Plus you have to license per disk printed still, I imagine, which'll be even more cost in printing the discs with no guarantee that they'd sell. In fact, with considerable reason to think they won't sell given NDA results.
Anyone still think Wii U will "win" "next gen"?
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Billy Idol
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Ah, ok...did not know that. I also thought about just releasing it whatever the sales might be. But the license stuff and all makes sense...did not know that a game could be so unsucessful that in theory it is cheaper to not release it even when it is ready.
No pun intended but I like pulling numbers out of thin air as much as the next guy. Do we know the cost of printing 100k discs and license fees? I only ask because I am pretty sure that is already included and covered by the final price it will cost a customer to pick it up at $60 or whatever Wii U games go for.
But you are right, this could also simply be a case where EA couldn't see any ROI from shipping another game on the weakest selling console in recent history.
But you are right, this could also simply be a case where EA couldn't see any ROI from shipping another game on the weakest selling console in recent history.
It could be pulling numbers out of thin air. It could also be that some of us have tracked this biz and read enough articles over the years to know how it works.
Only when the disc sells. Production costs and fees comes to around $20 I believe (2 minutes Googling throws up this ). These are up front costs. Print 100k discs and you have to spend $7 fees (I've seen devs mention this as $10 before, but I think that was PS2 era) + $4 packaging, so let's say $11 (that's lower than other estimates I've seen). 100 k units sold is $1.1 million going by the link's estimates. If you sell 20k units at $30 per unit money to publisher, that's $600k, so a loss. You only make a profit if enough of those discs actually sell.
There's a thread on this board linking to an article on how 70% of games fail to break even. If you don't expect great sales of your software, it's more economical not to release. That's true for all arts, and plenty of films and books and TV series and games get canned long before they see the light of day when management decides they'll cost more to produce than they're worth.
Edit: Here's a EuroGamer breakdown. £8 license fees
I'd question what "ready for release" is, specifically how much QA it has on it but.
Shipping something costs money, by ready I'd assume it hasn't gone through Nintendo QA, which means you have the opportunity cost of whatever fraction of the team you have to leave on the project while that happens. the Internal test team.
You're not going to just throw it out there so there will be some marketing spend.
You pay the licensing fee per disk to manufacture, so it's an outlay you may never recoup.
You have inventory management, plus the taking potential of taking returns from retailers if they don't sell, or at least providing trades for more desirable inventory.
If you could guarantee 100K sales you'd probably ship it, if the projection was 10-25K you probably wouldn't.
I'm not sure I can totally buy into that reasoning. CoD was old hat, so it would never sell hugely in any case. Most people interested in that game would have acquired it in some other way already by the time the wuu version launched. AC wasn't a completely new title either on wuu IIRC, but C3 is a brand new game. Or was, anyway, when it launched. (It's still pretty darn fresh really...)
It could have been out on wuu from day 1 together with the PC and PS360 versions if EA wanted it would seem, and I don't see why they wouldn't want to, unless they held back just to try and gain traction with nintendo or try to hold the game hostage in order to negotiate contractual advantages somehow or such.
But 3DS is doing alright. Would phones and tablets really steal sales from home consoles before gaming handhelds? Would it heavily impact Wii U while XBox 360 still maintains this much momentum?
Shifty Geezer said:
Most of that loss is due to the immense cost of game development (which is already lost by the time you're trying to determine whether or not to release an already finished game), not over-printing the game. I don't know how things are now but in the past there were plenty of opportunities of highly limited runs. That is of course not something you want with a cartridge, especially if you're making mask ROMs, but that shouldn't apply here. Is this something Nintendo is unwilling to do on Wii U?
Shipping should be roughly proportional to run-size too. But if it still has to undergo a lot of QA that is of course a different story.
At some point Nintendo needs to step up and offer to publish these games themselves, if the original company refuses.
Not really an option. Publishers typically own the rights. They would need to cut a deal with them to make launching on WiiU more attractive, or live without those titles.
Of course I meant an attractive offer that the publisher would want to choose over sitting on the game, not implying that Nintendo has any kind of legal right to take a game from them.
Or did you mean that the publisher couldn't agree to transfer the rights? Hasn't that happened all the time for localizations?
No that's right. The question becomes how does it become worth it for Nintendo if it's not worth it for the publishers.
Increased console sales?
I'd guess more available content would help move more units and help future sales of software.
But we probably all know that the Wii U is going to play third fiddle and vanish into obscurity when both the true next-gen consoles are being released.
They should just be happy they launched before the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft. They need a new Zelda or similar.
Not to be pedantic, but do you mean to say 5th Fiddle, as it's already playing third fiddle to the PS3/XB360 twins.
Though it really should be 6th Fiddle as it's even behind the Wii.
Just bad execution on the part of Nintendo, the system has more potential in my view then what they are delivering. Sure future updates can solve this, but you are correct the Wii is cramping their own market share - not sure if they saw that one coming.Not to be pedantic, but do you mean to say 5th Fiddle, as it's already playing third fiddle to the PS3/XB360 twins.
Though it really should be 6th Fiddle as it's even behind the Wii.
Because lowering the price doesn't solve the problem of lack of games. People who already own the console are the ones complaining of this problem, which is the real reason why the system isn't selling. Even if you had a Wii U for free, there are almost no games on it worth owning that you really shouldn't get for 360 or PS3 instead.
Nintendo doesn't need to lower the price, they need games. We are basically in a 6 month dry spell. There is no point in lowering the price until at least E3 when Nintendo can give us solid dates on games.
Offering publishers deals isn't going to get you games before E3 either. Although they might be able to press all the copies they'd need in a day.
Publishers don't want to make games for a console that isn't selling and Nintendo doesn't want to lower the price if it doesn't get people buying more games. Hence why the term "system seller" for a game is actually really, really important. Nintendo has always been extraordinarily lucky that with its home consoles, it has always launched with a system seller as I've said before, but the Wii U is turning out to be a dud.
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