale as a succesor c) rallying fans to boycoott not just B3 but also potential spin-offs she has nothing to with d) the 500m revenue number for the IP.
Just shows that this wasnt just about stating facts but a hurt person somewhat trying to return the "favor."
If you think about it she hasnt been part of the Bayonetta games for nearly a decade, yet want people to boycott a game 60-70 devs worked their asses off for the last 4 years and is paying their bills to ?
Personally speaking, i would have appreciated her message much more without the boycott and Hale statements.
Agreed with everything, except maybe "she raised some legit complaints". Which one do you mean?
As far as the "lowballing" complaints, I'm still upset at "gamers" who spend more time fighting for someone in a fancy voice-acting job, getting 4k Dollars for 16 hours of work. The same people most likely don't fight like that for ALL the hundred millions of people doing hard, physical, stressful jobs that require working at least 40 hours per week, 160 hours per month, and STILL paying much less than 4000 Dollars.
If all of this outrage is a placeholder debate for "capitalism needs to end!", then these people literally picked THE worst example for their cause. And I will always be supportive of any anti-capitalistic movements, but this just isn't that. Right now there's a poor retail worker somewhere in the world, having suicidal thoughts, because of the soul-crushing, low-paying, hard job he/she must do, because no other job opportunities exist. That person deserves to be picked as an example for a job that deserves better pay. Not someone talking into a mic for at most 16 hours per month, enjoying high pay, a creative, fullfilling job and even the chance at fame among the product's audience. When I read some of the outragers on Twitter and elsewhere, my only thought at the end of the day is: Wow, these people REALLY hate the poor, huh?
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Hale also liked Kamiya's initial response tweet regarding the allegations, but this isn't really enough to make for an official take from her.
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Well she definitely doesn't seem to have an issue with the replacement with this response.
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Well she definitely doesn't seem to have an issue with the replacement with this response.
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Its difficult to speak on it because many layers, emotions and positions have to be considered but the amount of people ive seen to refer to a 4k payday as nothing, dirt, disgusting and whatever pissed me off. Thats more than most people make in a month here and yeah i get that those are diffrent fields and not everything can be compared 1:1.
But if i can make 4k for a couple days of work on sidegig i have going beside my regular job i dont think i could frame the situation in such a negative way. Maybe im not making enough money but at the same i dont wanna be in a situation where i would be disgusted with this kind of offer.
Its okay to say that PG could or should have handled it better or even paid her more without making it seems 4k for a couple days of work is some human right violations.
She has earned a lot of recognition and fame from that role besides just the monetary value, so her wishing for people to boycott the game and just dismiss Hales future contributions was too much.
Exactly.
If the people currently hard at outraging over this actually told us what they think OTHER JOBS should receive for pay, that really would shine some light on the situation. Because if this is about the unjust distribution of wealth in our overall society, then SURE, I'm all for discussing that. We live in a world where the lady cleaning shit from public toilets gets paid the worst, where Eastern Europeans are transported to Germany to handle the mass-butchering of cheap pork and beef, where retail workers make about 1200 Euro a month for soul-crushing work with shitty customers. And we live in a world where football-players receive millions, Hollywood-actors receive millions, and Youtubers/Twitch-Streamers receive millions. Something is inherently broken in this current form of society and nobody in power wants to fix it.
But I'm not willing to seriously debate this in the context of someone who got a nice, fancy voice-acting job that earns 4000 Dollars for 16 hours of work. All the people currently crusading for her need a severe reality check, touch grass, get outside, leave their bubble, what have you, and get some perspective on what most people are forced to do to get even half of that amount of money. Wasn't there news recently that translators at CrunchyRoll only get paid 50-80 bucks for one episode? That's insane to me. Each episode and its translation will be used FOREVER for a millions strong audience, but the person making it possible for all these people to understand the anime only gets a one-time payment of 50-80 bucks? Wow. That would be worth a major outrage imo.
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To be blunt, I don’t see the issue even if what she said was true. They gave her an offer, she thought it was a lowball of her worth and she walked away, studio gets a replacement, the end.
It isn’t like she was forced to take a bad job or she got blacklisted. So not sure what soapbox she’s on other than feeling entitled to play Bayonetta and getting a nice check for it. The whole ‘VA are underpaid’ is just something people latched onto when it’s really just a private depute especially when both Bayonetta’s VAs are union with one being very pro-union and was most likely more expensive.
It isn’t like she was forced to take a bad job or she got blacklisted. So not sure what soapbox she’s on other than feeling entitled to play Bayonetta and getting a nice check for it. The whole ‘VA are underpaid’ is just something people latched onto when it’s really just a private depute especially when both Bayonetta’s VAs are union with one being very pro-union and was most likely more expensive.
Says it all, really. Platinum didn't do anything villainous. We probably won't hear the true story, because Taylor will never tell us and Platinum and Hale are too professional to do so. People who had any interest in the game should buy it.
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By the by this was shared by another VA (William Salyers) who took over a character in Mass Effect 3 and it too is VERY well said:
kotaku.com
Bayonetta's Original Voice Actress: 'I Urge People To Boycott This Game' Over 'Insulting' Pay Offer [UPDATE]
Hellena Taylor, the original voice actress for Bayonetta, claims she wasn't offered a living wage by PlatinumGames for the upcoming Switch exclusive
kotaku.com
That part especially is exactly what I kept thinking, too: Voice-acting simply IS that kind of job where you need to be lucky to make a living off. Some manage to do it, most won't. But no company owes a voice-actor to pay for their "off-time" during which they fail to find a gig. That's why most voice-actors have other jobs on top.
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Exactly. As stated, you don't live on one role unless it's super regular (like Charles Martinet as Mario and company, and even THEN Nintendo isn't all he does). You have to keep your net as wide open as possible. Hunt for auditions, nail them, keep at it. They may not pay that much each, but do enough and the funds add up.
The big question on my mind is WHY Helena isn't doing more VA (before this)? She's clearly talented, so what stopped her from trying for roles in literally anything else? She must either suck royally at auditions (obviously not), or she just never bothers. That's her choice of course, but clearly Bayonetta was never supposed to be her main source of income. You manage with what you're given. Not only that, but that $4000 she was offered likely became $0 because she refused, assuming she had nothing else to work on during said time she would've spent on the role, so again, that was her choice. If not you, then someone else will (Jennifer Hale).
Especially considering Bayonetta is only a thing because Nintendo took it under its wing and have developed enough of a following among Nintendo fans to vote her into Smash. That isn't something you would want to base your entire career on. Even Sean, the person who does the English dub for Goku, does other voice work. Same with the person who voiced Mickey Mouse until his passing in 2009.
Okay, this is becoming a total shitshow now. People "found out" about her political believes and now apparently she doesn't deserve to be paid "properly" anymore. I hate this world so much.
I wish the game the best, a lot of effort went into it, and that's that. I'll be playing A Plague's Tale 2, however ^^
I wish the game the best, a lot of effort went into it, and that's that. I'll be playing A Plague's Tale 2, however ^^
Yeah that’s along the lines of his tweets above, which Hale liked on Twitter.By the by this was shared by another VA (William Salyers) who took over a character in Mass Effect 3 and it too is VERY well said:
Bayonetta's Original Voice Actress: 'I Urge People To Boycott This Game' Over 'Insulting' Pay Offer [UPDATE]
Hellena Taylor, the original voice actress for Bayonetta, claims she wasn't offered a living wage by PlatinumGames for the upcoming Switch exclusive
We still don't know many things, but the comment from William Salyers saying that $4000 is is actually a good offer, makes some things clear, at least for me.By the by this was shared by another VA (William Salyers) who took over a character in Mass Effect 3 and it too is VERY well said:
Bayonetta's Original Voice Actress: 'I Urge People To Boycott This Game' Over 'Insulting' Pay Offer [UPDATE]
Hellena Taylor, the original voice actress for Bayonetta, claims she wasn't offered a living wage by PlatinumGames for the upcoming Switch exclusive
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This is what strikes me. We still don't know how many hours the job was, how much she was wanting, and of course how much Hale is getting.
We are still only hearing one side here so far
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Is there an archive of Amazon placements? I would like to see if the games rise in the charts accelerated significantly once it became the topic of conversation as some people predicted.
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You could try and piece it together from internet archive. Here is the link for the US hourly best sellers. But it doesn't have a capture every day.
Wayback Machine
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The 180 elsewhere is just .. people should learn to wait for facts instead of letting their emotions run rampant.
There's no universe in which $1k for 4 hours of work is "beeing underpaid". By those rates, 99% of the working population is borderline living under the poverty threshold.
There's no universe in which $1k for 4 hours of work is "beeing underpaid". By those rates, 99% of the working population is borderline living under the poverty threshold.
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You cant piece together much, since its not in the charts in October 14th (the latest capture). Though I guess going from not in the charts to number 25 does say something.You could try and piece it together from internet archive. Here is the link for the US hourly best sellers. But it doesn't have a capture every day.
Wayback Machine
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Yeah, and while I'm no voice-actor, $4k for a few days (presumably) of work sounds downright amazing to me. And as I said before, it was HER choice to not accept that amount and depending on if she even had another job at the same time, chose to make possibly NOTHING instead.
Like, she could've taken the job, had been satisfied with it (even if it wasn't to her liking), and she would have future opportunities in both the franchise, and in the industry itself. She obliterated both of those in one fell swoop, and honestly, I'm not sure what she hoped to accomplish by doing so. Nintendo/PG weren't going to do "we're sorry" and kick Jennifer out of the role. Folks have wondered if she went to a lawyer before this. I'm extremely confident she did NOT because ANY lawyer would've told her this was a stupid idea for those reasons alone.
You want to talk about VA's being underpaid? That's fine! But there were obviously other avenues she could've taken to make/bring that message without ruining her career forever.
And honestly I'd hate to bring up twitter drama, but considering what was dug up (look at the now locked Era thread to see, again I'm not bringing that here), she could've avoided the big blowback against her... views if she never did this. You have folks going 180 against her and are now buying the game. Of course she didn't see that coming... but still. :/
The funniest posts from this outrage.
Sound like racist when someone defend because he short ?
Let's move on from that topic I say.
What's Platinum Games working on right now anyway, with Bayo 3 about out?
- recently read some very vague rumors about MS maybe reviving Scalebound
- shouldn't we hear about Astral Chain 2 sooner rather than later if Nintendo intends to continue the franchise?
- Nier 3?
What's Platinum Games working on right now anyway, with Bayo 3 about out?
- recently read some very vague rumors about MS maybe reviving Scalebound
- shouldn't we hear about Astral Chain 2 sooner rather than later if Nintendo intends to continue the franchise?
- Nier 3?
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Bad faith argument, antagonistic behaviour, no respect for the mod's post, third major infraction in less than two months with no signs of learning
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I bet they announce Astral Chain 2 in the February direct.