Diablo 4 [XO, XBSX|S, PC, PS4, PS5, XGP]

It's not considered a good money-maker if the developer promised its publisher and/or investors around $1B in profits throughout a period of 5 years for that game and then it needs to revise it down to only $100M (made up numbers).
The developer is the publisher in this instance. Blizzard made D3, sold over million copies at probably an average of $30 each given it's price has stayed high, for $1.5 billion revenues. Certainly factoring in license fees and ignoring all DLC, should be $1 billion in takings. That's not considered a good enough investment? Perhaps it's not, but if so, that's basically pushing the economy too hard, with investors being too demanding and the end result being unhealthy and destructive. D4 could be made with an expectation of bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars for a moderate outlay. Should be looking at 5x ROI minimum given the proven franchise. With that, wanting to add even more revenue to the detriment of the game is criminal. It's a game that can afford to keep its artistic integrity, and it'd be monstrous if it lost it under the relentless pressure of finances.
 
Gotta wonder what the make-up of the studio is. The customer service & support systems could be fairly significant as an on-going cost (world-wide) next to the studio's contracted workers who would have already finished the bulk of the game assets (those who are only needed past the pre-production stage).

But I guess it might be a drop in the bucket compared to the posted operating profits...
Customer service is just a group allocated to service lots of products, and the cost of doing service would be split between the studios for those products. I can't imagine the allocation for Diablo would be much at all given the lack of complexity for the game (not an MMO, low player base, max 4 player instances etc)
 
Whoops. :p Click click click

Yeah, was just thinking that as I kept editing and accidentally thing.
 
It's not considered a good money-maker if the developer promised its publisher and/or investors around $1B in profits throughout a period of 5 years for that game and then it needs to revise it down to only $100M (made up numbers).

We shouldn't assume only investors and publishers are at fault here. Dev house heads are getting onboard, too.
Amy Hennig and Visceral's heads refused to do that for EA, but DICE did that pact with the devil promise for Battlefront 2.


Blizzard went for a full price + GAAS attempt back in 2012, and now they're unapologetically back at it again. I doubt anyone is pointing a gun at the studio heads to promise this.

From your link:
The whole thing can be summed up in a statement given by a former developer on Ragtag, who compared the game Hennig and Visceral were trying to make with what EA was actually looking for. "She was giving these massive presentations on the story, themes,” the developer said. “EA executives are like, 'FIFA Ultimate Team makes a billion dollars a year. Where’s your version of that?'"

This is why I'm a cynic.
 
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That's not considered a good enough investment?
What counts as a good enough investment for an investor is the percentage of how much money you made compared to how much money you predicted you'd make.
That's the metric that counts, because the amount of money per share that an investor puts in your company is always based on a predicted outcome, since that's the only information the investor has when he puts the money prior to the game(s) launching.

So if you tell me your company will make 10 million in 2020 then 5% of your company's shares are worth X. If you had told me your company will make 2 million then 5% of your company's shares are worth Y (which is substantially less than X).
Within that context, if you told me you'd make 10 million in 2020 and I purchased 5% of your company for X, but then your company only made 2 million, I'll consider your company wasn't a good investment because I should've paid Y instead of X.
And in the end, it doesn't really matter if you made a profit of 10% or 1000% within the 2 million your company made. What matters is your prediction failed by 80% and I overpaid for your shares as a consequence.


To summarize, the problem here is how much revenue Blizzard promised to make on Diablo 3 game sales + microtransactions because that determined Activision|Blizzard's share price.
The fact is that a game that successfully distributes millions of copies and then gets an engagement of microtransactions from wales is bound to make a lot more money than any game without extra monetization. A full fledged game that sells 20 million copies can have a ROI of 2000%, but that still pales in comparison of the ROI provided by a popular $2 horse armor made by an artist during an afternoon.
Once Blizzard predicted a constant flow of revenue based on microtransactions for Diablo 3 through the auction house, there's no way they could match that revenue on sales alone.


That's why it's extremely hard for developers to cancel the implementation of microtransactions. It's not because it's technically difficult to shut the thing down, it's because when they do so heads will roll since the expected profits are going to be a fraction of what was promised to investors.


If anything, the gaming industry is doomed because of unicorns like FIFA Ultimate Team and PUBG that generate such an absurd amount of money that completely spoils the investors' expectations on how much revenue a videogame can or should make.
 
And mobile games, don't forget the other cash cow that publishers what to mimic in the rest of the gaming market. They want to get those whales spending 150k on a stupid Transformers mobile game into their other games.
 
The whole thing can be summed up in a statement given by a former developer on Ragtag, who compared the game Hennig and Visceral were trying to make with what EA was actually looking for. "She was giving these massive presentations on the story, themes,” the developer said. “EA executives are like, 'FIFA Ultimate Team makes a billion dollars a year. Where’s your version of that?'"

I thought it was because EA thought that Stig Asmussens game tested way better and was way ahead of her project and they were like just make that the Star Wars game?

Might of been tales out of someone's ass that though :yes:
 
Isn't the collectors box all physical items? Makes sense to separate them from the game itself and just take out the cost of the game from the price.
I believe so.

Is this the norm from game publishers? That the collectors edition doesn't include the actual game?
 
I believe so.

Is this the norm from game publishers? That the collectors edition doesn't include the actual game?
I've seen it before. It's probably also a factor of no longer being just battle.net store. You'd have to have a store that can handle both generation of either battle.net or Xbox game code and handling of physical delivery.
 
Isn't the collectors box all physical items? Makes sense to separate them from the game itself and just take out the cost of the game from the price.
I think this is a sensible option which avoids having X, Y and Z number of platform-specific Limited Editions. Otherwise publishers are guessing how many PlayStation, PC or Xbox Limited Edition packages to produce.
 
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