Developers Not thrilled with Nextgen?

[Shifty Geezer]

Unless things gave changed since PS2 days a publisher can still make a $9.99 game. Sony (at least circa late PS2) has a sliding royalty scale, although the cheapest price point maybe more because of the Blu Ray.

I didn't know this. So the pricing is the publishers choice, and they choose to hit the high end. Wasn't there a baseball game beginning of this gen that went cheap? Maybe ther core gamer wants 'as pretty as possible' and there's no choice but to shell out lots, in which case it's the psychology of the end user that is forcing devs to expand their costs to the capabilities of the machine.

Just to add to my previous post, that your reply seems to have sparked discussion, there are already tiers at least in the 360 sense (as an example). Virtually free/indie/arcade occupy the lower pricing tier from as low as $1, games on demand sits in the middle, Kinect games hit the middle-high tier, and then there's retail at $60..

That's the same with PS3 too. It's just the main game experience, walking into a shop and buying a disk, seems very statically priced (RRP) without publishers wanting to sell lower.

I guess that's also because prices drop, so you may as well start high. But without targeting lower production budgets, devs are going to have to suck up more costs next-gen. The solution is to aim lower. Why won't they do that? Well, some do, I guess. Not every game costs top dollars to make. But they don't differentiate at market.

We really need to know what the real consumer response is. Are cheaper-to-make games generally not being picked up on console? If so, that's why touchies are so appealing. The iOS/Droid market will accept anything. Same with downloads to.

 

[upnorthsox]

They differentiate by sales projections. Not a perfect system, but then neither is tiered procing.

 

[Platon]

*mega snip*...Further, what he doesn't analyze is how profitable and sustainable the new emerging formats are...*mega snip*

I would really like to know that as well. In the end, although games might be some of the most downloaded and bought apps for mobile phones/tablets, one should not forget that they are very low priced and can be an impulse buy with the mind share of you don't loose too much if you don't care to play it. And then the question becomes how much do you need to sell of those $1-5 games to actually make a profit and finance development of future projects. Most of the mobile games are not even close to the angry bird success and there can only be so many of those games. If the console market is "hit" based, I think that goes double for the mobile market. It feels like very few games/apps really emerge above the "app noise" levels and the ones that do it because of strong word of mouth aka facebook/twitter etc and then everyone goes for those very few apps. And many times as fast as they rise they will fall.

Furthermore, just because there are many devices that can play games does not mean in the end they will. There are many more PCs out there too, still games sell more on consoles. It is about whether your target group are on the devices you target and if so if they will use those devices for what you intend them to. How many of the PC/console gamers would start playing exclusively on mobile devices, that is the question. I see the "casual" market more as an addition to the "core" market not instead of. There is no need to target either or.

Personally, and I believe a lot of other gamers, would not skip the next Mass Effect/Bioshock/GOW or whatever AAA game so I can play instead Angry Birds in Himalaya or something. I think this was also a bit confirmed this gen with the success of the Wii. Sure it sold like gang busters, but in the end it did not hamper too much the sales of 360 games for example and looking and game sales and $ spend/month much more goes to the PS360 than Wii for example. Just because it captures a different target group did not mean that the group already present suddenly disappeared or that they all moved to Wii-land.

That is why I am bit cautious about statements about more and more people play on their mobile devices and such and it will kill consoles. So what, most of the "mobile gamers" likely did not play on the consoles to begin with...

 

[fearsomepirate]

That seems to be the oppostite of what you said. If AAA titles only declined 25% compared to the overall market then non-AAA titles could have had a similar or greater decline. Depending on if they are segregating AAA versus non-AAA by MSRP.

Regards,
SB

I said AAA sales are declining. A decline of 25% is a decline, not an increase. And I said they're an increasing share of a declining market. If AAA sales are down 25% and the overall market is down 33%, if the original size of AAA was A and the market was M, the share of AAA games has gone from A/M to 0.75A / 0.67M, i.e., has increased to 1.12 (A/M). And individual Call of Duty titles have indeed been setting records--but not very many titles are Call of Duty.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I said AAA sales are declining. A decline of 25% is a decline, not an increase. And I said they're an increasing share of a declining market. If AAA sales are down 25% and the overall market is down 33%, if the original size of AAA was A and the market was M, the share of AAA games has gone from A/M to 0.75A / 0.67M, i.e., has increased to 1.12 (A/M). And individual Call of Duty titles have indeed been setting records--but not very many titles are Call of Duty.

Are console software sales declining? If not this discussion is pointless because AAA will depend on the number of aaa releases that given year etc

 

[dobwal]

Why is a decline at this point in time important?

We're in the seventh year of the current gen. A decline is expected. And most of that decline is being perpetuated by a single manufacturer whose release of AAA or most have titles has been less than stellar.

Maybe the increase in outside competition is having a detrimental effect on the console market. But a decline at this point in time is hardly proof because there seem to be many other factors that can easily be the main contributing factor for said decline like market saturation.

 

[blip]

Just cram as much beautiful graphics producing hardware you can in a non-upgradeable box, please.

Enough with the Wii crap. That, and anything that resembles that, is a kid's toy. I want full 1080p hi-res textured hardcore M-rated go anywhere do anything create your own world and live in it games, and I want to play them on a dual analog stick controller from my couch.

Am I alone?

Surely the console developers understand this is what men aged 13 and up want?



Is it going to be too expensive for them to provide this next time around? It wasn't too expensive for them too make the Xbox 360 in 2005....

 

[deathindustrial]

Is it going to be too expensive for them to provide this next time around? It wasn't too expensive for them too make the Xbox 360 in 2005....

Considering the 360 may not break even this generation it is easily arguable it was too expensive for them. Same applies to the PS3.

Cheers

 

[joker454]

Just cram as much beautiful graphics producing hardware you can in a non-upgradeable box, please.

Enough with the Wii crap. That, and anything that resembles that, is a kid's toy. I want full 1080p hi-res textured hardcore M-rated go anywhere do anything create your own world and live in it games, and I want to play them on a dual analog stick controller from my couch.

Am I alone?

Surely the console developers understand this is what men aged 13 and up want?

Are you alone? I don't know but let me ask you and other men aged 13 and up some questions to help decide that.

Are you willing to accept a $600 console to get what you want? What you are asking for requires major hardware yet men aged 13 and up balk at $300 video cards as being incredibly expensive, so are they ok spending $600 on a console to get the hardware needed to get the job done?

How about $99 games? Since most games fail and don't earn a profit, someone has to pay for all those failed studios making these expensive games with high dollar assets that mostly don't sell.

Are you ok with your console overheating or being loud? Fitting all that power into a tiny console won't be possible any time soon so would you live with it either overheating or having really loud fans?

Are you ok with waiting 3+ years for each iteration of a game? Making every asset be perfect takes a heck of a long time.

Are you ok with really long load times? Supersizing every possible asset will inevitably take a hit on load times.

If enough men aged 13+ answer yes to all of the above then I guess you aren't alone.

 

[BRiT]

Blip, and exactly how much are you willing to pay for such games? Surely you realize the cost associated with developing what you want is exponentially more than today's.

 

[blip]

Blip, and exactly how much are you willing to pay for such games? Surely you realize the cost associated with developing what you want is exponentially more than today's.

Why does it cost more money to use higher resolution textures and so forth?

I know when they make these games, they make them using much higher quality assets. Then they scale them down to fit in the constraints of the hardware.

So they would just scale them down less with the better hardware. Better textures, higher poly counts, longer draw distances with more objects on screen / no pop in, etc...

Please tell me how this costs more money for the developer?

And no, I am not willing to pay $600 for a console. I am sure they will be $300 in no time, just like last gen.

And Xbox 360 barely break even? Please excuse me while I laugh. Xbox makes money. Just because the console hardware itself wasnt a huge money maker, doesnt mean Microsoft doesnt get a cut of game sales, makes money on their own publishing, makes a ton of money on accessories, xbox live, xbox points, downloadable software, etc... that really is hilarious that you would suggest that Xbox barely breaks even.

 

[function]

Working from a high detail model doesn't make all lower detail models free - they still have to be optimised, adjusted and tweaked to get the best effect and the right balance of detail and memory. The same goes for textures - unless you just want to add another higher lod texture at 4 times the resolution* (meaning you'll need 4 times the memory allocated to textures) there will need to be work done on using resources optimally and testing to see if some of the textures look right with certain scaling applied.

*(Do GPUs still work optimally with ^2 textures? You used to be able to assign a none ^2 texture in OGL, but did the driver just expand it to the next ^2 resolution upwards and only sample from the valid area? ATI cards were slow as hell if you mucked up your texture res, but this was years ago.)

 

[Nesh]

Just cram as much beautiful graphics producing hardware you can in a non-upgradeable box, please.

Enough with the Wii crap. That, and anything that resembles that, is a kid's toy. I want full 1080p hi-res textured hardcore M-rated go anywhere do anything create your own world and live in it games, and I want to play them on a dual analog stick controller from my couch.

Am I alone?

Surely the console developers understand this is what men aged 13 and up want?



Is it going to be too expensive for them to provide this next time around? It wasn't too expensive for them too make the Xbox 360 in 2005....

Ideally thats what we would like to have, but it doesnt mean it's feasible, cost effective or practical based on the technology that we have now.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Ideally thats what we would like to have, but it doesnt mean it's feasible, cost effective or practical based on the technology that we have now.

Not to mention that at age 13, what you want and what your parents will buy for your are not always the same thing. I'll be damned if I'm going to buy a GTA game for a 13-year-old.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Why is a decline at this point in time important?

We're in the seventh year of the current gen. A decline is expected. And most of that decline is being perpetuated by a single manufacturer whose release of AAA or most have titles has been less than stellar.

Did you see the charts in the talk? The decline is both industry-wide and unprecedented in it speed. In previous generations, there was a slight, like maybe 2% to 5%, decline from peak to next-gen. This gen, we've seen a whopping 20% decline in the USA and over 30% in the UK.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Considering the 360 may not break even this generation it is easily arguable it was too expensive for them. Same applies to the PS3.

Cheers

The 360 itself or the 360 plus recovering the investments in the initial Xbox and Live? The 360 itself or the 360 including the write-offs due to the RRoD fiasco?

Because I'm fairly certain that RRoD aside, the 360 is extremely profitable for MS.

And yes, that is important, because it demonstrates the strategy wasn't incorrect - (launching with high-end hardware and selling at a loss), only the execution was flawed.

There's a reason why executives get paid so handsomely, and part of the reason is to be able to determine if the plan was faulty or if the implementation failed.

You don't dump a successful strategy because of poor execution.

 

[deathindustrial]

Microsoft intentionally obfuscates the costs of the Xbox 360, Zune, Windows phone, etc. So you have to look at the division and guess from that. That said, here is an example article showing the profitability of that division based on their reports:

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-01-28/tech/30063548_1_xbox-live-money-pit-kinect

It's going to take a number of high profit quarters to offset their initial losses.

Cheers

 

[Rangers]

Wow, next gen news hitting fast and furious now. Developer states Durango budgets twice that of current gen...

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-03-next-gen-consoles-mean-increased-development-costs

Developers see costs double for Durango sequels to Xbox 360 titles

Developers with access to the Durango (the code name for Microsoft's next console) are seeing costs rise sharply, primarily due to higher polygon counts and better textures required. "I'm having to double my budget for models," said one developer working on a sequel to an earlier title that appeared on Xbox 360 and PS3. "If we want to take advantage of Durango's capabilities it takes a lot more time for each model." This can also result in either a longer time to develop a title, or the need to put more artists on, or both.

 

[liolio]

Wow, next gen news hitting fast and furious now. Developer states Durango budgets twice that of current gen...

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-03-next-gen-consoles-mean-increased-development-costs

I find the part on texture a bit tough to believe, at least for big games that also see releases on PC.
They are already starting with super high quality assets. If anything they may spend more time fine tuning their models as performances might be less of an issue.

It sounds a bit like an attempt to fill costumer mind with smoke, as they pretty early in their talk move the discussion to the need for more DLC (on disc DLC Capcom style...), possibly raise the price of games, etc.

Still it might be true for tiny developers but how many tiny developers are left anyway? Is it safe to assume that they would already have their hands on Durango devs kits? But for the big?
For example if we look at the racing genre, one may have a good argument by saying that for most part the hi-def models are already there (in the garage literally).
Or they no longer compute those high quality models using REYES so they get proper normal maps?
Etc.

If anything I expect way lesser increase in content creation for next gen than from the ps2 to the ps360. Clearly a way lesser one and I believe that the subject is constantly bring back into the discussion to get people prepared to a raise in games prices...

Just an example, look at Alien vs predator, the PC version came with tessellation, displacement map, etc. "fine tuning higher quality model", and what? it sold on PC for two third of price of the console release.

Oh it's, it's how I read here and there, console development that subsidize for PC games development. So what is happening is that on a market where they are making not that much money they are investing a lot of extra time to create those nicer textures. That makes sense all of sudden, business sense... or not.

I believe the truth is that the assets are here and they spend more time trying to downscale them and make them fit within our 7 years old, constrained in both RAM and performances, systems.

Clearly this is a purposeful leak to bend people perceptions so they accept another 10 bucks increase for games and in an unilateral fashion...

EDIT
And all of this whereas there have been no rumors stating that next gen consoles could actually even match nowadays high end PC on top of it... smoke a lot of smoke imho.

 

[Ninjaprime]

I find the part on texture a bit tough to believe, at least for big games that also see releases on PC.
They are already starting with super high quality assets. If anything they may spend more time fine tuning their models as performances might be less of an issue.

It sounds a bit like an attempt to fill costumer mind with smoke, as they pretty early in their talk move the discussion to the need for more DLC (on disc DLC Capcom style...), possibly raise the price of games, etc.

Still it might be true for tiny developers but how many tiny developers are left anyway? Is it safe to assume that they would already have their hands on Durango devs kits? But for the big?
For example if we look at the racing genre, one may have a good argument by saying that for most part the hi-def models are already there (in the garage literally).
Or they no longer compute those high quality models using REYES so they get proper normal maps?
Etc.

If anything I expect way lesser increase in content creation for next gen than from the ps2 to the ps360. Clearly a way lesser one and I believe that the subject is constantly bring back into the discussion to get people prepared to a raise in games prices...

Just an example, look at Alien vs predator, the PC version came with tessellation, displacement map, etc. "fine tuning higher quality model", and what? it sold on PC for two third of price of the console release.

Oh it's, it's how I read here and there, console development that subsidize for PC games development. So what is happening is that on a market where they are making not that much money they are investing a lot of extra time to create those nicer textures. That makes sense all of sudden, business sense... or not.

I believe the truth is that the assets are here and they spend more time trying to downscale them and make them fit within our 7 years old, constrained in both RAM and performances, systems.

Clearly this is a purposeful leak to bend people perceptions so they accept another 10 bucks increase for games and in an unilateral fashion...

EDIT
And all of this whereas there have been no rumors stating that next gen consoles could actually even match nowadays high end PC on top of it... smoke a lot of smoke imho.

Yeah I'm sure thats it...

Maybe look at the cost scaling from all previous generations? You think that line thats going straight up at 45 degrees is gonna go down this gen because why? Because you determined so? Whats magically changed this gen that is going to make the cost scaling of new titles completely reverse its previous course over the last two or three decades?

I really want to know.