Do you think there'll ever be great, AAA-level home console anime games? What conditions need to be present?

[Warmmedown]

Not counting franchises that started as games and then had animes like the greatest game series of all time or Pokémon.

So far I don't think there have been any great home console games based on anime. I mean the kind of game that gets 85+, even 90+ on Metacritic and takes the gaming world by storm as much as the Resident Evil remakes, Final Fantasy, Nioh, Spiderman PS4 etc. A game that mainstream gaming youtubers would play em massa. Ya get me?

I think one thing holding anime games back is that the story of the game is already known, so the appeal of going through an unknown story isn't there at all for the existing fans of the series and is easily taken away for other players with a quick google search, the temptation of watching the anime (I can also imagine retailers or streaming platforms promoting the anime if they know the game is coming out (to take advantage of the interest to get sales), making it more likely people will watch it) or comments on Youtube trailers and articles.

They can make an original story (set in the same world as the anime) for the game, but if they come up with a truly great story they'll see it as better to just make that story into an anime series/anime movie instead of a game, since they know they already know that the franchise can sell an anime, whereas trying to sell a game is a bigger risk.

So they know they won't have an unknown story to bring in sales, so they don't see it as worth it to make the game extremely high quality.

You might say "but there are high-quality AAA games based on movies". However:

- Harry Potter's Hogwarts Legacy (2023). It has an original story (which supports the idea that an original plot is needed). That story also couldn't be made into a book (time-consuming, JK Rowling probably not keen, maybe not enough plot/character depth for a proper novel) or Hollywood movie (expensive) more easily than a game.
- Spiderman 2 and Spiderman PS4. They don't follow a movie's plot. I don't know if they follow any of the comics' stories (but even if they did follow the comics, almost nobody has read the comics anyway, compared to how many have watched even moderately popular anime and it's hard and time-consuming to read through the Spiderman comics, compared to catching up on an anime). Again, those original stories don't make more sense to make into a movie (too expensive) or a comic (not enough sales power, probably not good enough depth for a comic story) than a AAA game.
- Star Wars games. They seem to use original plots. Movie is still too expensive to make and they already have enough movies coming out.


What do you think could make an anime game happen?
One thing I can think of is if a Western game studio approached the anime company about making a game and said they'll write the whole game without the anime studio's input, because they think they can make money selling it to a primarily American audience. Similar to American studios making anime/manga-based stories, like WB making Dragon Ball Evolution or Fox making Alita: Battle Angel.

 

[SSJ2]

Is there any way to compare how anime stacks up against AAA video games? How much money does One Piece generate compared to Call of Duty? One Piece is one of the largest anime/Manga worldwide and yet has never had a game coming close to the scope of a CoD game.

Your point about not wanting to use a good original storyline could have something to do with it, but in the case of One Piece where the story's ending has already been determined, would that really matter? Maybe they would rather use that idea to create a non canon movie, but AAA video games generate more money as far as I know.

 

[Warmmedown]

Yeh I was imagining they'd do an OP movie instead.
GAMES:
-The best-selling game in Japan was Pirate Warriors on PS3, which made $51.3M (¥6.8B). The next best is $34M (¥4.5B). Unlimited World Red made $17.3M (¥2.3B) across six consoles in Japan, which is pretty bad. Mostly they seem to pull in less than 2B Yen/$15M, aside from the Pirate Warriors (PW) games.
I'm not sure if PW does better because of some sort of Dynasty Warriors rub. One thing I noticed is almost all the OP games since 2010 were also available on PSP/Vita or a DS, which I don't think is the case for any AAA home console games.

MOVIES: All the movies since 2010 have pulled in between $60M and $95M worldwide, except the 3D movie (which totalled less than $7M in Japan/Korea) and OP Film Red which pulled in $246M. The older movies usually pulled in $10M+ worldwide.

GAMES VS MOVIES: The game Unlimited World Red sold like 650,000 units worldwide, with 370,000 being in Japan, so 280,000 outside Japan. So assuming $60/unit, that's $39M. (dunno if $60 is realistic since a lot of the sales were portable. Plus regional price variance).
The Pirate Warriors games might pull in as much as the movies - like PW4 sold over 1 million worldwide in 2020 and reached 2 million worldwide in 2022 (so the sales slowed down around 50% I guess). PW3 also sold over 1 million its first year. So you'd think they'd pull in $60M+, even if the price drops over time.

AAA GAME SALES: AAA games like FFXV, Nioh, RE2 remake, Dark Souls 3 sell like 7 to 12 million units, so $420M to $720M revenue, at $60/unit. Even if the games go half price after a bit, they're making 9 figures. I haven't taken into account microtransactions tbf. Games like God of War 2018, Star Wars: Fallen Order and Red Dead 2 sell 20-50+ million units, so I guess they're making billions of dollars (holy fuck, never imagined that). The new Harry Potter game sold 12M in two weeks, damn. CoD MW2 (2009, add 40% for today's money) made over $1B in its first year. I guess CoD gets a huge boost from the online play, compared to all the single-player games.

AAA GAME BUDGETS: Most games don't release their budget (I mostly only found media estimates), but Nioh apparently declared a budget of around $20M. The Witcher 3 was $81M, for development and marketing. CoD MW2 (2009) took $40-50M to make and $200M to market, according to the LA Times. Most games spend less or the same on marketing than on development, just going by Wikipedia.

ANIME BUDGET: The anime movie Your Name cost 450M Yen/$3.4M to make. DB Super Broly was apparently $8.5M and DBZ Resurrection F was $5M (Japan's 2015-2023 inflation is only like 6%). Idk how accurate those are though - Your Name is from a Japanese newspaper, the DBZ ones are from an American movie newspaper (Deadline) and a Peruvian gaming site. There are some more expensive ones out there (20M+), like supposedly the Ghibli movies and Red Line. But I'd guess OP movies are comfortably under $10M each, if the other budget figures are real.

So idk, a AAA game seems like a bigger risk. Even the weaker-selling movies make over $10M and the new ones are making $60M+, so it seems impossible to not make a profit, although the one thing I haven't found is the marketing costs. Whereas AAA games could make $200M+ in profit, but some of them end up losing 10s of millions.

One thing I'm not sure about is how Shounen Jump/Toei is involved in the game-making process. Like do they write the games or put money into them? I've assumed they do a lot, but maybe they don't.
Do Disney, Marvel etc put money into making games or write the stories?

 

[Fantastische Hure]

The only manga/anime based games in Japan that sold over a million are:
DragonBall (3x I think)
Yu-Gi-Oh! (x3 or x4; best-selling, one even had 2 million.
basically rivalled actual video-game franchises like Pokemon, Dragon-Quest, Monster-Hunter or some-thing)
Kinnikuman
Hokuto no Ken (x2 I think)
Jump cross-over game
Doraemon
GeGeGe no Kitarou
Ninja Hattori-kun

^Is it worth it nowadays? Well maybe.

 

[Classic Adamas]

I'm not too sure. Dragon Ball FightersZ is probably the closest I've seen an anime game to being "mainstream" and that game is very well liked.

I guess if you could get a big open world game release during the height of an anime's popularity in the West, that would be a best seller.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

Wolf you beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch:

Spoiler

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel-Monsters 4 - 2,210,163!!! (full shipment numbers is supposedly 2,500,000 but I'm not sure.)
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel-Monsters - 1,522,968 (shipped 1,610,000)
Ninja Hattori-kun - 1,500,000
Hokuto no Ken (FamiCom) - 1,500,000
DragonBall Z - Super-Butouden - 1,410,000
GeGeGe no Kitaro - Yōkai Daimakyō - 1,250,000
DragonBall: Shenron no Nazo - 1,200,000
Doraemon (FamiCom) - 1,150,000
DragonBall Z - Super-Butouden 2 - 1,150,000
FamiCom Jump: Hero Retsuden - 1,100,000
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel-Monsters II - 1,100,000
Kinnikuman: Muscle Tag Match - 1,050,000
Hokuto no Ken Pachinko Port for the PS2 - 1,000,000

Some of these are shipment numbers I think (like Hokuto no Ken Pachinko thing, last recorded sales number for it was like 962,768 & Duel-Monsters II's last recorded sales number was 984,864), but that's like the video-game equivalent of circulation-numbers for manga soooooooooo...

Also considering up-to late 90s or so I think Famitsu used like a point-system instead of sales numbers, I guess Shueisha/Bandai put shipment numbers for those DragonBall games too, unless there was another sales-tracking magazine or they did the tracking themselves or something.

 

[Warmmedown]

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that information, but I'll try....

Interesting, those were some good sales compared to all the OP games. But then it's not translated into success post-Gameboy and I'm guessing Yugioh game sales dropped to an unnoteworthy level that, since nobody even bothers to write about the sales numbers.
Those also aren't the home console kind of games I'm on about though, both in terms of gameplay and budget.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

Well. Those are the only manga/anime games that reached/surpassed a million (think of all the giant franchises that weren't able to: One-Piece, NGE, Sailor-Moon, you name it), when established video-game franchises can surpass a million in their sleep. You might as-well go with what works (business thinking).

 

[Warmmedown]

Yeh.

twowordpost

 

[sei'taer]

Bandai namco needs to stop getting licenses to make games based on anime IPs