You can’t be satisfied after seeing one of the most hilarious videogame scenes - the “Secundo el major screw up one”
I know I have to have more…
It’s just a shame that the game didn’t sell as many copies as it should have, because then the arrival of a sequel would only be a matter of time.
I heard BG&E will become a trilogy, although I can’t remember if that was actually official news or not.
EDIT: apparently BG&E was supposed to be a trilogy, but Ubisoft reacted with “no comment” when asked about a rumour that a sequel was already in production.
They’d better make a sequel. That ending just pissed me off.
The last boss was tough indeed, but I figured out that he reversed directions on the controls.
I thought the boss was pretty easy myself actually.
I would love to get this game! However my xbox just died on me for the third time and I’m not gonna try to fix it this time! Is the gamecube version much different?
I have heard news of the trilogy from IGN but alas no more info has been shown since summer when that was posted.
I finally got a chance to play BG&E and I must say it really is a brilliant game. I wonder what Ubisoft were thinking when they released Prince of Persia and BG&E at the same time. Talk about bad timing. This game deserved far more attention, and far better sales. What’s worth noting though is that on a lot of different forums there’s a thread about BG&E, just like this one. The game may not have sold that well in the beginning, but there’s a dedicated fanbase still supporting the game and demanding a sequel. I’m convinced that enough people are willing to buy a sequel to make the game profitable, the problem is convincing Ubisoft about that…
Based on what? You have to remember that the internet is primarily the vocal minority. While it may seem like there’s a lot of people demanding a sequel to BG&E, the fact of the matter is that the original hardly sold at all. Even if you were to get five thousand people together to sign a petition or whatever, that’s hardly enough to justify a sequel… As much as I’d love to see one myself 
Based on what?
Do you believe it should’ve sold more copies, Abadd, or was the game simply out of touch with what the majority of gamers today want? Or more to the point: should this game have even been made?
Beyond Good and Evil is a great standalone title, even if it was meant to be the first part of a trilogy. I’ll always remember it as the unique experience that it was.
True, but you have to consider the fact that since its launch Beyond Good and Evil has earned a lot of recognition from the gaming community. If Ubisoft would announce a sequel today, it would be top news on every gaming website. A huge difference when compared to the game’s release that was overshadowed by Ubisofts’ own Prince of Persia. I’d really like to see the final sales numbers to see just how bad the sales were.
Gehn: Are you asking “based on what” as in “why didn’t it sell?” Or “how do you know it didn’t sell?”
(This should answer D-unit’s and Geoffrey’s questions as well.)
If the question is the latter of the two, it’s from sales figures. The final numbers turned out marginal when you added all three console versions together, but that’s primarily because of the drastic price drops. At full price, it hardly sold at all. I’m talking in the thousands.
And if you’re asking the former of the two, well, that’s a little more complex. Geoffrey’s right in that it doesn’t resonate with the mass market. Well, primarily, the style didn’t, is my guess. A female lead character? Rarely works (there’s only a handful of success stories where having the lead be a female worked). A female lead character with green lipstick and is a photographer? Even worse (in terms of mass appeal).
Had Nintendo made this game, it would have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It’s right along the same lines as Zelda in terms of style. In the end, though, other than Nintendo, no game publisher has really been able to release a game like this and be successful with it.
And releasing it at the same time as Prince of Persia was only part of the problem. Prince of Persia didn’t sell as well as they had expected, either. In fact, with the amount of money they spent advertising PoP, I bet that Ubisoft either actually lost money, or barely made any at all.
(On a side note, lot of people say, “Such-and-such game would have sold better if they had just advertised it more…” Sure, that’s true. But what if the number of increased sales don’t offset the actual amount spent on marketing? You end up even further in the hole.)
In the end, I’m glad they made the game. I enjoyed it thoroughly. But, I think the game may have just lost too much money to warrant a sequel, unforutnately. You never know, though. Game companies have been known to do stranger things.
As for the comment about recognition in the community, like I said, the onlin community is a very small, but vocal community. While the opinion of the public sometimes resonates with the majority of the message boards (i.e. GTA, Halo, etc.), such is rarely the case. Take a look at the Panzer series, for instance. If you were to just base your theories on popularity of the series just on these boards, you’d think it was the best selling game in history. =\
What bugs me is that Ubisoft tried everything to sell PoP (for example it was even bundled together with Splinter Cell), while BG&E didn’t even get a decent patch to fix the PC version. And if what you say about PoP not making any profit is true, why is it getting a sequel?
Sure it’s always a risk, but imo Ubisoft didn’t even try to sell this game.
But why are we getting a sequel to Ico then? If I ask every “mainstream” gamer I know if they ever heard about a game called “Ico”, I doubt anyone would know. While Ico’s sales were less worse than those of BG&E, the situation is more or less the same. If they can sell Ico 2, they can sell BG&E 2.
Abadd: I was actually fooling around with you since you reacted with a “Based on what?” when D-Unit said there ARE people who would buy a sequel.
I aske dyou “Based on what” as a comparation between your “i know these were the sales” and Donut’s “i know there is a considerable public”.
Anyways you say the online faction of the gamers is very small as far as proportions are concerned.Well I dunno really…
Everyone who can affored consoles and videogames nowadays can afford a Pc with a net connection (in fact net/pc is often a priority between the two; at least from my experience).
Most videogame fans with internet connection visit the net and input (even if it’s a couple times a month) their thoughts in forums related to videogames.
That’s what ha sbeen shown to me in my daily life.Unless you are talking about strictly Championship Manager and soccer game fans which normally don’t reveal the same “pattern”.
PoP most likely sold just enough to cover the brunt of the development costs, and seeing as the game is still using the same engine, the cost of developing a sequel was most likely much less than the original. I didn’t say that the game didn’t sell… I said it just didn’t meet their expectations.
As for why they put more money behind PoP than BG&E, it’s not like they have unlimited resources. You have to bet big in cases like this. They had two products, one of which was a rather cartoony-looking adventure game… the other was part of a classic franchise that had more action. Both were high quality… They probably had to choose which one they thought would do best and put all their money behind it. They chose the right one, IMO, but neither did nearly as well as the had hoped.
As for Ico, well, Ico was always a vanity project. When you’re a first party, you have the luxury of being able to spend money on games that fill certain niches… that make your console stand out. It was one of the reasons why Sega made interesting games way back when. You don’t have to cater to the mass market: that’s what 3rd party publishers are there for. And so, when you’re a first party and you’re raking in all kinds of money from royalties, you have the ability to make artsy games like Ico.
One thing’s for sure Sands of Time managed something quite difficult since there had been a not too good 3D PoP game before it.
Btw : Damnit I hate when that happens!You shoulnd’t have posted after me Abadd 
Ironically PoP uses the JADE engine developed by - you guessed it - the BG&E team. So the same situation would apply to BG&E, they could still use the same engine. I guess Ubisoft didn’t believe a sequel would sell any better than the first game. It’s disappointing to play through a game only to realize that you may never find out the rest of the story. I only hope Ubisoft reconsiders… You made some valid points about Ico, although a company like Ubisoft should be able to release games that aren’t guaranteed to sell millions of copies. It’s not like BG&E is going to make them loose their fan base, quite on the contrary.
It’s a pretty heavily modified version of JADE, but the reasons still stand. All the R&D was done for PoP, and the sales were strong enough to the point where they felt like they could recoup costs (most likely, anyway).
As for Ubisoft being able to do something like that, not so much. There are very few companies that can have major games bomb and still survive. EA, Rockstar, Nintendo… that’s about it. The rest of the game companies are pretty dependent on a few key franchises. Every thing else that bombs makes it even more necessary for those key franchises to do that much better. It ain’t easy…
Ubisoft = Key FranchiseS
Edit: I’ve been reading conflicting sales figures for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. When it was initially released (last December) it sold somewhere in the region of 400 000 copies across all platforms (which isn’t bad), while Ubisoft’s official sales figures later reported that it went on to sell a combined total of 2.4 million copies (maybe it sold better in Europe?).
All the Tom Clancy games have been million hit sellers too (the original Splinter Cell has sold 6 million copies since the game was launched according to Ubisoft’s official sales figures). It’s a shame that Beyond Good and Evil didn’t enjoy the same success. That’s life I suppose.
I wonder how Sega’s Headhunter: Redemption and Sammy’s Spy Fiction are doing. Stealth Action/Adventure games seem to be big business these days.