KOF XIII Deluxe Edition/4 CD Soundtrack Edition

[Koinos Kosmos]

Hi again all,

More pre-order woes betide me!

I pre-ordered the UK PS3 version of KOF XIII from Amazon about two months ago - itself replete with generous offerings such as a double-sided poster and an art CD. Now, the European publisher Rising Star games stated that there would be yet another pre-order bonus in the form of a four CD soundtrack collection and that they expected it to be packed with all copies of the game at launch.

The game duly arrived and I whipped it open only to find it was the so-called 'Deluxe Edition' containing the poster and CD sans soundtrack! I promptly returned it to Amazon and went online to find some answers. It appeared certain sites had offered the soundtrack version but were now sold out. In a last bid, so to speak, I took the eBay plunge and discovered a Hong Kong seller who offered the US soundtrack edition at a reasonable post-launch price. I purchased it immediately and it shipped soon thereafter. Oddly, they didn't mention the poster or CD as part of the bundle.

The game arrived this morning and upon opening it I discoverd that while the CD collection was included in a separate sleeve, the poster and art CD were missing - the US version was not labelled as a 'Deluxe Edition'. It must also be noted that Atlus is the publisher in North and South America so perhaps that has some bearing on it.

All I can say is that from an ardent SNK fan from AES up, I am rightly dismayed for once - and yes, even taking into account the Playmore-only era and KOF XII - at the way they've handled the pre-order.

Has anyone encountered the same problem?

[endo]

I got mine from Shopto and it arrived without the CDs. I had a quick google the next day and it turned out Shopto were going to send out the soundtracks at a later date- presumably meaning there was a supply issue with Rising Star.
I think Fuse had an email from them along these lines, but I got no info from them but to be honest and in the end I wasn't that bothered if the CDs turned up or not. I actually received the soundtracks sometime last week, can't remember the day.

You might want to try posting on the Rising Star forums to see what's going on.

[Neon Ignition]

As far as I'm aware the Deluxe Edition name is just a term that the retailers used to make it sound better. All copies of the game are standard versions with the pre-order stuff being handled seperately which has led to some people getting the CD's etc a few days after the game arrived.

[endo]

Yeah, I think the Deluxe Edition is essentially the only edition in the UK, i.e. you get the art disc and the poster etc. The soundtrack CDs were a separate pre-order bonus here. The extras with the US release are different since Atlus handled it and did their own thing. It does seem Rising Star are really trying to deliver decent little packages when they're releasing these games. Saying that, was it Death Smiles where there was an issue with the soundtrack disc and all the tracks were just wav files on a CDR or something?
Anyway, kudos to them for trying.

[Koinos Kosmos]

Yeah, it's just a pity that since KOF is such a niche brand in the West - in Europe, particularly - that they couldn't have just made the soundtracks available with all Deluxe Edition pre-orders. My inner completist is now telling me to purchase a 360 version post haste!

[endo]

I think it was the intention to offer the soundtracks for all preorders, but purely on a 'while stocks last' basis, which does seem a bit contradictory really. I would imagine the fact you didn't get one is more an issue with Amazon that Rising Star. Bit of a bummer, but I don't think it would make such a massive difference to sales anyway since despite being relatively niche in Europe, people who've never played the game aren't so likely to be tempted by a load of tracks from games they don't know or have never played.

[J0e Musashi]

KOF is not niche in the West at all. There are only a handful of titles that have not been released to the Overseas market, and they are largely novelty or edits anyway.

[endo]

Yeah, loads of KoF games have been released in the West, but they certainly are niche in the sense that not many people buy them. It's only in recent years that interest in fighters in general has picked up, and even now with the interest in Street Fighter etc. KoF isn't exactly shifting millions of units.

Ignoring notions of casual and hardcore, if you take 'gamers' as anyone who buys and plays games in general, most gamers aren't buying this stuff. I would imagine the number of people who are into KoF and buy every game hasn't changed much over the years. I would have thought the series has found more fans over the last few years with the resurgence in fighters as a whole, but it's far from a household name, whereas most people who play (or used to play, or have never even played in a few cases) games would know what Street Fighter was, even if they weren't into it.

Going on sales alone (and I hate myself for looking - sales talk normally bores me to tears), KoF is resoundingly 'niche' in the West.

Street Fighter 4 - 360
Week 1
USA: 267,221
Europe: 88,564

KoF XIII - 360
Week 1
USA: 76,155
Europe: 7,101

Just over 7000 units in Europe in its first week? Even if that only included the 27 EU Member States, divided equally among them that's 259 per country, which is an unrealistic scenario admittedly. I'd be amazed if the reality was wildly different though. I'd guess more sales in France and the UK, and possibly in Italy and Spain, but seriously, 7000 units in one week- how is that not niche? And according to those figures, SF4 did loads better, but compare those figures to the likes of what FIFA, CoD etc. sell day one, let alone week one. KoF is great, always has been (mostly), but it is niche.

[J0e Musashi]

You're talking about one game. I was talking about the brand as a whole.

[Flabio]

It's still a tiny amount compared to even 'average shooter 4'.

Fighting games are considered to have done very well indeed if their global sales are over a million.

Most games don't even break even with one million sales these days.

[endo]

You're talking about one game. I was talking about the brand as a whole.

I'm not going looking for figures but has any KoF really shifted loads of units in the West? I doubt it.

[Koinos Kosmos]

It was only around mid-2004 that KOF began to get any exposure in Europe again since the PlayStation conversion of KOF '95 in 1996 - and that was with a rather tardy compilation of 2000 and 2001 on PS2. Granted, the NTSC-U DC and PS received conversions of late 90's KOF in the form of 'Dream Match 1999' for DC - an enhanced port of '98 - and 'KOF '99: Millennium Battle' for both formats but they arrived to muted fanfare and quickly vanished after an initial print run. Obviously, this was in part due to SNK's financial problems - or implosion, even - at the turn of the century and their lack of marketing funds.

All the same, KOF is certainly a strange beast, never quite possessing the requisite cachet outside of its native territory to enable it to be embraced by the masses. I remember reading C&VG during the Davies Era and despite how they championed it in the magazine - reviewing the import Saturn versions of '95 and '96 or plying would-be DC adopters with Dream Match '99 in a blind-test - it still fell far short of the appreciation of titles like Street Fighter Zero 3. I guess some felt that it was some kind of quasi-SF series with anachronistic 16-Bit visuals that didn't deserve their attention.

[Shoju]

Yeah, loads of KoF games have been released in the West, but they certainly are niche in the sense that not many people buy them. It's only in recent years that interest in fighters in general has picked up, and even now with the interest in Street Fighter etc. KoF isn't exactly shifting millions of units.

Ignoring notions of casual and hardcore, if you take 'gamers' as anyone who buys and plays games in general, most gamers aren't buying this stuff. I would imagine the number of people who are into KoF and buy every game hasn't changed much over the years. I would have thought the series has found more fans over the last few years with the resurgence in fighters as a whole, but it's far from a household name, whereas most people who play (or used to play, or have never even played in a few cases) games would know what Street Fighter was, even if they weren't into it.

Going on sales alone (and I hate myself for looking - sales talk normally bores me to tears), KoF is resoundingly 'niche' in the West.





Just over 7000 units in Europe in its first week? Even if that only included the 27 EU Member States, divided equally among them that's 259 per country, which is an unrealistic scenario admittedly. I'd be amazed if the reality was wildly different though. I'd guess more sales in France and the UK, and possibly in Italy and Spain, but seriously, 7000 units in one week- how is that not niche? And according to those figures, SF4 did loads better, but compare those figures to the likes of what FIFA, CoD etc. sell day one, let alone week one. KoF is great, always has been (mostly), but it is niche.

I hope those figure are wildly off and it's done at least well enough to ensure future games. I think this is miles better than SF4 and 1 of the best fighters this gen so seeing that sort of disparity in the sales is a bit depressing (though obviously it was never gonna do as well). Sales in Japan are supposed to have been good and hopefully in Asia too.

http://orochinagi.com/2011/12/kof-xiii-is-sold-out