"DBZ: Battle of Z" (360/PS3/Vita) On-Going Discussion Thread

[Super Sayian Prime]

Media Create sales for Japan:
[PS3] Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z -30,192
[PSV] Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z - 22,901
[360] Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z - ???
Total: 53,093

Previous console titles on modern hardware:
(First week / Last known total)

[PS3] Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi - 44,593 / 81,181
[360] Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi - <3529 total

[PS3] Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 - 47,610 / 96,210
[360] Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 -3.000 / <4046
First Week Total: 50,610

[PS3] Dragon Ball: Raging Blast - 57,972 / 118,821
[360] Dragon Ball: Raging Blast - 6561 / 9745
First Week Total: 64,533

[PS3] Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit - 92,298 / 152,582
[360] Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit -<20,933 total

Similar game play styling:
[PSP] Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team - 19,080 / 68,733

[dbboxkaifan]

It's more likely that they'll abandon the franchise before resorting to revisiting those past mechanics.

If they released Dragon Ball: Zenkai Battle Royale for the current-gen consoles (PS4, XO, WU) then that would wrap it up for me and not bothered to look forward to more yearly Dragon Ball games any more.

Namco Bandai better have a plan b for this because Battle of Z isn't doing that great with fans or gamers in general.

[Silkman3003]

@Prime

Ahh, so if i'm reading this correctly, for the PS3 versions of DBZ games in Japan, BOZ is the least selling one in the first week?

Though it looks like the Vita version helped boost up the total to around 53,000?

[Blade]

Namco Bandai better have a plan b for this because Battle of Z isn't doing that great with fans or gamers in general.

If this isn't already their Plan B, then it wouldn't shock me if Plan C was to ditch the franchise - or pump even less money into future endeavors.

[sintzu]

What's more surprising then the bad sales is that bandai know what the fans want yet for some reason they give us the compleat opposite

[VegettoEX]

People keep saying "what the fans want" as if that's some sort of quantifiable thing.

Who are these fans? Where is this consensus? Are you sure you're not just projecting your own wants onto the rest of fandom?

If anything, they did provide what fans "wanted" if you look at the sales data. Each subsequent Sparking!-styled game in this console generation (basically) sold fewer and fewer copies. They "tricked" people with some branding magic naming "Ultimate Tenkaichi" as such, but that clearly didn't work either. So if you look by the sales figures, OK, that's not what fans want. They want something different that doesn't play exactly the same. That's what the numbers are saying, and money speaks more than your words on a random message board do.

So what did they do? Totally fresh developer with totally fresh gameplay style that, while on the surface it resembles older games that people did like, switches us pretty much everything for an all-new experience.

THAT'S A SOLID BUSINESS DECISION.

[sintzu]

Who are these fans? Where is this consensus? Are you sure you're not just projecting your own wants onto the rest of fandom?[/i]

For the most part i alwayse read fan comments about wanting a budokai 4 or tenkaichi 4 with new content wich is a major problim with the pa3 games that evryone will agree on and that's the new games don't have anything new in terms of charecters and story from burst limit to battle of z it's saiyan saga to buu saga while dragon ball heroes gets all kind of new stuff from gt to new transformations so why can't they give us a game with that kind of stuff ? if heroes is selling very good thanks to that wown't the console games as well ?

[JeffJarrett]

They want something different that doesn't play exactly the same. That's what the numbers are saying, and money speaks more than your words on a random message board do.

Fans want games that play like Budokai or Tenkaichi games. What they did is keeping changing the gameplay while removing content, and here is the result. They should have just improved the already existing gameplays and add more content, that's all we were asking.

Instead of giving us an improved gameplay A, a gamplay A+ or A++, they give us a totally different gamplay, a gamplay B. With gameplay B < gameplay A, in addition to less content in game B, sure we won't buy the new games.

Mario sell well and have great gameplay because they don't change the gameplay with each games, they improve the already existing gameplay. Considering DBZ games with lot of content is what makes them sell well, Dragon Ball Heroes proves this (as well as Tenkaichi 3), why are they doing exactly the contrary to sell well: change gamplay (with new gamplay < old gameplay) and remove content.

[Eddie]

Who are these fans? Where is this consensus? Are you sure you're not just projecting your own wants onto the rest of fandom?[/i]

For the most part i alwayse read fan comments about wanting a budokai 4 or tenkaichi 4 with new content wich is a major problim with the pa3 games that evryone will agree on and that's the new games don't have anything new in terms of charecters and story from burst limit to battle of z it's saiyan saga to buu saga while dragon ball heroes gets all kind of new stuff from gt to new transformations so why can't they give us a game with that kind of stuff ? if heroes is selling very good thanks to that wown't the console games as well ?

"Fan comments on the internet" are probably the last thing Bandai Namco should be looking at for their business decisions. Those oft-repeated Character Creator internet comments reallly didn't lead the franchise in the right direction with Ultimate Tenkaichi. As for everyone agreeing that the PS3 games brought nothing new to the table, I can't say you're correct on that. I thoroughly enjoyed Tarble's playable debut, the customization in the Raging Blast games, and I look forward to the Battle of Gods content in the new game.

[sintzu]

Who are these fans? Where is this consensus? Are you sure you're not just projecting your own wants onto the rest of fandom?[/i]

For the most part i alwayse read fan comments about wanting a budokai 4 or tenkaichi 4 with new content wich is a major problim with the pa3 games that evryone will agree on and that's the new games don't have anything new in terms of charecters and story from burst limit to battle of z it's saiyan saga to buu saga while dragon ball heroes gets all kind of new stuff from gt to new transformations so why can't they give us a game with that kind of stuff ? if heroes is selling very good thanks to that wown't the console games as well ?

"Fan comments on the internet" are probably the last thing Bandai Namco should be looking at for their business decisions. Those oft-repeated Character Creator internet comments reallly didn't lead the franchise in the right direction with Ultimate Tenkaichi. As for everyone agreeing that the PS3 games brought nothing new to the table, I can't say you're correct on that. I thoroughly enjoyed Tarble's playable debut, the customization in the Raging Blast games, and I look forward to the Battle of Gods content in the new game.

Looking at the sales of the ps2 games and ps3 games should tell them what they should be doing and no one is going to buy a game for tarbel

[Eddie]

For the most part i alwayse read fan comments about wanting a budokai 4 or tenkaichi 4 with new content wich is a major problim with the pa3 games that evryone will agree on and that's the new games don't have anything new in terms of charecters and story from burst limit to battle of z it's saiyan saga to buu saga while dragon ball heroes gets all kind of new stuff from gt to new transformations so why can't they give us a game with that kind of stuff ? if heroes is selling very good thanks to that wown't the console games as well ?

"Fan comments on the internet" are probably the last thing Bandai Namco should be looking at for their business decisions. Those oft-repeated Character Creator internet comments reallly didn't lead the franchise in the right direction with Ultimate Tenkaichi. As for everyone agreeing that the PS3 games brought nothing new to the table, I can't say you're correct on that. I thoroughly enjoyed Tarble's playable debut, the customization in the Raging Blast games, and I look forward to the Battle of Gods content in the new game.

Looking at the sales of the ps2 games and ps3 games should tell them what they should be doing and no one is going to buy a game for tarbel

I'm not quite getting your argument on this one. Nobody will buy a game for Tarble, but those millions of internet commenters will totally throw down that cash for... GT and new forms? The logic is pretty faulty. Especially since, y'know, Bandai Namco did those exact things in their games for the PS3/360. Ultimate Tenkaichi had GT (apparently due to that rabid fan demand), and new forms for characters has been a sorta kinda big thing.

[thatdbzguy]

So... Does the game suck?

Yeah, pretty much.

[thatdbzguy]

I like how most critics are totally ignoring this game.

[VegettoEX]

I like how most critics are totally ignoring this game.

Why would you expect them to? Do you pay attention to every annualized anime fighting game?

Also, let's put "sucks" in perspective here, folks. Taiketsu sucks. Battle of Z is at least competent at what it's trying to do.

[Blade]

Battle of Z is at least competent at what it's trying to do.

I dunno, even if we're treating the game mechanics as being most relate-able to MMORPG combat, it's still pretty ham-fisted, overly simplistic and clunky.

It feels unfinished, unrefined - and to some extent, untested, which is probably a consequence of a tightly squeezed budget.

[Eddie]

I like how most critics are totally ignoring this game.

Why would you expect them to? Do you pay attention to every annualized anime fighting game?

Also, let's put "sucks" in perspective here, folks. Taiketsu sucks. Battle of Z is at least competent at what it's trying to do.

You rat bastard.

I'm still waiting on my copy of Battle of Z, so I can only comment based on the demo. Still, "sucks" doesn't really tell you much. I don't agree with many of the decisions made with this game (no Vs CPU is going to kill this game's replay value once the fans abandon the online mode), but I found the gameplay to be a refreshing change of pace.

[thatdbzguy]

I like how most critics are totally ignoring this game.

Why would you expect them to? Do you pay attention to every annualized anime fighting game?

It's not like critics have much else to review at the moment. The best they could do right now is Tomb Raider, which is just a port.

[dbboxkaifan]

Mario sell well and have great gameplay because they don't change the gameplay with each games, they improve the already existing gameplay. Considering DBZ games with lot of content is what makes them sell well, Dragon Ball Heroes proves this (as well as Tenkaichi 3), why are they doing exactly the contrary to sell well: change gamplay (with new gamplay < old gameplay) and remove content.

You know if the Dragon Ball franchise was owned by Nintendo or Sony Computer Entertainment we'd have a quality seal that the games would live up to its potential but being on Namco Bandai's hands is like asking for trouble. I don't even consider Microsoft because they ruined Rare.

I agree that the Dragon Ball games need to step their game up but neither of Namco Bandai (I know that they've officially changed to Bandai Namco but whatever) nor ARTDINK have done it properly.

[Eddie]

You know if the Dragon Ball franchise was owned by Nintendo or Sony Computer Entertainment we'd have a quality seal that the games would live up to its potential but being on Namco Bandai's hands is like asking for trouble. I don't even consider Microsoft because they ruined Rare.

I agree that the Dragon Ball games need to step their game up but neither of Namco Bandai (I know that they've officially changed to Bandai Namco but whatever) nor ARTDINK have done it properly.

Nintendo and Sony have both released their fair share of terrible games. Being owned by one of those two companies does not inherently guarantee any sort of "quality seal that the games would live up to its potential." The franchise could absolutely improve, but Dragon Ball: Ozaru Jr. Math would not light up the sales charts.

[Li'l Lemmy]

Also, let's put "sucks" in perspective here, folks. Taiketsu sucks. Battle of Z is at least competent at what it's trying to do.

I can get behind this. Even Ultimate Tenkaichi is a god compared to... to... ugh. I can't even say the name. I refuse. When you talk about "sucks," that one is the real deal.

Battle of Z at least shows a considerable effort on the part of a new developer, who I think worked really hard to deliver a competent DragonBall presentation. That other game plays like it was vomited into a blender and then flushed down a toilet full of shit.


~Da Lemmy