Bollocks.
1. Early adopters of consoles are usually hardcore gamers that buys ton of games.
2. Since DeS Souls series became BIG. I don't know what are numbers for DS2 but it looks like it will brake 3-4mln coppies sold
3. It is first souls next gen game. Meaning ton of Dark and Deamon Souls fans will buy it to get their crack fix.
4. From is doing it because:
a) they don't want to pay for next gen developement cost alone (which include R&D)
b) FROM is not big company. They probably don't have money to create two games with their own funding B2B.
5. They will still sell shitload of copies even if game is not multiplatform.
First off, what the hell is it with this "next gen development cost R&D" bullshit? Have I unwittingly ventured into a parallel universe where Codex became neofag? What R&D? They already have an engine that runs on PC, and with the reused assets visible in these screens and gifs, Beast almost surely uses that engine as well. This isn't fucking Watch_Dogs, they're not going to spend millions carefully mocapping thousands of different animations for every action, on voiceacting everywhere, on making sure the lawn in front of every house is unique and special, and other nonsense that causes AAA games to cost so much. They're going to have higher-poly models, more effects, better lighting, and (hopefully) larger levels. You don't need R&D for that, they arguably already had these things in DaS2 but had to gut the game because of shitty 8 year old consoles. If anything, developing for the PS4 might be easier for them, as they won't have to bend themselves over backwards to fit the levels in 512 MB RAM.
DaS2 shipped 1.2 million copies across NA and EU, this is on both Xbox and PS3. If you add PC sales and Japanese PS3 sales, it's likely above 2 million as of now. This is 1.2 million on two consoles with a combined install base of over 100 million. Now, take the PS4. Install base unlikely to be over 20 million when Beast ships and basically no Japanese sales. Yep, I think around 1 million is a decent estimate. For a point of comparison, look at Infamous: SS, huge first-party exclusive, open world action game with jaw-dropping (for consoletards anyway) graphics, and it didn't even break 1.5 million as far as we know.
Sure, you can argue "oh, Souls fans will buy PS4s to play it", but that's a great unknown. They might, or they might not. I seriously doubt the Japanese will suddenly start loving the PS4 because of one game. For everyone else, no idea.
And the reason I find this a weird move, is that, assuming Beast is a proper Souls game, why not pitch the thing to Namco and make it multiplatform for easily double the sales? One reason I can think of is that From are extremely sick of shitty last-gen consoles, but couldn't find a publisher that would shoulder the risk of a next-gen only game. I find that somewhat hard to believe, but it's possible. It's still very surprising if it's essentially a Souls game, and not something new. I can only imagine that they end up with IP ownership and other perks, because otherwise they're letting themselves get royally fucked in the arse.
Cowboy Moment
if it sold 500k in a year in NA alone, i really don't see how the slightly over 3 times that worldwide is an "inflated number" (unless the article stated otherwise)
The 1.69 number is from VGChartz, which is mostly bullshit. Still, they claim it sold close to 900k in NA total, which would be quite an achievement for a physical release of a console game, which typically see extremely frontloaded sales. It's possible, but I think a total figure around 1.3 is more realistic.
huge amount of PS4s sold (more than PS3s sold when Demon's Souls came out, and that was a success
Not even close. Also, PS4 is selling like shit in Japan specifically.
