KZ2 and game budgeting in general *spin-off
- Thread starter Laa-Yosh
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I'm late entering the thread here, but a couple of retroactive points I want to make.
Firstly, there definitely is a lot of redundant tech development which Sony funds, and I'd emphasize redundant if only to separate people from the idea that KZ2 funding will necessarily reap great rewards beyond its own internal development. The Sony teams do share ideas and tech where they can and where it makes sense, but they are separate teams still at the end of the day, with the staffing they each have and the goals that they each pursue... goals which usually differ in material ways from that of the other teams.
Rather than linger on the above though - and like most here the tech is what I would prefer to linger on - but I'm going to go straight into the next point, that being that nowadays, it's all about content creation anyway in terms of the big costs. And marketing on top of that when it comes to the 'big' titles. What was the breakdown of the eventual 200-person staffs job roles, that's what I'd like to see, and I'm sure it goes without saying that it's going to have artists, level designers, testers, etc. hugely represented.
At the end of the day, who knows how much KZ2 will sell. By my criteria, it is a qualified success - it adds to the library in a positive way, and I can see it selling steadily in non-trivial numbers on into 'Greatest Hits'-dom. It is not *the game* that some had thought/hoped it would be... but Sony needs to flesh out its library with some decent exclusives, and KZ2 helps. Maybe it didn't sell the consoles it might have in March of 09, but if it forms part of a collage that influences a consumer purchase one this December, well... certainly I think Sony would had their fingers crossed for stronger initial sell-through though. Those are the breaks it seems.
Anyway as others have mentioned there's just no quantifiable way to ever know what could have been, might be tomorrow, etc etc...
Firstly, there definitely is a lot of redundant tech development which Sony funds, and I'd emphasize redundant if only to separate people from the idea that KZ2 funding will necessarily reap great rewards beyond its own internal development. The Sony teams do share ideas and tech where they can and where it makes sense, but they are separate teams still at the end of the day, with the staffing they each have and the goals that they each pursue... goals which usually differ in material ways from that of the other teams.
Rather than linger on the above though - and like most here the tech is what I would prefer to linger on - but I'm going to go straight into the next point, that being that nowadays, it's all about content creation anyway in terms of the big costs. And marketing on top of that when it comes to the 'big' titles. What was the breakdown of the eventual 200-person staffs job roles, that's what I'd like to see, and I'm sure it goes without saying that it's going to have artists, level designers, testers, etc. hugely represented.
At the end of the day, who knows how much KZ2 will sell. By my criteria, it is a qualified success - it adds to the library in a positive way, and I can see it selling steadily in non-trivial numbers on into 'Greatest Hits'-dom. It is not *the game* that some had thought/hoped it would be... but Sony needs to flesh out its library with some decent exclusives, and KZ2 helps. Maybe it didn't sell the consoles it might have in March of 09, but if it forms part of a collage that influences a consumer purchase one this December, well... certainly I think Sony would had their fingers crossed for stronger initial sell-through though. Those are the breaks it seems.
Anyway as others have mentioned there's just no quantifiable way to ever know what could have been, might be tomorrow, etc etc...
I agree with most of what you're saying, but I think someone at Sony/GG was overly confident on how PS3 gamers would accept KZ2 regardless of release date/feature set.
Another possibility is that development was delayed (and/or over budget) to a point where they can't just wait for the next holiday season.
It's a little disappointing to see a project of this size not to do a grand-slam because a couple of missteps.
The following are my guesses (I have no data).
Yeah, I don't think you need an iconic character to sell games (CoD doesn't have one). It is helpful but not mandatory or sure fire. I don't think it's the graphics because IMHO GG delivered and Sony has done its part to exemplify KZ2 visuals.
Marketing-wise, I think Sony only targeted very specific profiles (That's why you and I did not see any KZ2 marketing on mainstream media). I also think the 4 year lead time is not a problem. Afterall, KZ2 enjoyed a sharp uptick of interests just before the demo. The graphics hype/debates generated a lot of buzz too.
I think the first major problem started when they distributed the demo to everyone. The sluggish control alienated a lot of players. And the edgy presentation (motion blur, narrow field of vision, etc.) may also turn some off. The demo took a lot of mysteries away from the game. If I am going for brand new experiences, I would have done controlled beta (with *both* Xbox 360 and PS3 owners) to gather feedback, fix the issues and then go straight to launch.
All the betas so far (I have highlighted this before) lack a purpose. If it's for driving interests, then some of the betas actually dampened/scared folks away because it's too early to show. If it's for gathering real feedback, the process was haphazard and the problems did not get fixed until much later. Many times, I have no idea what I'm supposed to test or talk about. This sort of public testing needs to be very focused to guide us. We are not professional game testers (Should have limited it to selected press only -- since they like to play game designer -- and do it earlier).
The other major problem is the (close to) one month lull period after the demo. People were left exposed to the negative opinions for one month, with no official stand/words from GG until weeks later. In addition, people who were ready to buy could not do so (Saw quite a few posts about it).
Ultimately, it falls back to the meat. KZ2 is aimed at the hardcore gamers squarely and it has to meet all their needs on the mark.
KZ2 has great online ! But it lacks a party system. As a result friends cannot play with each other the way they want it. Even Home party system would have helped somewhat but Sony being Sony, it's a separate thing altogether (or is it no budget ?). It's very easy at this point to just go back to their old game to quench their collective thirst. I wouldn't be surprised if other MP games enjoy a slight jump in usage because of KZ2.
The lag is not that bad (unless you compared it to dedicated server gaming). I actually didn't pay much attention to it.
The other major problem, in general, is the player treatment:
* Again, the KZ2 MP game is great ! (but only after you have suffered because of unbalanced/unmatched games). I now know that they gimped the starting ammo size (I always ran out of ammo and had to kill myself to get new ones). Once I gained the ammo badge, I have been having lot's of fun nailing people (and getting nailed). They should keep new players very happy and satisfied first. Then worry about upgrades and longevity.
* Also fix the advanced soldier classes. They should address it fast (or at least calm people down first) rather than keep quiet 'coz words will travel. And lower level players are being used as cannon fodder now. Sebb has done a great job keeping us informed about upcoming patches. But in this case, he should press his CEO and lead game designers for a public response, and drop them *informally* to let the grapevine help him.
Once the "closed-loop" marketing/referer cycle is broken (Relatively new players keep playing --> bring in his/her friends --> so on and so forth), the multiplier effect will be affected drastically. What sells the game right now is the raw appeal of the game. So hitting 1 million plus under 2 months is solid, but they need to put the cycle back somehow.
These issues are subtle but their data should be able to tell them whether the churn is happening. Since they have started to fix party system, next thing I'd do is to quarantine the advanced soldier classes. They do make the game more unpredictable but they are harmful to lower level players. They may left expert players unchallenged (lose interest) when played against the noobs.
As usual, I could very well be wrong. But look at the data. All the things I speculated above should be verifiable by looking at play data.
I like Killzone 2 quite a bit (Just started playing again !). I don't generally buy specific criticisms of the game (e.g., lag) because other popular games have them too. I think it's multiple subtle factors that combine to form a general issue. I don't hate the advanced soldier classes. In fact, I find them interesting. When things cliqued, it's rather impressive. The only thing that has more and bigger explosion is high level Resistance co-op (ZOMFGBBQ). However when players exploit the game, you'll have to use your brain harder to get/stay out of the situation.
It's a rather intelligent game. Took me more than 8 hours of playtime to figure out some of the maps (Freaking Tharsis Depot is one confusing vertical maze). I am also not sure if the lazy gamers "get it". If they stop thinking and exploring, they may actually think that Tharsis Depot is small and broken (like I did during my first 8 hours).
Yeah, I don't think you need an iconic character to sell games (CoD doesn't have one). It is helpful but not mandatory or sure fire. I don't think it's the graphics because IMHO GG delivered and Sony has done its part to exemplify KZ2 visuals.
Marketing-wise, I think Sony only targeted very specific profiles (That's why you and I did not see any KZ2 marketing on mainstream media). I also think the 4 year lead time is not a problem. Afterall, KZ2 enjoyed a sharp uptick of interests just before the demo. The graphics hype/debates generated a lot of buzz too.
I think the first major problem started when they distributed the demo to everyone. The sluggish control alienated a lot of players. And the edgy presentation (motion blur, narrow field of vision, etc.) may also turn some off. The demo took a lot of mysteries away from the game. If I am going for brand new experiences, I would have done controlled beta (with *both* Xbox 360 and PS3 owners) to gather feedback, fix the issues and then go straight to launch.
All the betas so far (I have highlighted this before) lack a purpose. If it's for driving interests, then some of the betas actually dampened/scared folks away because it's too early to show. If it's for gathering real feedback, the process was haphazard and the problems did not get fixed until much later. Many times, I have no idea what I'm supposed to test or talk about. This sort of public testing needs to be very focused to guide us. We are not professional game testers (Should have limited it to selected press only -- since they like to play game designer -- and do it earlier).
The other major problem is the (close to) one month lull period after the demo. People were left exposed to the negative opinions for one month, with no official stand/words from GG until weeks later. In addition, people who were ready to buy could not do so (Saw quite a few posts about it).
Ultimately, it falls back to the meat. KZ2 is aimed at the hardcore gamers squarely and it has to meet all their needs on the mark.
KZ2 has great online ! But it lacks a party system. As a result friends cannot play with each other the way they want it. Even Home party system would have helped somewhat but Sony being Sony, it's a separate thing altogether (or is it no budget ?). It's very easy at this point to just go back to their old game to quench their collective thirst. I wouldn't be surprised if other MP games enjoy a slight jump in usage because of KZ2.
The lag is not that bad (unless you compared it to dedicated server gaming). I actually didn't pay much attention to it.
The other major problem, in general, is the player treatment:
* Again, the KZ2 MP game is great ! (but only after you have suffered because of unbalanced/unmatched games). I now know that they gimped the starting ammo size (I always ran out of ammo and had to kill myself to get new ones). Once I gained the ammo badge, I have been having lot's of fun nailing people (and getting nailed). They should keep new players very happy and satisfied first. Then worry about upgrades and longevity.
* Also fix the advanced soldier classes. They should address it fast (or at least calm people down first) rather than keep quiet 'coz words will travel. And lower level players are being used as cannon fodder now. Sebb has done a great job keeping us informed about upcoming patches. But in this case, he should press his CEO and lead game designers for a public response, and drop them *informally* to let the grapevine help him.
Once the "closed-loop" marketing/referer cycle is broken (Relatively new players keep playing --> bring in his/her friends --> so on and so forth), the multiplier effect will be affected drastically. What sells the game right now is the raw appeal of the game. So hitting 1 million plus under 2 months is solid, but they need to put the cycle back somehow.
These issues are subtle but their data should be able to tell them whether the churn is happening. Since they have started to fix party system, next thing I'd do is to quarantine the advanced soldier classes. They do make the game more unpredictable but they are harmful to lower level players. They may left expert players unchallenged (lose interest) when played against the noobs.
As usual, I could very well be wrong. But look at the data. All the things I speculated above should be verifiable by looking at play data.
I like Killzone 2 quite a bit (Just started playing again !). I don't generally buy specific criticisms of the game (e.g., lag) because other popular games have them too. I think it's multiple subtle factors that combine to form a general issue. I don't hate the advanced soldier classes. In fact, I find them interesting. When things cliqued, it's rather impressive. The only thing that has more and bigger explosion is high level Resistance co-op (ZOMFGBBQ). However when players exploit the game, you'll have to use your brain harder to get/stay out of the situation.
It's a rather intelligent game. Took me more than 8 hours of playtime to figure out some of the maps (Freaking Tharsis Depot is one confusing vertical maze). I am also not sure if the lazy gamers "get it". If they stop thinking and exploring, they may actually think that Tharsis Depot is small and broken (like I did during my first 8 hours).
No problem. I'm just curious if we have a consensus on what the expectation is, since everybody seems sure the game is going to sell less than some expectation.
I'm pretty sure 2-3 million is far from avarage.
Which is irrelevant besides the fact that avarage 360 owner didn't buy more RE5 SKUs than avarage PS3 owner.
I see that I wasn't clear as I wasn't talking about the investment aspect. The question is whether PS3 owners look at exclusives less favorably than 3rd party software, as has been voiced countless times.
While interesting take on the "ramifications", I cannot see how a KZ2 success (a universally accepted one) could have changed minds of 3rd party publishers. Certainly there are games that have sold much better than KZ2 with more rumored budget. It's like movie industry anyway, sometimes small budget games sell a lot, sometimes big budgets bomb, or sometimes they sell accordingly.
On a personal note, I find Capcom games extremely disappointing, so I'm not sure that model has benefited me in anyway, as a gamer that is.
On the other hand, they seem to be projecting sales of their own games fairly well, reflecting also well on budget and business side of things. I'm sure lots of companies would like to be able to do that.
Again, the second question was about perception of PS3 exclusives not business model though, so Capcom isn't exactly relevant in that context, RE5 sales on PS3 (and on 360 as control group) is.
For some reason, I doubt gold membership is as popular for multi console owners as for 360 only owners.
Of course multiconsole owners are insignificant anyway even with the highly "optimistic" assumption that every single one of them bought as many RE5 360 SKUs as 360 owners did. Same goes for your PC assumption.Which brings me to the real problem with your paragraph. You seem to be explaining why RE5 on PS3 didn't sell well, but it sold at least as good as it did on 360 (as far as tie ratios go). It's also fairly inline with YTD 360/PS3 split of all multiplatform games.
I find it unlikely as the expectation feels like 50% or something.
The real decision makers (not silly marketing people) at Sony dont expect 4-5 million sales unless from the existing owners which is very unlikely etc. They know the consoles to expensive. I think Sonys 1st party has been excellent this gen but keeps hitting brick walls because of the consoles price. Sony knows that.
But Master Chief is an icon by now.
No, it was about memorable characters, which visuals may or may not be a part of.
The Spartans in Halo Wars look just like Master Chief but they aren't as memorable. It's the voice acting, the stuff he says and the stuff he does that adds a lot to him.
See above - the guys in Gears have just the right amount of personality through little things in the visuals and voice acting / writing. It's a fine line but Epic has managed to stay on the right side of it.
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Sort of, but only for the first game; by now it's the other way around. And every Halo game has a picture of Master Chief on its cover so he's a large part of the franchise's visuals. Damn, H3's launch had a 5 meter tall statue of him even here, in Hungary...
If that was the case, (when taking 360 out of the equation) why is it that 3rd party games are doing better on PS3 than 1st party? 3rd party games are doing fine in comparison to 1st party.
Is this really true? Uncharted has sold 2 million, which other new IP has reached those numbers? Has any racing game outsold GT5 Prologue?
Edit: Not to mention MLB 09 the Show which totally outsold the 2K version.
Or are you expecting every 1:st party game to sell better than its 3:rd party counter part or do you think Sony is expecting that?
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I thought YTD the ps3 version sold more WW are we talking only about NA.
I think they're actually closer than we might expect. The PS3 version outsold the 360 version in Japan by ~340k. The US version outsold the PS3 version by ~353k. So they're about even. It all depends on Europe, where the 360 still has a lead, but like CarlB said, RE5 for some reason resonated proportionately more with PS3 owners than 360 owners in the US.
Sure, now, after the title has found success. The argument again, is that one of the reason for Halo's success came because of the memorable characters. That you'd look at Master Chief and go 'I want to be that guy'.
Like I said, the Helghans are memorable. Even Sony knows this, since most of the publicity is on them. And if you think antagonists can't be memorable, think of Aliens. No one cares about Colonial Marines, but everyone wants to see them fight (and die to) xenomorphs. You could argue that KZ2 didn't explore this properly, but that has nothing to do with whether the characters themselves are memorable, either.
But once you're dealing with the voice acting, you're already playing the game. Once you're playing GeoW, especially if we're talking about late 2006, you're hooked. The argument was that Marcus Fenix, visually, is memorable. He's more memorable than Master Chief, but I think that more than anything, when GeoW1 came out it looked totally different from anything else, it really did look very striking. I brought up the Madworld ad and I think that was a huge influencer. (I don't think Halo 3's 'dreams' or the GeoW2 ad were nearly as influential, but they didn't have to be.)
While I do think that KZ2 does look better than both Gears games, like StefanS said, it's not the same leap. It couldn't be, GeoW was a generation ahead of other games.
I'm sure it helped. He was in the adverts, on the cover of the game, on the cover of magazines. You go round a friends house, play co-op, watch a cut scene and see and hear the character. The more people are exposed to the character, what he's about and what he does, the more likely they are to want to take up his fight.
It gave the marketing people something they could use to sell the game to people - and they did use it, everywhere. It also turned out to be an investment that benefited the subsequent games.
Memorable isn't enough - we can all remember lots of things we want to have nothing to do with. Seemingly the Helghans are one of them (joke ... but maybe not totally off the mark?).
I'd speculate that to most players the draw to be an "attractive" character doing something "meaningful" is stronger than the urge to fight something with a memorable face - even if "attractive" and "meaningful" are very simply defined.
Colonial Marines are somewhat generic but they do present a well defined and attractive role that builds successfully on current day Marine imagery and associations. Not as good as having Marcus Fenix, but it's something to start with. The player character can be important - sometimes hugely - in any game which is about more than simple gameplay mechanics (where there is context to interactions).
Yeah, I think Marcus was an important and valuable aid to marketing GoW and through it the Xbox 360 platform (which of course was Microsoft's reason for signed Gears).
Once again (and I'll stop after this, I promise) if I was throwing $50 million at a game I'd want to know where the main character I could centre marketing around - if I so chose - was. After all it's my $50 million and if I'm spending it I can have what I want.
Maybe Halo Wars has sometime to do with it? Wasn't it also to same with SF4 and DMC4? Japan seems to be an big ? for SONY.
GTA, GT and COD aren't really marketed around a central character and they have no problem with sales. In fact as a FPS, Halo is one of the few games that uses its central character as a major marketing device and still Master Chief is mostly just a set of armor.
In fact there has been a historical trend where a lot of FPS avoided characterizing their central character as an immersion tool where the central character is you. This has influenced Halo as well, as Master Chief lacked a face and voice in Halo CE. Well thought and flesh out characters used to be only a major characteristic of third person shooters and platformers. Futhermore, I was quite surprised that KZ2 had a fleshed out central character with a name, voice and persona as I haven't seen this in a FPS in a long time.
And now alot of titles use a character creation mechanic and really avoid centering the marketing around a central character.
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At this point it's just us disagreeing at each other, so I might as well let it go. I think that there's numerous counterexamples to your points, but it's all theoretical since Halo was a breakaway hit and KZ2 wasn't.
It was even more skewed in the PS3's direction for SF4 in the US. I mean, both sold over 400k in their first month in NPD. DMC supposedly sold more on PS3 LTD WW, but that could just be blog misinformation.
Japan is... well, no console's doing really well in Japan. PS3 is really sorta the GCN there, in that the owners have strangely large appetite for games compared to the install-base, except the Wii isn't really the PS2. On very western titles the 360 sells a lot closer to PS3, though.
Yeah, I'm sure the decision makers thought that it would be a great ideal of investing vast amounts of resources into a title with the ideal of having very average sales. Unless, games like Uncharted and Resistance required the similar amounts of resources to develop as KZ2, I seriously doubt that they didn't expect nor hope for sales that KZ2's sales would trump the before mentioned games' sales.
True but we are talking about PD. It is attributed to what they want to do than bad planning and management that often lead to a bad product. Their history record shows this. How many delayed GT games turned out to be bad games? None. The only fluctuations were on features due to the time available (see GT3).
And I think this is natural considering the quality they have achieved before, the complexity of development and the nature of the genre. They raised the bar a lot and they challenged their selves as result especially now that there is Forza. Then its the fact that there are limitations in what they are allowed to improve and do compared to fantasy games and arcade racers. Both Forza and GT are restricted by realism in one hand and on the other trying to make the most realistic simulation racer with the most complete features and elements demand greater work. But this is what people demand. Especially car lovers. And they shall compare with the older versions and competition. This is how GT was judged
I read an interview during the PS1 days that the employees were trying to meet a deadline for GT2 so they ate and slept for weeks in their offices trying to meet it. If GT5 doesnt have such a strict deadline is it a bad thing? Then again we might not know if there is a deadline or not. But what we know with more certianty is that the extra time is put in features and attention to detail. We can refer to a very simple example. Too many of us demanded an in car view for years. And our expectations were so high that we wanted an accurate representation of the real thing. Because GT is considered (wrongly or rightly) to be the pinnacle of realistic racing we even cared to look if everything in the dashboard worked. Placeholders are not acceptable. Internal view sounds like such a simple concept but not for the development of GT.
Btw based on a recent interview I saw, currently PD has private rooms for its employees and an entertainment room.
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