Dark Souls had 90,000 signatures and sold more then 3 times as much in a few months.
While you can't find those numbers accurately anywhere, GTA 4 has easily sold millions and millions of copies in the past 5 years. I'm thinking 5 million at the very least. GTA 5 on the PC would sell half a million to a million in the first month without even trying.
Two Worlds is a jump from Oblivion, let alone Skyrim.
Yes, Vanquish looks infinitely better artistically speaking, simply because Gears is as dull as they come. So yeah, not a great example there.
Thing is this, westerners aspire more for realism while Japanese take more then a few artistic liberties with their art direction.
Want appealing female in a western game? Lara Croft from this year's reboot, and to boot, she isn't dressed like a ......excuse my language .....hooker. I'm sorry but that the truth. That is not how you make a character appealing, no matter what silly excuses you drop for her being like that (the End stuff).
But above all else, there's a certain juvenile spirit in what Japan does that rarely comes across from western games. Now please, don't confuse juvenile with kiddie. There's a certain sense of wonder that comes with the territory and that's what I THINK Japanese developers do best. Think Studio Ghibli and you'll know what I mean.
Finally I think you love the style of Japanese developers more then anything else. To simply state they have superior character designs and/or animations sounds just plain biased.
@Thor_Oddinssohn @AmZD @Cloud_imperium @Sushiglutton Destructoid have no idea what they are talking about .....but then again, if you checked it wasn't even them with that story.
Also, that number is based on the ASSUMPTION that Rockstar pumped into MP 3 the same resources they pumped into GTA 4, plus the delays. I have it on good authority that MP 3 had infinitely less resources at its disposal. For starters, as most people might know, Rockstar Vancouver handled MP 3, which based on several sources, had as much as 75 employes at one time, all working on that game. Now true, there have been many delays on the project, but compare 75 people with the 500+ that worked on GTA 4 from the start (yes I know, they ramp development in the last 12 months, that's why you've read reports of 1000+ people working on GTA 4, MP3 probably got as high as 500, if not more).
A game's budget comes down to how many people worked on it and for how long. MP3, at worse, cost maybe 60 million (but I'm more inclined to believe it was 40-50, realistically speaking).
Character design is subjective. I think there are SOME Japanese developers that do what you said (Nintendo and Capcom, From Software, for the most part), unfortunately most of them just rely on the same tropes (not something Western developers are strangers too either).
BUT, and a big but here, while once on the forefront of technology, Japanese developers have fallen on the wayside, content in recycling the same code they used a decade ago while only updating models with higher poly counts and obviously higher resolution textures and then calling it a day.
Finally, I think Skyrim (or any Elder Scrolls game for that matter) is hardly worthy of some of the artistic merits it gets. Fans worked more then the actual devs to make that game beautiful, if you ask me.
If you want breathtaking art direction in a game, look no further then The Witcher 2 and even its upcoming sequel (which we've only seen glimpses of).
Love the "out of your own ass" numbers. Max Payne 3 did NOT cost that much. Witcher 1 cost 8 million, Witcher 2 was twice that. Witcher 3 is PROBABLY (since I don't have any data on that) going to cost at the very least TWICE, if not more. Also remember The Witcher 3 is far from being anywhere near finished. They still have a year to go. My educated estimate is anywhere from 30 to 40 million.
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