word to mouth is a marketing achievement also. Marketing isnt necessarilly considered anything that can be explicitly noticed
Cross platform development and choice of 'Lead system' *Spinoff*
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word to mouth is a marketing achievement also. Marketing isnt necessarilly considered anything that can be explicitly noticed
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Deja vu...word to mouth is a marketing achievement also. Marketing isnt necessarilly considered anything that can be explicitly noticed
Valid point, but as has been shown a few hundred times over, only marketing which is explicitly noticed ever gives rise to word of mouth in the first place. You think about the very same games that people are discussing their expectations about or the ones that get discussed a lot after they're out... which games are they? Any obscure projects among them? Anything that hasn't been covered up and down by the press or has a name behind it?
And that goes double for a game after it is out. Word of mouth is still effective, sure... but you need initial sales velocity or all you get out of word-of-mouth is a minor short-term victory that hardly accounts for more than a handful of units sold (albeit that "handful" means something like 1-50k).
For all the easy quips about the "information superhighway" making it easy for word to spread, people don't actually take "road trips" as often as you'd think. sorcerer seems to overstate many things, but there's more reality to it than many of us would like to accept.
On the other hand, web made things really easy for non-consumers to help spread "the word of mouth" - from various viral stunts and selfproclaimed gamer PR spokesperson blogs, to the fact that companies are happily placing their community reps even publicly into gaming forums, let alone any that are there covert.ShootMyMonkey said:
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
In other words... getting noticed other ways than spamming gaming magazines and websites. Not really any different. Doesn't change the fact that you still have to get noticed first however you might choose to do it and only then does the value of word of mouth among the public really exist.
The previews say it's because of the shoulder buttons, although it's not a big difference. the game apparently works better with normal buttons (not triggers) on the shoulders and in previews, previewers say that it's something you can adjust to. the rest of the sticks and buttons work fine though. fans may want to get the PS3 version if they really prefer the controls.
Although like I said, I want a demo to see for myself.:smile:
Oh, that is interesting. I don't have a ton of face time with the DS3/SIXAXIS but, someone correct me if I am wrong, doesn't it have triggers for L2/R2 just like the 360?
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/a82352/halo-3-cost-gbp15-million-to-develop.html
Interesting article on average PS3 game development cost and the cost of developing Halo 3. The Halo 3 cost was about 30 million dollars (15 million pounds) not including the cost of the marketing (which was probably a lot more). The average PS3 game costs about 15 million dollars.
at $50 a game, since PS3 game prices have gone down a little over the last year, a PS3 game would have to sell around 300,000 copies to break even but that might be a bit optimistic. I'm guessing the average PS3 game costs about the same as the average 360 game.
The article says that the rapid rise in cost from past generations is due mainly to making more detailed graphics which means the cost of getting a game out the door goes way up.
Interesting article on average PS3 game development cost and the cost of developing Halo 3. The Halo 3 cost was about 30 million dollars (15 million pounds) not including the cost of the marketing (which was probably a lot more). The average PS3 game costs about 15 million dollars.
at $50 a game, since PS3 game prices have gone down a little over the last year, a PS3 game would have to sell around 300,000 copies to break even but that might be a bit optimistic. I'm guessing the average PS3 game costs about the same as the average 360 game.
The article says that the rapid rise in cost from past generations is due mainly to making more detailed graphics which means the cost of getting a game out the door goes way up.
Not to mention that the 15 million is only the development cost, it doesn't cover the marketing budget.
I'd say that such a game needs to sell about 500K copies, which is about in line with what a japanese publisher (Capcom or Namco?) has talked about a few years ago. But high profile games like Halo 3 or some of the Sony exclusives need even higher sales (Lair was about 20-24 million).
I'd say that such a game needs to sell about 500K copies, which is about in line with what a japanese publisher (Capcom or Namco?) has talked about a few years ago. But high profile games like Halo 3 or some of the Sony exclusives need even higher sales (Lair was about 20-24 million).
Will those costs remain relatively constant come next generation though? Artists and modelers are already creating multi-milion polygon meshes. The second step is to create the lower fidelity assets for in-game usage. It doesn't seem apparent or obvious to me if that second step will "cost more" next generation - creating a mesh that is much more high poly than this gen for in-game, but still much lower than the high poly mesh.
But I suppose animation quality will be the other area of focus ?
I'm hoping costs don't sky rocket next gen at a same or higher pace as we saw between PS2/Xbox and PS3/X360. Otherwise, we'll be calling "1M seller" a failure (ludicrous!).
But I suppose animation quality will be the other area of focus ?
I'm hoping costs don't sky rocket next gen at a same or higher pace as we saw between PS2/Xbox and PS3/X360. Otherwise, we'll be calling "1M seller" a failure (ludicrous!).
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
What makes you think that such costs have not already been the case for some PS3/X360 games? There were a handful of titles at that level of costs even on the PS2. There are a lot of factors that affect how much net earnings are seen per unit sold, and the effective spread is actually pretty wide. I've heard figures ranging from as low as $10 to as high as $35 per unit (this is in the US, mind you).I'm hoping costs don't sky rocket next gen at a same or higher pace as we saw between PS2/Xbox and PS3/X360. Otherwise, we'll be calling "1M seller" a failure (ludicrous!).
If you assume that 15 million is the cost of development alone, and the title is necessarily a AAA title which demands a similarly hefty marketing bill, then you will easily need close to 1m units sold to break even. Halo3's bill was actually quite enormous when you include marketing and merchandising costs and what not (which as you can guess were insane by themselves). The widespread rumor is that it was high enough that even with those miraculous first day sales revenues, that first day alone was actually not enough to break even when you stripped away all the fixed per-unit costs. When you bear in mind how many of those early sales included instances of the edition that included all the pointless merchandise and other fluff sold at ridiculous markups, the actual number of units sold on that first day is probably less than one would immediately assume, so there's some believability to that claim.
Sorry of topic .
If MGS 4 needs sells 1 million in day one,so this game cost more tham US$50 million?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=31092
(more tham US$41 mill Kilzone 2)
If MGS 4 needs sells 1 million in day one,so this game cost more tham US$50 million?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=31092
(more tham US$41 mill Kilzone 2)
How much does the average 360 game cost?
Firstly, a correction to that misreporting is in this thread - Day one isn't the issue. The question of profitable requires one million sales, from which you can derive from the profit per unit to Konami what the cost was. On a $65 game, an amount goes to the store, and an amount is paid up front to Sony, so you'd probably (just a guess though) be looking at a maximum of $40 per unit sold being received by Konami, which would put the cost at $40 million. $50 million seems very unlikely if the million units is an accurate figure, but also on that, it's likely a nice round number for illustration purposes rather than an exact figure. It's just as likely if the game cost $35 million, in the interview the guy would say 'if we were to break even on day one, we'd need a million sales' rather than 'if we were to break even on day one, we'd need 875,000 sales'. You can't really use that remark as an effective measure for the game cost.
There's no such thing as "average" 360 game. Some have costs partially covered up by PS3 or PC versions, some are sequels with 30% more stuff and new levels, some are PS2 games with textures redrawn by Kazakhstan outsourcers, some are in development for the last 5-6 years.
