Fancy graphics are pretty easy if you don't sweat framerate...
Crytek: "It's physically & financially impossible to go higher than the PS4 & Xbox ∞"
- Thread starter Cyan
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L. Scofield
Veteran
Doesn't Crysis 3 run pretty good on consoles?
Billy Idol
Legend
Lol
L. Scofield
Veteran
user542745831
Veteran
We've reached the point that the limiting factor for many developers is budget, not graphical capability. Not every studio has $50 million to spend.
I hadn't even heard of any of the other titles except SC. I get the impression these are probably coming from smaller developers, rather than seeing any of the big names making huge AAA releases using CE3.
Square Enix lost $138 million for the fiscal year, despite sales of Tomb Raider (3.4 million), Sleeping Dogs (1.75 million) and Hitman Absolution (3.6 million)
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/03/square-enix-president-resigns/
Devs/Publishers need to figure out how to turn a profit on a game that sells 3-5 million rather than chasing the COD blockbuster sales figures. Seems in-line with what Crytek is saying, even though they could probably re-evaluate what they're doing as well.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/03/square-enix-president-resigns/
Devs/Publishers need to figure out how to turn a profit on a game that sells 3-5 million rather than chasing the COD blockbuster sales figures. Seems in-line with what Crytek is saying, even though they could probably re-evaluate what they're doing as well.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
It's easy, the cost of doing business has steadily risen, but the price of games have been relatively stagnant over the same period of time making it require higher and higher number of sales in order to break even. I remember buying games for an average price of 60-80 USD back in 1992. It is now 2013, after over 20 years of inflation games are 50-60 USD. Er, what? Oh and that doesn't even take into account that game development budgets have increased far faster than inflation.
Want to know why there aren't as many niche games as during the PS2 era? There you go. It's hard to make a profit on a niche game if the number of titles it needs to sell in order to break even continues to go up because you can't raise the price of your games.
But that's a catch-22. People don't mind spending 100% more than they spent on many things 10-15 years ago. But OMG, if a game publisher/developer were to raise the price of their game even 20%, you'd see a massive internet explosion.
Those greedy bastards.Hell, I still run into people that claim retail games that cost more than 10 USD is a huge ripoff because publishers are all greedy pigs raking in the cash.
Regards,
SB
L. Scofield
Veteran
New Warface trailer:
I find it hard to believe those games didn't make them money, but DO find it easy to believe they hoped those games would sell more to cover up losses elsewhere (like iono, developing Final Fantasy Versus XIII for at least 7 years or the colossal screw-up that was Final Fantasy XIV that required 3 extra years of dev time to fix it).
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Those games obviously made money. And it isn't being used to "cover up" losses.
Publishing is all about taking risks. Every game that gets funded is a risk. Currently the average is about 70% of greenlit AAA games that get published end up not making a profit. Hence you need games like Tomb Raider, Borderlands 2, COD, Madden NFL, etc. to make sure you can keep developing games.
No game gets the go ahead if the publisher doesn't think there is a reasonable chance they'll make a profit on it. But since there is no way to predict whether a game will be successful enough to make a profit at the ridiculously low price games are sold at, then these things happen.
And it's not limited to the games industry. Book publishers have had to deal with this for hundreds of years. The music and movie industry also has to deal with this. Automobile companies have the same problems, etc. Your profitable product lines allow you to take chances and invest in unproven endeavors.
But with the limited and stagnant pricing for games, it is especially hard for the games industry.
Take a look at EA, for example, one of the largest and longest running games publishers in the industry. For their last 12 financial quarters, 6 of them resulted in a loss. That basically boils down to half the time they can't earn a profit. It gets a bit worse if you look at Fiscal Year numbers. IIRC FY2010 resulted in a net loss, while FY2011 resulted in a relatively small profit despite large revenues.
Things like that are what the entire industry deals with. And why it doesn't take much to push a company into bankruptcy as happened with THQ, despite having some best selling games. It's also why you frequently see long lasting development houses getting closed down.
Regards,
SB
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Yes, the Final Fantasy screw-ups look to me as something much more responsible for the losses than the sales of Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider and Hitman Absolution.
Maybe Squeenix was hoping for the sales of those games to provide enough profits to cover for the rest, which may have not been realistic from the beginning.
Unless the production+marketing values for those games go too much above the $100M mark, I can't see how they can be considered a commercial failure. Plus, I believe the bulk of the sales in the PC will come when the games go to lower than $25 in Steam sales or something like that.
These games should provide a continuous (not constant, of course) stream of revenue for at least a year.
Just the development hell of Versus XIII must be making them lose tens of millions.
Also, I can't believe their Android ports of 20-year-old games are making them any money, since they cost 10-20x more than your typical Gameloft "«AAA»" title and emulators are.. well, free.
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