Well that's kickstarter basically, because they invest real money up front.
The Rise of Costs, the Fall of Gaming
- Thread starter Bigduo209
- Start date
Well that's kickstarter basically, because they invest real money up front.
I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but an example was Snowblind Studios. They needed a next-gen engine for their actgion games. They could have released a simple dungeon crawler early on, of which there have been quite a few download titles this gen, to test the engine and mechanics while still making money. And then scaled it up for their full release. I've an idea for an Android game that I'd start with just a simplified version of the mechanics for free to see if people take to it, and if so, make a 'full' game. But keep it version 1 and don't throw the whole kitchen sink in.
Mirror's Edge would have been a good test case I think. A simple Parkour-type game could have been offered. I'm thinking along the lines of MGS's training modes. See if there's a market for it. When it turned out people weren't that enamoured, they could have avoided creating Mirror's Edge and losing money (IIRC).
It'd take quite a bit of research I suppose to be able to turn the stats of downloads into the stats of disc-based titles, but it seems an obvious way to monetise development all through the process. Although one risk may be that the lite version is enough to satisfy gamers who'd otherwise have bought the full version. AFAIK most games aren't completed. If players typically only progress for a few hours on a game before buying another, being able to charge them $60 for that few hours instead of $10 would make more money. But being able to stave off development of more than the few hours that people care about would have saved costs.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
I think that this is exactly what will happen. And given the point that if the smaller d/l game does well, competition stealing your idea is not too much of an issue, mainly because this would and does happen anyway, yet consumers tend to gravitate towards brands, developers and IPs they know and are recognisable.
I think we'll see the scope of content, complexity and depth of d/l-able releases increase next-gen. Games on the scale and size of stuff like portal, the GTA episodes, and perhaps even games like Bayonetta/vanquish etc (those without massive featuresets and multiple game-modes) will be what populate the online stores.
If you think about the biggest PSN and XBLA games this gen, games like flower, Journey, the vampire InFamous expansion, Braid, Crysis 1 port, Trails 1 & 2, Alpha protocol etc etc these games easily could have all been retail releases last gen (some even retail releases this gen). I believe that the online games of next-gen will all try to emulate the scope, scale, content, complexity and depth of these kinds of titles. With retail being limited to fewer but much bigger blockbuster high-end monsters.
When Mirror's Edge was released the download/renting markets was not as developed as they are today. But this should work better today.
No, but it seems to be the natural state that some companies release sub-par or unattractive products and therefor fail in the market place. The companies that release attractive products live on and provide profits for their owners.
One Area I haven't seen discussed. Calander year. WTF devs there is more than just the holiday period to release games. I think the insistance of releasing so many huge games all at once is hurting the industry. COD can sell just as well in June as it can in Nov now , same with gears and halo and other hits. They need to clear out the major sellers from the holiday period and give life to deader time frames and save the holiday period for newer franchises and new Ips
That's the scary thing. Take the prime example CoD. Black Ops (the one released at end of 2010) sold over 25 million. That would probably be more than all other fps in that year combined, if both Halo and Battlefield hadn't come out in that same year.
If we look at the fps (tps) genre, it's something like this:
25-30 million: Modern Warfare
>10 million: Halo, Battlefield (with 3 new in that group)
5-10 million: Gears of War
that's it.
So we have one series that is far, far above everything else. Then the 2 next games that together don't reach the first one and one lonely rider sitting in the 5-10 million category. I can't really think of any other fps that reached close to 5 million. MoH, Killzone 3, Dead Space, Resistence 3, Homefront, Golden Eye, Crysis 2, Rage are all far from the 5 million mark (afaik).
Seems fucked up.
I don't think costs are to kill the game industry.
It's more about finding the good channel / evolving the existing channels be it traditional consoles, facebook iOS/Android/win8.
An interesting article from gamasutra about about how studio are experimenting with new business models:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/174075/staying_triplea_how_big_.php
It's more about finding the good channel / evolving the existing channels be it traditional consoles, facebook iOS/Android/win8.
An interesting article from gamasutra about about how studio are experimenting with new business models:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/174075/staying_triplea_how_big_.php
Nope, just not true. There are these things called seasons that are physical reality. These seasons that physically alter the weather around us does influence the market whether you choose to deny it or not. Christmas and the holiday season happen to occur at a rather good time of year to be shopping for things to do while being stuck inside for months because it is really cold outside. Holiday season is the primary factor here, but don't think for a minute that the actual time of year in relation to the weather has no effect. There's a reason why summer time has had slow sales of games in the past, and that is because there is more stuff to do outside to spend money on. I don't know anyone going to Six Flags whatever, I guess Great Adventure for you, in the winter, but I do know a bunch of people playing their games they bought during the holiday season.
Though I'm not entirely against the idea of big selling games being released at various times of the year. Blizz did it with Diablo 3. But yeah, June might be one of the least optimal times to release a game, especially a big one like CoD. Imagine if it only sold 15 million instead of 25 miillion just because it was released in June, while still making a shit ton of money that is a lot of lost sales. Meh.
Why would the costs continue to rise though? How much of these rising costs are a lot of "fluff", like hiring well known Hollywood actors for acting/voice acting (many times I feel like no name actors are better) or other such "I-want-to-be-a-movie-too" extravaganzas that we see so many games trying now. At one point the rising costs would be because of the added time it takes to make hi res models, textures, larger worlds and what not, at least that what "they" said. However, this whole gen and we had hires modelling and what not and on PCs for longer than that. So I don't get it that game creation need to get so much more expensive every new gen anymore...
Not that I've ever seen outside of sequels, but even with realistic art styles I wonder how much you could really use. A lot of the style is usually the relative distribution of polygons, and I think that would stick out if you put two disparate models next to each other.
There is also technical reason for it, most game models would look hokey in a different lighting environment, most lighting models in current games are not energy preserving and artists tend to adjust material parameters to make them look good where they are in a scene rather than addressing underlying material or lighting deficiencies.
Often they look off even if you just moven them inside a level.
Most people I talk to see a moderate cost rise for next gen, but nothing dramatic, but that's as much about how much you can afford to spend as anything else.
Would it be fair to say that the top end cost may not go up too much, but the bottom end may increase more significantly? What I mean is that the biggest titles might not be impacted too much, but the small titles might see their budgets increase dramatically to stay in line with "next-gen" expectations.
I don't see why that'd happen. As digital distribution is well established, developers can target any development budget they want, from a $10,000 two-man effort (or even far cheaper, depending on what options exist next gen such as PSMobile games or XNA, but I think you'd be looking at about that for the cheapest this gen when you need to buy an SDK and pay the bills during development) to a crazy $100 million extravaganza. Devs can take current games and they'll be next-gen enough just with a hgih quality lighting solution, high framerate and IQ, in the same way 2D games are 'next-gen' this gen thanks to being HD. No-one's going to be expecting Crysis/Battlefield graphics from a $100,000 three-man game selling for $10 a pop online.
Hope for what?
Diversity and fun games obviously ;p
I think we have shitloads of diversity on the different gaming platforms (not just consoles). Fun on the other hand is very personal. I think playing Sakura Taisen 3 (サクラ大戦3) is shitloads of fun, for others that would be boring as hell.
