Based on the last numbers I have seen it is already worse. It’s called blockbuster syndrome. Currently the general rule says if you don’t make it to number 1 in the sales record you don’t make profit. That’s the reason why publishers have cut down their release lists and try to move release to timeframes with fewer titles in the same genre.
Study: Average dev costs as high as $28m
- Thread starter JPT
- Start date
Based on the last numbers I have seen it is already worse. It’s called blockbuster syndrome. Currently the general rule says if you don’t make it to number 1 in the sales record you don’t make profit. That’s the reason why publishers have cut down their release lists and try to move release to timeframes with fewer titles in the same genre.
That's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy, if you budget to be number 1 you will have to be.
The two are not comparable IMHO. Cinema tickets are far cheaper and you don't have to budget them, but very few people are going to buy multiple full price games in a single month. A lot of the gamers purchasing MW2 have skipped on other titles and may not even find them later. I expect seriously skewed NPD charts for december, and as I recall november was quite uneven too.
Edit: in November, both versions of MW2 sold about five times as many copies as the second best selling title on that platform; which, ironically, was another multiplatform sequel, Assassin's Creed 2.
Edit: in November, both versions of MW2 sold about five times as many copies as the second best selling title on that platform; which, ironically, was another multiplatform sequel, Assassin's Creed 2.
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I agree to some point. But as long as anybody in the Top 10 uses such high budgets you will end with a lower budget even lower in the charts. And the sales in this region are not enough high enough to generate profit even with your lower budget. Therefore the only chance to make profit in the retail game business today is to aim for the next number 1 blockbuster. If you hit you make an enormous profit. As a publisher you can only hope to make enough of these number one hits to compensate all the losses. Unfortunately the consequence of this is that any title that is not a potential blockbuster would get no funding. This was somewhat different some time ago. We are in a deathly spiral that started with this console cycle driven by the hope that the player base, and therefore the sales, would reach new highs. As this hasn’t become true everybody have a big problem now. But nobody is willing to reduce the budgets back to a level were anybody in the Top 10 and below can make some profit. The retail business is destroying itself.
If so, its only because the people with the purse strings and overly zealous and ambitious developers seem to ignore how these blockbusting titles like COD MW2 came about. Very few of the top blockbusters were intially realized with a bunch of money thrown at a developer with the intent of producing a title that would generate 5 million in sales off the back. Most seemed to have started with modest budgets with the developer producing very good titles that did a good job of resonating with its audience based on fun gameplay not glitzy graphics.
People are attracted to the high level of marketing surrounding great graphics when it comes to the GTAs, FFs and Halos out there but the thing that people seems to forget is that even with all the visual hype that these titles generate. There exist an underlying expectation of great gameplay that these titles or the developer behind these titles have historically delivered.
Its makes me wonder if the investors and developers of these high profile highly invested commercial failures really ever examined the history and background of these blockbuster titles and franchises who success they so much want to replicate.
There would be no GTA3 without GTA1&2, no Halo without Marathon, no FFVII without the first 6, no GTA without Motortoon Grand Prix (and Yamauchi originally started GT with a staff of 4), no CODMW2 without COD1-3 and with a IW that was formed by 22 former 2015 staffers who worked on MOH.
IMO, only comparable if we have thousands of girlfriends who are "forced" to play/watch MW2 with their boyfriends and cringe in pain while doing it. I wonder if they will stoically accept their faith... But, hey, a movie named Titanic that runs for 3 hours or so and that boosted the tissue sales numbers by 300% is not enough to warn the male population that something dark is brooming.I think that many husbands/boyfriends remember their Titanic "If you like it it so much, I will watch this movie with you, honey!" sentence. After that it gets traumatic
. In our MW2 example, "Did you loved the flying scene?" becomes "So, what do you think of my 26 kill killing streak?"
And they were never heard of again...
Sorry for the off topic...
About on topic, IMO, as with every business if you are unable to adapt to changes you will not succeed. It does not matter if costs are at 28 million pesos or dollars, if you are making dumb business decisions you will sooner or later fail. When reading about some idiotic decisions I sometimes wonder how some companies manage to hold on so long...
Good night...
DeadlyNinja
Veteran
I brought up this concern a few months ago, and looks like things really are as bad as I thought. The next gen's gonna be brutal.
Luckily there is Dante's Inferno too around the same time.
PS. checking out the earnings of RPGs I see Fallout 3 made 300 million in it's fucking first week ... freaky.
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Titanic made 1,85 Mrd $ in 1997 - what would be easily over 2 Mrd. $ by today.
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/international/records.php
A LOT of games are too expensive at $60. There are a lot of 6-10hr $60 games as well as a lot of crappy $60 games. The industry increased prices at retail this generation, has had quality control issues (think of some really huge budget duds as well as 4+ year projects that a ton of cash was sunk based on nearly impossible targets), has resisted tiered pricing models, the HD consoles pretty much abandoned the casual market through numerous moves, and Publishers have made crazy moves (almost 1B for Bioware only to close Pandemic) and continue certain mantras and concepts that are pretty much dead end.
Why aren't publishers developing fast prototyping engines (e.g. like Crytek has shown) and spent a dev team year split up into 10 groups trying 10 concepts pushed into XLBA/PSN. Designs, stories, and mechanics that prove themselves can then be snowballed into full development projects with proven consumer appeal.
The issue isn't that consumers aren't a) spending enough money or b) that the money on a project isn't reasonable.
The issue is publishers put all their eggs in one basket, expect antiquated concepts to push projects through, and throw tens of millions an minimally effective marketing channels and then kevetch when it fails.
The industry has serious problems and until they really address them they will continue on a path of failure due to such small margins.
I look around and see titles like Kill Switch and even Brink that introduced very novel concepts that could, in the KS example, with a quick prototype pushed through a XBLA like channel for mass beta testing and refinement, and then moving forward to a "Gears of War" like title. But instead a good-but-unrefined concept was shoved out the door, it failed, and it was a developer and another publisher that capitalized on the failed experiment.
I think Portal is a good example of taking a concept dry run, testing it out, and then pushing a team behind it. THEN realizing, "This isn't a $60 game" and then marketing it in a way that was mutually beneficial to both consumers and the publisher.
Shareware in the early 90s was a major boon for some games. I think the industry is ripe for a publisher to take a disruptive route in terms of game design, distribution, and monetization with consumers.
Until then software packages ("engines" and dev tools) will continue to be built and discarded, assets "one time and discard" use mentality, and all games will be treated as "major block busters." At least the TV/Movie industry understands you have major motion pictures, prime time TV, sitcoms, day shows, etc. XLBA/PSN are a good move in that direction but there is little cost differentiation at the retail outlets.
Like most things, though, Publishers will push through lobbiest to blame everyone but themselves, become more anti-consumer, and fail to address their own disfunction and aim to preserve themselves through any avenue except real internal growth adapting to the changing market.
Ok, that felt good to rant Not ranting at LY, just the industry that will fail to correct internal process issues and whine about costs.
The funny thing is the "big dog" studios like IW will still push out these titles that create disparity in the industry. There will always be someone taking the gamble, and when it pays off, the rest of the industry will whine.
At least XBLA/PSN offer demos, videos, and even betas to allow studios to level the marketing field some. I have bought a couple games I wouldn;t have otherwise and a game like Trials HD is probably one of the best this gen and without Live I would have never bought it.
Not ranting at LY, just the industry that will fail to correct internal process issues and whine about costs.The funny thing is the "big dog" studios like IW will still push out these titles that create disparity in the industry. There will always be someone taking the gamble, and when it pays off, the rest of the industry will whine.
At least XBLA/PSN offer demos, videos, and even betas to allow studios to level the marketing field some. I have bought a couple games I wouldn;t have otherwise and a game like Trials HD is probably one of the best this gen and without Live I would have never bought it.
What exactly have Crytek shown? Their first public appearance was in 2000 with the X-Isle demo (the NVIDIA Geforce2 promotion, IIRC), so we can assume they exist for something like 10 years; in this time they have managed to ship two titles (Far Cry and Crysis), one expasion pack/minisequel (Crysis Warhead), and sell an engine which has, to my knowledge, resulted in two games: Merchants of Brooklyn and Aion.
Much good can be said about their high-end rendering features, but they are by no means a paragon of rapid, nimble development.
The reference was to their sandbox rapid prototyping demoed in CE3. See: Cryengine 3.
Anyhow, it was only a single example (could have used other engines that allow fast gameplay development/testing) of why a studio doesn't setup a rapid prototyping engine for gameplay and basic art asset purposes. I have worked with mods before and a a skilled team can produce concepts quickly. A pub like EA could develop engine tools that pretty much mop the floor with most of the indie efforts for specialized products (I know you are going to disagree as an indie dev, but oh well).
So the thought process (and I am not alone, look at the working conditions thread and ERPs posts) is this:
1. I am "EA" and want to make the next best shooter ever.
2. We have our best engine guys build an engine that is focused on (a) gameplay flexibility and (b) fast asset creation and (c) gameplay testing. The goal is simple: allow small teams to test concepts quickly and aiming for a "indie" quality end product.
3. Instead of one team with 50 people we deploy 5-10 teams with the goal of turning out an equal number of demo titles.
4. Internal testing, focus group evaluations, demos, and betas would be used to judge game concepts (both gameplay, art, and story) to find effective game concepts as well as address core issues early in the development process.
5. The best couple concepts go into full blown game development, the other ideas dropped (or but on the back burner for future development and testing).
A new model like this could result in a lot of benefits. You could make some money with XBLA titles. You could allow your creative people to do new concepts they would LOVE to do but unworthy of a $30M gamble. But most of all it allows you to avoid sinking $30M into major duds (Army of 2, Kane and Lynch, etc) and pick up on issues that prevent good games from becoming killer games.
I know you smaller indie devs wouldn't appreciate the competition and don't think it is a plausible approach, but if I am EA I am betting on me having the best people working for me as well as fostering a more creative and productive environment for employees and the bottom line.
This also would address some employee treatment issues, make some work environments more enjoyable, and cease treating the market as "$30M blockbuster or bust."
What I am suggesting isn't too different from the shorts done before District 9 and how the concept videos became a blockbuster hit.
Anyhow, it was only a single example (could have used other engines that allow fast gameplay development/testing) of why a studio doesn't setup a rapid prototyping engine for gameplay and basic art asset purposes. I have worked with mods before and a a skilled team can produce concepts quickly. A pub like EA could develop engine tools that pretty much mop the floor with most of the indie efforts for specialized products (I know you are going to disagree as an indie dev, but oh well).
So the thought process (and I am not alone, look at the working conditions thread and ERPs posts) is this:
1. I am "EA" and want to make the next best shooter ever.
2. We have our best engine guys build an engine that is focused on (a) gameplay flexibility and (b) fast asset creation and (c) gameplay testing. The goal is simple: allow small teams to test concepts quickly and aiming for a "indie" quality end product.
3. Instead of one team with 50 people we deploy 5-10 teams with the goal of turning out an equal number of demo titles.
4. Internal testing, focus group evaluations, demos, and betas would be used to judge game concepts (both gameplay, art, and story) to find effective game concepts as well as address core issues early in the development process.
5. The best couple concepts go into full blown game development, the other ideas dropped (or but on the back burner for future development and testing).
A new model like this could result in a lot of benefits. You could make some money with XBLA titles. You could allow your creative people to do new concepts they would LOVE to do but unworthy of a $30M gamble. But most of all it allows you to avoid sinking $30M into major duds (Army of 2, Kane and Lynch, etc) and pick up on issues that prevent good games from becoming killer games.
I know you smaller indie devs wouldn't appreciate the competition and don't think it is a plausible approach, but if I am EA I am betting on me having the best people working for me as well as fostering a more creative and productive environment for employees and the bottom line.
This also would address some employee treatment issues, make some work environments more enjoyable, and cease treating the market as "$30M blockbuster or bust."
What I am suggesting isn't too different from the shorts done before District 9 and how the concept videos became a blockbuster hit.
With a big grain of salt to vg chartz it barely broke 400K in NA LTD.
The marketing was pretty aggressive for the title. If the total budget for development/distribution and marketing was $20M I don't think it was a success.
