[ranatalus]

Originally Posted by hello271

I don't think anyone will argue that DDR X is a step down in quality, in terms of songlist. There are barely any crossovers, good KOs/licenses are still few and far in-between, and we still only get a handful of 15+ foot charts in the release.

Contrary to popular belief by the "hardcore" community, Konami's target audience IS the tween/teen girls that will buy each mix, play their favorite licenses over and over and only occasionally venture into the KO area, typically by accident.

Yet, what is Konami to do? DDR sells fewer and fewer copies every year, and it makes no sense for them to pour MORE money into the next mix, to get more KOs and more crossovers and more charts.

DDR games still sell quite well, otherwise they wouldn't be making them. If I remember correctly, every US console release from Extreme back (yes, including the horrible mix that was US Extreme) and possibly Extreme2 has gone BEST HITS.

So the solution I thought up of: Release DDR every two years instead of every year. Let's consider why this will help.

1. Konami can put more songs into every mix. More KOs, more Crossovers, more boss songs (or just hard songs), maybe even a new difficulty. We get a really quality mix of around 100 - 120 songs for each CS release, and maybe 20-30 charts with 15+ ratings instead of 5-6.

You are absolutely right, they COULD put more songs into each mix--but what would their incentive for doing this be? Why make one release when they could easily stretch that content across 2 or 3 versions and have you buy (pirate) 3 games instead of 1? Do you think they hate money or something?

2. Konami will probably save money, so that's incentive for Konami.

How would they save money? If anything, they'd lose immense amounts of money from lost sales.

3. Konami will sell many more copies.

I doubt there would be a significant increase in the number of copies sold, assuming that in that 2 year span they weren't completely forgotten about.

This is because a) there is pent-up demand, remember how popular SuperNova was (relatively) because there hasn't been a new mix in so long?

There was also over a 3 year gap in release there, with the general public having accepted that the game was over and done with. You can't recreate that kind of event.

About half the arcades around the countries have upgraded.

This is a number pulled out of your ass that you are trying to throw off as fact. California has 191 EXTREME machines, compared to 66 SuperNOVA machines. This is probably indicative of the rest of the United states as a whole--some areas might have more or less but I would say that is a good average.

How about SuperNova 2? Not nearly as popular.

Or it could be the fact that the entirety of a SuperNOVA 2 upgrade kit is a marquee, a DVD, and a security chip which caries a ridiculous price tag of roughly $2500.

b) people like fewer versions. Does anyone like 360's multiple SKUs? Or Windows Vista's multiple SKUs? People like having fewer, stable iterations, instead of a million versions that will just confuse them.

That doesn't really apply here. It's not like you can choose between SN 1.3 or SN 1.56 or SN give-you-a-blowjob mix.

Also, do casuals really need to buy a new DDR every year? Of course not. But if Konami release QUALITY DDR versions every two years, that will interest the casuals much more, because the older version will be much more outdated.

I don't think you've dealt with young teenagers much, or don't remember what it was like to be one yourself. They ALWAYS want new things. Things are outdated within a month or two.

4. This will increase the longevity of DDR as a series. People won't get sick of it as quickly because every version will be a full step forward, not the same thing year after year.

"Increasing longevity" is not the same as "dragging your feet to make the same amount of content appear to last longer. It's like saying that if you have enough food to eat for 3 days and don't eat as frequently but eat more when you do, you are somehow going to survive on that 3 days of food longer

And what have we got to lose? Okay, the obvious, one mix every two years instead of two. But so what? Look at DDR X. It's a pretty half-assed mix anyway. It's not even half the mix Extreme was, maybe not even SuperNova. I'd take Extreme's quality of songlist every two years versus two DDR X.

To be fair, EXTREME was supposed to be the equivalent of Beatmania THE FINAL. There weren't supposed to be arcade versions after it. They had planned to be done with it, and as such, put an extraordinary amount of effort into it to make it last (and it did--we are still running EXTREME tournaments over 6 years later!). Along with that, DDR X is Konami's attempt to take things in a different direction (which I don't like but hey, I'm not in charge).

Also, perhaps I'm misunderstanding your wording but you seem to be implying that SuperNOVA is a better mix than EXTREME?

Lastly, while I agree that DDR X US CS is very poor, the arcade version appears to be much better.