Sony financing about 40 EDI (download) games
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
Yeah i had read that, but i mean, what will that actually involve? Will we have to sell our souls to Sony, sign something in our own blood... or even worse, pay them money?!
Why do you think that? There's been plenty of comments from devs saying the downloaded titles gives them more creative freedom. If bundling mini games into major titles was an option, why hasn't that happened in pretty much all of the last 10,000 or so DVD games produced? Why would Jaffe invest 7 months creating 'Calling all cars' just to give it away for free?
Anyhow, I thin that argument here is getting lost in a jumble of choice of words and interpretations. You said that you couldn't see a difference between Sony's EDI and the PC scene. The difference I see is, in the PC scene, you don't know where the good Indie games hang out. It you go looking you'll find all sorts of tripe until you find the good stuff. Much of the good stuff is very simple 2D games. Because the PC download market is fractured without a central point where you can be sure to reach millions of users, you can't be sure of getting much exposure for your games. Thus they're rather limited on the whole.
The EDI provides a unified portal for millions of PS3 (and Live can be pointed to as well, but that seems to have it's own rules. The potential is there just the same). If you get a game onto the Sony EDI, you know there's millions of potential customers who will actually get to see it. Consider Geometry Wars. That's sold 45,000 units from what I can find. Imagine that instead of appearing on XB360, it had been created by an independent on the PC. How would they tell those 45,000 buyers that this game was available on PC? It's not easy without a point of contact. What the console distribution method provides is a network of millions of potential customers all there are ready to buy. You can promote a culture of trying demos to help reach potential customers. That doesn't exist on the PC except for those who go looking. The consoles actually create download customers out of those who otherwise wouldn't bother, because they offer them the simple process and mix it with other download features. Knowing that there's a market out there that can be reached, developers can invest more to make deeper games than just 2D puzzlers. Jaffe's CAC was 7 months in the making. No developer is going to spend that long on a title unless they are hopeful of getting sales - they're in it to make money after all! This means there's (potentially) a viable third tier in games. There's the premium disc-based games costing many millions of dollars. There's the bottom tier super-simple games that are very cheap. And there's in-between games with an in-between price, with the polish and depth or creative experimenting usually confined to larger games, but on a smaller scale. That's something that doesn't exist elsewhere at the moment. Even if there's people investing many thousands on developers and artists to create fantastic Indie titles (and the Indie awards show that's extraordinarily rare), there's no industry for that tier of game development because most PC users don't know how to find those games. It's not made easy for them, and if they go digging there's a good chance they'll become convinced there's no good games out there because of the shear number of Indie titles. The closest similarity is handheld games versus console games. One ofthe big plus-points for DS that has been trumpeted is the limited requirements of games making them cheaper. They're still full titles, professionally produced. But they are cheaper to make, so a high-class dev can afford to work on smaller titles. Otheriwse they have to work on large, expensive titles, or PC titles with negligable reachable market.
If you're asking is it anything new, on the whole no. There's been download games before and what-have-you. However, in this refined form, it is new. I draw a parallel with the DS. Was the touch screen a new idea for games? No. The Tapwave Zodiac had it ages before. Did the DS manage to create an market in game design though? Yes. Even though the Tapwave had the same touch-screen tech, it didn't have a market that could support. DS brought the same features into a cheap, mass-consumer device, where devs who wanted a go at creating touch-based games could do so. If they were confined to the Zodiac, they wouldn't have bothered (and didn't) because they just wouldn't make money from it. In the same way, sure...any dev house could produce a simpler game and float it on the PC, but the chances of making real money from it are slim. That's why they don't do it. That's why Jaffe spent 3 years making GOW instead of lots of little games - there's no money in the latter. Unified game portals actually create a viable market for these devs to target, and plenty have said as much in interviews.
Of course, we can't say for sure that download games will result in more variety. XBLA has shown a lack of real gaming progress and Wii's lineup is all retro. Sony's EDI is mostly 3D puzzlers from what's been shown. The only real standouts I think are CACs, a fully-3D title (shock horror!), flOw for it's wierdness, and Lemmings for it's quality despite being a retro game. However, it does seem the best chance to get publishers and developers to invest in more risky ideas than they would otherwise. No other space has provided the same chance to sell a product on a large scale, meaning more can be invested in product creation.
Probably.
To be fair, the Net Yaroze thingy seemed to have been fair on people. As long as the lawyers creating Sony's gaming contracts are a totally different bunch to those who create their music contracts, it might not be so bad. Paying them money shouldn't come into it at all if they're kosher, except perhaps maybe a small fee to keep out people from submitting any old rubbish. It should be a matter of presenting them with either a prototyped concept or working game for consideration. The difficulty will be in the protection of ideas department. There may be a case of Sony working on (or saying they're working on) a game that's very similar to yours. I had that with a TV idea I had years and years back, where I contacted Sony and they replied saying they're working on something similar. Whether they are or not, you never know, but you can be sure that the contracts favour Sony in that regards.
Oh...for a second I thought Sony was developing some kind of space-based EM weapons platform...
I agree on the name, and that's probably where they were coming from (the current content makes that clear), but their plans for e-distribution of all kinds of stuff tells another story IMHO.
I just hope they drop that 50MB limit soon.
Anyway, I love all this stuff. I wonder if Nintendo will broaden their virtual console concept too at some stage.
Doesn’t cost end up somewhere in the equation. A virtual library of thousands of 50 MB games has got to be cheaper then a library of thousands of 1-7 GB games in terms of storage and bandwidth. I doubt MS or game publishers want to move to a more costly model then the one that currently exist just to move away from optical media.
A virtual library for 50 MB (or less) restricted games makes sense when you calculate price per MB, which is a lot higher than traditional full-blown games.
Now let me pull out some of my cowboy math (which means calculations who variables are composed of wild guesses.)
A consumer would pay 50-60 dollars for a 4-7 gig 360 game that works out to 0.7 cents to 1.5 cents a MB. Compare that to Live arcade game (<50 MB) that sells for between 5-8 dollars, which works out to 8 cents-16 cents a MB. While cost for games are not usually calculated in such matter, I’m sure the cost of maintenance and operation of a virtual library would make such a metric necessary.
Another thing is looking at cost over time. No full-blown games maintain its initial retail price, which means it becomes more expensive to offer on-line over time. While the cheaper arcade will probably never launch with the fanfare of full blown games, they do seem to maintain a more consistent sales pace due their low cost and broad appeal. Furthermore, you wouldn't have to compensate for those times that additional bandwidth was required for popular game launches.
A virtual library for 50 MB (or less) restricted games makes sense when you calculate price per MB, which is a lot higher than traditional full-blown games.
Now let me pull out some of my cowboy math (which means calculations who variables are composed of wild guesses.)
A consumer would pay 50-60 dollars for a 4-7 gig 360 game that works out to 0.7 cents to 1.5 cents a MB. Compare that to Live arcade game (<50 MB) that sells for between 5-8 dollars, which works out to 8 cents-16 cents a MB. While cost for games are not usually calculated in such matter, I’m sure the cost of maintenance and operation of a virtual library would make such a metric necessary.
Another thing is looking at cost over time. No full-blown games maintain its initial retail price, which means it becomes more expensive to offer on-line over time. While the cheaper arcade will probably never launch with the fanfare of full blown games, they do seem to maintain a more consistent sales pace due their low cost and broad appeal. Furthermore, you wouldn't have to compensate for those times that additional bandwidth was required for popular game launches.
Last edited by a moderator:
Dobwal, I'd say storage probably isn't so much a factor (that's dirt cheap), but bandwidth might be -- the difference between 100k downloads of 50-100mb file vs 1gb file is going to be quite large. But even bandwidth is pretty cheap for a large company that likely already has access to a pretty fat pipe to begin with and probably gets a pretty decent deal (compared to a consumer; $ per Mb/s) for the bandwidth they get.
Definitely another part of the equation though. It's still going to be cheaper (or less of a hassle, most likely) than physical distribution (pressing discs, worrying about stock #s, holding stock, transporting stock, etc.).
Definitely another part of the equation though. It's still going to be cheaper (or less of a hassle, most likely) than physical distribution (pressing discs, worrying about stock #s, holding stock, transporting stock, etc.).
The point is, they overlap but XBLA is an intentionally limited channel/service to focus on a certain objective. So, if you want to be accurate on definitions, you never can say they are not different. If Microsoft wants to do what EDI is trying it'll be through another channel, not in the frame of XBLA. EDI contains the "Yarouze" creators audition, XNA Creator's Club may cover the same concept in future.
In other words, this marketing characterization, or branding, is what Microsoft chose. I think blurring the XBLA brand again by introducing other facrtors into it is not what they want, they've been building it as a casual gaming brand and people recognize it as it is.
One parallel is the "Xbox Live" brand. It's a premium online gaming service. But SCE doesn't give a brand name to their network.
mckmas8808
Legend
I wonder if most people in this thread realize that Jaffe actually has 3 eDI games in development now and CACs is just one of them.
Jaffe has already said that he will/wants to be doing this for a fews years instead doing big AAA games like God of War.
Jaffe has already said that he will/wants to be doing this for a fews years instead doing big AAA games like God of War.
I don't know about XBLA,EDI or even VC following the same patterns as PC. Pc is an incedibly open platform AFAIK, compared to a close platform like a console.A consoles pattern of games can be perfectly controlled by the platform holder whehte rit be MS,Sony or Nintendo.And that pattern can turn out vastly different than PC.
scooby_dooby
Legend
I don't think bandwidth is an issue, they are delivering 300mb music videos, and over 60 demo's that range from 500-1100mb, for free...
mckmas8808
Legend
Exactly! Why people doubt these new things is incredible. eDI and Live Arcade is outstanding and I can't wait to see what it looks like 2 years from now.
And nine million voice and text messages every week...
I actually didn't know he had 3 in development, so thanks for the information, but I have to ask: what's your point?
Some top level developers known for AAA titles would like to have a go at smaller games as they're more fun to make. Thus EDI is capable of attracting the best talent and isn't just the domain of small, inexperienced developers cutting their teeth on the consoles before moving to 'real' games.
mckmas8808
Legend
I tried to make that post as nice as possible because I could make me sound like a smart ass, but Shifty Geezer explained exactly to the tee 100% what the point was.
Some people in this thread were acting like some of the best talent in the world of videogames weren't going to be making downloadable games and that's 100% wrong. I can't wait to see what the best talent has to offer and we all should be happy.
Where is this coming from though? Who is arguing that these download services are being staffed with inexperienced developers who's only goal is to eventually make a real game?
(And to be pedantic, Jaffe working on 3 projects doesn't really show that EDI is capable of "attracting" AAA talent--since Jaffe works for Sony, I'd hardly call being assigned to something as being "attracted" to it. He may have volunteered since I know I've read interviews where he really wanted to go smaller.)
