[Pie-kun]

rantalus really hit the nail on the head so to speak.

Except the target audience of casuals do NOT buy each mix. Find people who have every mix since DDRMAX. That person is more likely to be a hardcore DDR player than a casual. How many casuals do you know that own every mix? I don't. They usually buy one or two games and that's it.

Of course ALL casuals don't tend to buy every mix, but the pool of casual players is WAY bigger than the pool of hardcore players, so they don't need to attract all of the casual players, just a sizable chunk for every game.

I'm going to take sales numbers in NA from VGChartz (which aren't that accurate, but I can't find them anywhere else):

DDRMAX2: 1.09m
Extreme2: 0.92m
SuperNova: 0.83m
SuperNova2: 0.62m
DDR X: 0.21m (so far)

The numbers are clearly dropping, and dropping fast. And is it any surprise? We get basically the same old game every year, with a few tweaks and a lackluster songlist.

A few things to consider with those numbers:

1. MAX2 has been out longer than Extreme 2, which has been out longer than SuperNOVA, which has been out longer than SuperNOVA2, which has been out longer than X. It should not be a surprise that games that have been out longer have sold more copies, especially when they go on to $19.99 BEST HITS.

Here's what I can gather from the VG Charts Data

MAX 2: ???
Extreme 2: ~180 Weeks of sales data
SuperNOVA: ~130 Weeks of sales data
SuperNOVA 2: ~80 Weeks of sales data
X: ~30 Weeks of sales data.

So, obviously a game that's been out twice as long as another game is more likely to have better sales.

2. Remember that back when MAX 2 was released, that was pretty much it in terms of DDR games. Ultramix was not yet released, and there obviously no was GC DDR series going. These days, we have series for PS2, Wii, and 360, so the sales are spread more.

But even if were to accept your assertion, then I should at least be able to expect Konami to pump out a game on the same level of Max2, or SuperNova. But DDR X is not even close to those two games. And if Konami's response is "well DDR is getting less popular," then maybe that's Konami's fault. After all, Konami puts a lot more effort into each IIDX and Pop'n version, and I don't hear those games dying out.

OK, IIDX/Pop'n have WAY different markets than DDR. DDR relies more heavily on casual/new gamers than IIDX and Pop'n Music do. And what has Pop'n Music or IIDX done recently to make the series more "fresh"? Not anything really, besides graphical changes and more modifiers.

I think all of this is coming from the standpoint that you didn't like DDR X (at least the songlist). Fine. But you know what? If they had spent two years on it, it probably would have turned on largely the same because the team was set on it going in a specific direction. The team was criticized for some parts of that direction, and I think that they are committed to turning that around. Obviously, we will see what the new year brings though.