Razor Blade Games? 347
Oxygen99 writes "There's a story on the BBC News website regarding the financial impact on game developers of the next generation of consoles. The article states that while the cost of producing games increases exponentially as new technology comes online, consumer prices stay approximately the same, leading to an unsustainable financial environment for many small developers. With many small development teams already hurting from the crippling costs of development for the X-Box, GameCube and PlayStation 2, what happens when the X-Box2 or Playstation 3 arrives? Are the days of small scale game development over? Will we ever see a new Jeff Minter? Will the games industry go down the route of the razor manufacturers where consoles are almost given away with the games?"
Pressure = opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line is that the demand side will determine what happens here - if the market can sustain higher prices for games, the current trend could continue for a while. If a big-budget game flops dramatically, however, you'll see a restructuring of the process that could result in a major shakeout within the industry...
Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
What you're talking about here is a GDE (Games Development Environment). It SOUNDS like a great idea, but I don't think so. It would mean that every game coming out of the pipe would be the same, homogeneous product, using the same libraries, graphics, sounds, whatever. Blech.
Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
You just described the standing state of Shoot 'em Up Games(tm) for the past two years.
Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
And while I'm at it - this article really overstates things. Yes, it can take more people to develop for consoles. But games can still be built by small groups, and the games can be A titles. It's about not reinventing the wheel - look at some of the mods out there. Built by small teams that have the engine already. Remember, while eye candy helps, it's all about the gameplay.
Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
It requires millions of dollars investment to produce the first game. Our estimates were $3 million of the game we had in mind (for the PS/2 using a from scratch engine).
There are a variety of ways to get money, but it's definatly not possible to do it nights and weekends, or in a garage. A lot of this is the control that the console makers have over every aspect of the game release.
Th
Enter The Matrix? (Score:2, Insightful)
rather than producing Hollywood-caliber graphics on a custom basis for each game, perhaps that function is better served by standalone companies that create characters and associated animations that game developers can license for use.
Licensing characters with animations? Movie license games are rarely[1] good games. Capcom and Virgin tried the licensed-character route in the 1990s, borrowing characters from cel-animated movies published by the company [disney.com] we love to hate [losingnemo.com]. The games (such as Chip 'n Dale's
Re:Enter The Matrix? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not what he means.
Let's say company A makes characters. Company B can either buy them or sub-contract them to create new characters for their games.
Therefore, letting the game company worry about the game itself. This is commonly done with sound effects and music. (outsourcing, more than licensing though)
Re:Enter The Matrix? (Score:3, Informative)
I mean, I remember playing "The Lion King"; all you did was play the storyline of the movie! I already knew exactly everything that was going to happen. Big whoop.
Now, if they had made it more of an RPG, with an action component, and extended the universe with a new story, THEN it might have been interesting. Combining likeable characters you already know with NEW adventures might have
Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
What has been the trend in all entertainment venues right now? Movies? One of the worst years for movies, average drop of is HUGE. Games? Things could be better. Music? Teetering on bankrupcy.
For whatever reason (bad economy?), consumers are a *little* smarter about what they're purchasing. People are tired of mindless teen movies, boring first person shooters, and bullshit pop music. Now I'm not claiming that every last consumer has wisened up, but that enough are atleast to reduce profits to critical levels.
We are at a low low LOW for creativity on all of these mediums. Normally, companies expect a ceartin ammount of idiots will buy a shitty product no matter what. But now, people hop on the internet, talk to their friends, and now you only need to know someone who knows someone who tells you a game is bad. "Yea dude, this guy I know bought red faction, its fucking lame."
I think what is going to happen is a market is going to be created for Independant movies/games/music. independant music is already here. I'm hearing *good* new inovative music and it just takes a little work to find it. I get to reject corpratism, I get to hear *good* music cheaper then I would, and good artists get my money directly.
A few years from now? I expect independant games / movies should start to show up. However, thats just my hope. It could be that once the economy loosens up, people will go right back to buying shit. But I have hope :)
Middleware is the Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Let us not lament- Sony is the current market leader and also happens to be the only manufacterer who opened up their console for easy programming (anyone remember the Sony Yazoo (or whatever it was called) for the PSX - a home development system) and is also selling Linux kits without a free cease and desist letter to anyone who uses linux on their PSX.
There's still space out there for bedroom developers, it's just that bedroom developers are changing!
Frogmanalien
Agreed (Score:2)
I don't know if it will be good that smaller game developers will find it impossible to compete in the near future. Perhaps we may never even notice that they went away. Personally, I just think that the best talent outtheir will be hired by the more successful companies, and
Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
On the coding side tho, programmers are still expected to build 3D engines from scratch. This is made worse on consoles, because you're usually programming the hardware directly with very few APIs t
Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
But honestly, it's a brilliant idea.
The same can be done for other objects. Recently the Driver 3 developers said that their biggest cost is designing the world, even though most of the buildings are still just empty boxes. The solution is similar - create a parametric function-based object called "house" that could be tweaked from igloo to WTC.
Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
he was... uh... referring to the decision to use a software polygon engine in the early versions of Messiah, IIRC... but it's a good point nonetheless.
I've played a lot of games with randomly-generated worlds, and while the variation sounds like a boon, it just ends up becoming tired and boring. Think of Gran Turismo (to pick a popular example). Remember coming out of the roadways at the end of the SS Rt. 5 stage, rising back up onto the highway straightaway. Remember how it felt like you were soaring, as you broke out of a series of tight turns in a confined space and started rocketing down a straightaway at 200 mph in a wide-open space?
You can't have that in a randomly-generated game... there's no experience.. things aren't planned.. they're just there. There's no personality to it, no cohesion in design.
Now, I get what you're saying about using random world generator to take all of the extreme effort of crafting a play environment, but then you lose all control over the world itself. The play isn't crafted any more. The world has no personality.
The only exception I've seen is Animal Crossing, but that's because you contribute to the world's personality so much, that it doesn't matter if the world is a little odd. Your environment doesn't play as big a role in the game as it does in others.
Now, randomly generated graphics... that's a great idea. How about completely randomly generated trees? Give a few parameters to work off of, and a seed for a random number generator. This way, it'll generated randomly instead of being modeled, and will look the same every time. There's great opportunity for streamlining graphics production, but the actual play environment is an expertly tailored thing, and randomization would only screw it up.
Compatibility... (Score:2)
This almost guarantees there will be compatibility problems somewhere down the road.
I hope they start giving away the consoles. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:STOP BUYING CONSOLES!!! (Score:2)
of games, I prefer the console experience. Perhaps this is because I'm not
a serious gamer, but then, the majority of people who are potential game
players aren't serious gamers either.
Console games need to be designed such that the limited input allowed by
the controller can still provide a natural way of interfacing with the game.
Computers have more interface options. If a game requires a more complicated
interface than a console provi
good reply... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. It started with small unknown developers writing games for the PC.
2. The small unknown developers become giants.
3. The consoles allow the giants to sell more games to people who don't understand computers.
4. The giant can no longer afford to develop PC games because they need to put all their development into consoles.
5. Nobody buys anything but consoles and console games because that is the only thing the dev
Nope - vis a vis Bookwork (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be fooled into thinking that consoles and PC are - forgive the pun - the only game in town.
To some extent ... (Score:2)
I doubt we'll ever see the day when something like the PS2 or XBox is given away alongside a game, at least during the period of prime profitability for the console. They're simply too expensive to produce to be given away.
Unless they're being obsoleted, I suppose, and then bundled into cheap bargain bin packs.
The theorem is simple (Score:2, Informative)
Movie industry parallel (Score:5, Insightful)
I am hoping that moviegoers are getting saturated by the overly formulaic movies they're being given, and will shift the focus back to smaller budget films that are more original. But I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with the movie biz right now. For those that crave original, small-budget films, there's no shortage of them.
Re:Movie industry parallel (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Movie industry parallel (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Movie industry parallel (Score:2, Insightful)
With games, the advancing technology has made it more expensive to create a professional looking game. A professional looking game requires more people today than it did 10 or even 5 years ago.
Re:Indie games? Like what? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Indie games? Like what? (Score:2)
SDK (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SDK (Score:3, Interesting)
On a side note related to this, I really wish Sony would resurrect the Yaroze
Re:SDK (Score:3, Interesting)
For starters you need a $15,000 development station.
Then you need to licence the SDK for an amount Sony will decide.
Then for each game you need to spend about half a million dollars to get it approved and tested by Sony. They can reject you for any reason and make you pay to have it tested until they are happy.
Then you pay Sony $8 for each game you sell, plus the costs to produce the special CD's the PS2 needs.
Then do the same with Microsoft and Nintendo.
Don't forget several
Re:SDK (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you need to licence the SDK for an amount Sony will decide.
You need approval for your game from Sony in order to buy the development kit - this is to prevent the PS2 market being flooded with crap. Once you have your kit, all the Sony tools are free. (but not as good as the third party tools from Sn Systems.)
Then for each game you need to spend about half a million dollars to get it approved and tested by Sony. They can reject you for any reason and make you pay to have it tested until they are happy.
The testing procedure is paid for by the license fees per disk. Again this is a hurdle to prevent crap being released on the market - or would you prefer publishers to be able to publish buggy games in order to hit their deadlines ?
Then do the same with Microsoft and Nintendo.
Your first game doesn't have to be released on all three consoles - why not just target one.
The consoles are VERY tightly controlled.
Because there are already too many professional games companies making games for the market to support - it is not in anybodies interest in the market for amateurs to flood the market with sub-standard crap.
Re:SDK (Score:5, Insightful)
Give us more, and make it hurt! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Give us more, and make it hurt! (Score:5, Insightful)
None of these require the latest screaming system to play, yet they all still represent the Best of Class.
I havn't purchased a game in years, not becasue of cost. Not because of lack of interest. Simply because I haven't been presented with a game superiour to those I already play.
It wouldn't take much to grab a few hundred more bucks out of my pocket, but the latest gee whiz bang twist to the same tired old formula isn't going to do it for me.
Give me games instead of technology and I'll buy them.
KFG
Free market (Score:2)
Then some companies will go out of business, and we will be left with enough to supply the demand.
Myself I'm just waiting for torcs to evolve a little bit more, then I'll be happy.
Golden age died along time ago (Score:4, Informative)
I still remember those 1.99 games being available at my local newsagent. Ahh let the nostalgia begin
Re:Golden age died along time ago (Score:2)
Re:Golden age died along time ago (Score:2)
Well, maybe... but on my systems (x86 and UltraSPARC), it looks like 32 bits to me... so that's either one word or half a word.
Sorry - had to do that :-)
It has already happened with Inkjet Printers (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider the Film Industry (Score:5, Insightful)
To me this is good news for gamers. True, it will result in a lot of lowest common denominator crap. But this analogy suggests a lot of positive aspects as well. For one, I personally happen to like blockbuster movies, and I'm glad that the market is such that someone can justify spending $300 mio or so on the LOTR trilogy (to name just one example).
At the same time, there is space for the little guy in the film industry to some extent. Innovative filmmakers can still make a name for themselves on a superlow budget (e.g. Clerks [imdb.com]. In my view this applies even more to the gaming world, where a clever idea can be a huge hit without requiring dozens of programmers and designers to implement (consider Tetris).
Anything that makes really stunning high-budget output possible is more than fine by me.
And just like the film industry.... (Score:2)
(advertisements in the background, as in sports arenas; billboards in the background of driving games, and then they'll start working the occassional coke or budweiser can in the hand of one of the main characters).
Sooner or later, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more non-game companies start getting into the video game business to push more produ
Smaller developers... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Big Hollywood style productions can be handled by the huge companies, while the smaller companies can do innovative things like games that actually have gameplay value as opposed to eyecandy value.
Gameplay value is timeless and largely not driven by technology. If need be, license the high end graphics from someone else rather than reinvent the wheel. But someone should be working on making games playable, re-playable, and fun.
A prime area for small-time, moderate budget development? AI. *Good* AI, that learns and adapts, for example, is something I'd like to see. AI that gets lazy and complacent and forgets sometimes, for that human feel, and to prevent things from getting too difficult.
Re:Smaller developers... (Score:2)
You mean Bust-A-Move (Score:2, Informative)
Snood is a nearly-exact knockoff of Taito's Puzzle Bobble: Bust-A-Move, played only by players who are unwilling to either buy a console or install an emulator to get the Real Thing.
But yes, I get your point that simple games such as Bust-A-Move can be fun without requiring too much of a budget. The problem here is finding that killer game formula, a needle in a haystack.
Re:Smaller developers... (Score:2)
Re:Smaller developers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider Puppygames.com's Alien Flux. They produced a full-on arcade style game in 6 months, with just 2 guys working mostly part-time. It's written in Java, using OpenGL and a wrapper library they happily "give away" (lwjgl), and runs under Windows and Linux, and soon MacOS X (they seem to have troubles finding and keeping a MacOS X person with the expertise/time to keep the library up-to-date as the primary developers are x86 only). Is it Doom 3? No. Is it fun? Yes. Definately so. It's proof that you don't need a 10 million dollar budget to produce a good game.
Other areas for small-time developers: Mindless action games. Puzzle games (see popcap.com). I'm even toying with the idea of a small, episodic RPG's (think monthly-bimonthy episodes at low cost (say, $5-10 module or use some sort of subscription).
Anyway, I don't think the days of the independent developer are over. In fact, I think with the wider acceptance of Flash, J2ME, etc, the barrel has opened even wider.
Small shops will do pieces of games (Score:2)
But that's not what I really want to talk about - the supposed rising cost of game development. Making games like the games being made now, only bigger, will cost more. Making fun games which look good doesn't necessarily cost any more. On the newest systems coming out (arguably, on systems already out) you will be able to do amazing things with graphics without doing obsessive optimization. Also, since the platforms are in fact tending to converge on a single methodology, which is to say uniprocessor mach
Re:Small shops will do pieces of games (Score:2)
The PS3 will have even more processors than the PS2, so a game for the XBOX will be very different from a game for PS3. (MIPS 64 bit * 2 or 3 processors versus x86 32 bit * 1 processor)
this happened in computer dev as well (Score:2, Insightful)
Voodoo economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Voodoo economics (Score:3, Insightful)
Technology on the CONSUMER end is improving, but if technology on the SUPPLIER end does not improve at the same pace, you have an increasing cost industry and consequently higher prices.
Any imbalance between cost of production and cost to consumers in the market would normally result in price shi
Small development vs. large development (Score:5, Insightful)
The costs of developing large-scale games only affects the developers of large-scale games. As noted abundantly by others, such games tend to fit certain well-defined genres: RTS, MMORPG, FPS, RPG... indeed, the whole reason we even have and know these acronyms is because the styles of games have become extraordinarily pigeonholed.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Take Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - the game only works because gamers have been trained to go along with the scripting and accept the monolithic linearity of the missions. If you do, however, you get a pretty grand experience.
But the point is this: A few game niches have become so overproduced that independent developers can't hope to compete - but the rest of the market is wide open.
And what a wide-scale market that is! How many genres have barely been tapped, or not yet invented? How do you even classify something like Popcap's Insaniquarium? Or PaRappa the Rapper, or Dance Dance Revolution? Those are pretty easy games to design and develop, and they're fiercely fun. Window dressing is extra - but for these innovative games, window dressing is secondary to gameplay. (What a novel concept!)
Bottom line: Independent developers should not mimic Electronic Arts and try to compete in these highly stylized, overbudgeted affairs. But there's plenty of untapped gaming out there, just waiting for someone with a smidge of vision and a touch of imagination. Go get 'em, guys!
David Stein, Esq.
Re:Small development vs. large development (Score:2)
Too many game creators dont realize that the #1 point of a game is for it to be fun. Yes, its fun to look at pretty graphics, but that only lasts so long.
Give me a solid control system and a fun style of gameplay, and im in. Thats why the megaman games have lasted so long.
Alternative business models? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, who am I kidding? Anything released to the console market without 3D graphics, genuine B-list actors providing the voiceovers, and 16.7 zillion colors is doomed to failure.
DecafJedi
Re:Alternative business models? (Score:2)
As the effort to create games gets bigger, re-use becomes more and more important.
Re:Alternative business models? (Score:3, Interesting)
DecafJedi
Small players in the console market? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is room for small game companies. Just not on the Playstation or the X-Box.
Re:Small players in the console market? (Score:3, Insightful)
More salient than you might think.
Atari's weakness was that it did not control the games publishers. There was no quality control, consumers were discouraged, and in the end the entire market suffered. When Nintendo and Sega started to reinvent the games console market the first thing they did was to strictly control who was publishing what for their systems.
Re:Small players in the console market? (Score:3, Informative)
They tried to put an end to it with the 7800. That machine had an encrytion scheme to prevent third party games from using the imporved features.
Like I said there has never really been room for the small guy in Consoles.
BTW some of the worst games came not from third party publishers but from Atari. ET and Pacman did mo
Hence the modding culture (Score:2)
I don't think I could count the number of FPS/RPG games out there that rely on the latest Quake or Unreal engine to do the dirty work.
We're already there (Score:2)
Given that MS, for one, is already losing money on each console they sell, I'd say we've *already* gone down that route. But since this means that the console makers are losing money if not for the collection of licensing fees, I wonder what more widespread pirating of games will do to the whole industry.
Two things will emerge (Score:2)
Every few years we see
You are not entirely correct (Score:2)
The rest of your post is not correct.
The most likely way developers will deal with the problem of generating increasingly complicated worlds will be to create tools that do more of the work for them. More of the task will become procedural. Part of that will be using fractal algorithims to genera
Re:Two things will emerge (Score:3, Insightful)
My biggest problem with this change is that games are getting too short. If I don't finish a story-oriented game, the real reason is that the game has suddenly become extremely difficult for no good reason and frustrating, not because I lack the patience to finish it.
Tragic (Score:2)
Zork... (Score:2)
I don't want to watch a mini-movie or blow up demons.... I want to get lost in the game and very few games hold up to that standard today.
Nintendo is confronting this (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Nintendo is confronting this (Score:3, Insightful)
Old School. (Score:3)
Let the large developers have their bleeding edge. There's no reason that smaller developers can't continue developing on an older system. Or is the gaming community really so shallow that it will always choose the shiniest graphics, and the most dazzling effects over the content and fun of the game?
game engines, pricing, expectations. (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the real problems is that there is little room for games with lower expectations. I'd be really happy to buy a bunch of ten hour games that had less technical wows but much heart, especially if their retail price was reasonable.
How many gamers do you know that buy the latest games at $50? Most games sold at $50 are the blockbusters that sell to the general public rather than the hardcore gamers. But it's the hardcore gamers who buy more than 1 game every few months. I buy a ton of games but I've learned to be patient and buy games a month or two or even 12 later than the release date, simply to get the game for $20 or less. There is a big market for new games at lower prices that is not being tapped.
Not everyone has 40 to 80 hours to sink into the latest rpgs and not every game needs to be Final Fantasy VII. I really love the Ikaruga's of this world. Final Fatasy VII cost $35 million to make and had a staff of over 100 people. On the other hand, 95% of Ikaruga was made by THREE people. (For instance, the music was written by the same guy who did the game's background art!)
I kinda get the feeling that the industry might be heading towards another major evolutionary period, similar to the market crashes of the late atari era... I'm just not sure what it will look like.
.
Re:game engines, pricing, expectations. (Score:3, Informative)
Many older Nintendo RPGs made it a point to advertise "over 100 hours of game play." Now, however, I am finding it really hard to complete an RPG that takes even 40 or 50 hours. I think this is indicative of the greater and more complex time constraints many of us are facing.
Given that people are now torn by cell phones, PDAs, PCs, gaming consoles, television, cable television, not to mention older avenues, such as magazines, newspapers, an
Misspent Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
What is needed is for game developers to stop throwing money into the photorealistic hole. Anime is a perfectly acceptable graphic style designed for mass production. By reducing the amount of "detail" using artisitic license you can focus more on game play, scripts, and quality assurance.
False razor analogy (Score:2)
The cheap razor / expensive blade analogy is often used with respect to game consoles, but there is an important difference: A razor (without the blade) really is just a cheap piece of plastic (or metal) with a clip on the end.
So in the razor industry, no strange or clever marketing is going on. The manufacturers sell cheap-to-manufacture holders for cheap prices, and expensive-to-manufacture blades for expensive prices. That's all.
With game consoles (or inkjet printers, for that matter), the situation
Something else to consider... (Score:2)
It is already rare enough that game companies invest time and resources into Linux ports for popular games, and a constant increase in development cost is only going to further discourage the practice.
Bioware's Linux port of Neverwinter Nights is going to become a thing of the past when game companies can't afford to put the time and resources into such a very small market share.
Re:Something else to consider... (Score:2)
"
Bioware's Linux port of Neverwinter Nights is going to become a thing of the past when game companies can't afford to put the time and resources into such a very small market share.
"
If it costs n% of the total development time to port the game to an additional platform with m% market share it should always be a profitable thing to do where n m assuming the same fraction of game players buy the game on each platform.
I hope it forces them to make better games... (Score:2, Interesting)
Something that irks me about recent games is that many of them are unoriginal, have worse-than-average gameplay... and a huge graphics budget.
For instance, I find that WarCraft III gameplay is much, much worse than StarCraft (could just be my low-end machine with a crappy graphics card), and the heros and other additions don't make the game much more interesting.
Similarly, Diablo II was probably the most unoriginal RPG I've ever played; the graphics are excellent
Why I Can't make a DOOM 3 clone (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been programming for many many years on many different platforms, I'm an expert in C and x86 assembly and I've done a lot of stuff with OpenGL and a good amount with DirectX not to mention being proficient in just about any area of programming you could think of. The problem is that a game engine like DOOM 3 is not a stand-alone work. It is rather the evolution of the first DOOM engine through all the iterations of Quake. I could write the first DOOM engine. I could probably even write something like Quake 2. But as a small developer, I cannot possibly break into this market when I'm competing with people who are evolving and reusing code that they've had for years. They just keep making it a little better. I can't do that because I don't have years and years of succesful 3d projects to draw from and improve upon.
No small developer can jump 6 levels of technology to get to the current state-of-the-art and compete with large developing firms. Programming, like everything, is an iterative process; so as games get larger(code-size) and more complex with more and better technology packed into them, it will be harder and harder for small developers to break in the market. Most of them end up buying a decent 3d engine from someone else. And with faster graphics cards and games like Warcraft 3 and PlanetSide, all games are beginning to rely on evolved technology. A small developer's game (whether its an FPS or an RTS or an MMORPG) can't compete with the beauty and speed of a large company's engine that has been revised and rewritten and composed of a multitude of high speed algorithms and computing tricks that have been drawn from a large code base. Which relegates us all to the realm of shareware...or, on the bright side, perhaps open source community projects.
Re:Why I Can't make a DOOM 3 clone (Score:3, Insightful)
I could probably write something like Quake 2... oh wait, I've got the whole Quake2 source code [slashdot.org] right here! Nevermind.
If you're a small developer, the excuse of not having a basis to start from doesn't hold up. Carmack has graciously released his code to the public well before it became fully obselete.
As mentioned in other responses, the majority of the work for a new game is in graphic/level resources. The fact
Great! (Score:2)
Precisely WHAT ... (Score:2)
large publishers emerge, just like movies or books (Score:3, Informative)
consoles publishing is very similar to that of mainstream movies, print, and pc gaming. (independent pc gaming is fairly healthy now, but is about as 'popular' as art-house movie theatres)
a console has a barrier for entry - just like getting your film into a loews cineplex, getting your PC game into CompUSA, or getting your book into Barnes and Nobles.
-developers- can remain small - but small publishers evaporate.
this is not a new twist in gaming, it's an emergent trend from the last 10 years. certainly, it's a market that costs money to break into. you either have it independently, or you pitch for it.
what does it mean for the industry?
well it nearly guarantees that games will continue to be as derivative as hollywood, and the ny times fiction list.
Anything remotely 'new' will get beaten into the ground in long-running strings of sequels (gta, doom, die hard, and Tom Clancy novels are not so different)
Innumerable 'knockoffs' will get published to try to ride the wake of what is 'new', and maybe once every 4 years something really cool and different from the norm comes out.
but it will quickly be emulated, immitated, and desecrated.
will it go the razor blade sales model?
no. that's ridiculous. the razor-blade sales model relies on producing inexpensive pieces, and packaging them as an expensive whole. (even with 4 blades in a refill, gilette is making money hand over fist - even on the cute handle)
Nintendo has shown that using your console as a loss-leader is not necessary (they make money on each console as well as each game) their lack of market share in the US and Europe is more directly due to nintendo's tight control over game developers, and their resultant small selection of games. microsoft and sony resorted to dumping, to try to capture large chunks of the market. with the new consoles becoming more and more complex, and incorporating more and more general functions - they most certainly will -not- be 'given' away. (xbox2 and ps3 almost certainly will carry pvr functionality)
they may be sold at a marginal loss, so long as there is healthy competition in the market, but it would never come down to handing someone a console. primarily because there would then be no 'attachment' to the title. everyone would own every console in short order. What xbox/ps2 owner would pass up wind waker or sunshine if they didn't have to pay for the GC? likewise with ps2 owners buying halo, and xbox owners buying gta:vice city. and if there's no brand loyalty - well then who's to say that MS will -ever- get their money back from game sales to support eating the cost of the console? particularly from the 'casual' gaming market - who would buy maybe a half dozen games. (and most likely, the 2 best from each main system). 2 games does not cover MS loss on the xbox, or Sony's on the ps2.
so what -does- this mean?
it does mean the end of originality on the store shelf - but that's been not-so-slowly happening since the early 90s.
perhaps if electronic distribution catches on, then this trend can be avoided - but i'm not holding my breath.
michael... (Score:2)
go to hell. fag.
PC is where its at... (Score:2)
Consoles, yes; everyone else, no (Score:2)
Consoles will always have a high barrier to entry (e.g., just having to set up disc/cartridge distribution is pretty big).
PCs and PDAs, however, will always be accessible to anyone who has one and can download and SDK (stir in a bit of creativity, and voila!).
Game development economics (Score:2)
On the one hand, developers these days have far more resources available to them. Unlike the old days where you had to write games in assembly because the machines couldn't handle the overhead of an interpreter, now developers have high level languages and can structure their code with OOP. They have extensive API's they can make use of, libraries to build upon, existing 3D engines
idiots (Score:2)
Wait, didn't someone else come up with idea like 5 years ago?
Freakin capitalists (Score:2)
There are no excuses.
If capitalism can't produce the games you want to play maybe you should rethink your form of society. It seems to be working just fine for me. I love GTA3: Vice City.
This is not a problem we can solve unless we're willing to look at all possible solutions. But most of you are too closed-minded. That's fine, not my problem. Just quite your bitchin.
Correlation to all other art forms (Score:2)
The only thing money does to art is to make it shinier and flashier. It does not make it "better," unless you're part of the breed (:cough: american idol
There's nothing wrong with enjoying shiney, flashy video games (or a
how about this (Score:2)
Stop the herd mentality, open your mind.
Some observations. (Score:2)
Tools are improving. Efficiency is improving. Developers can now farm out music, art creation, testing, etc. to contractors. They can buy in engines and middleware.
Furthermore there is no hard-and-fast rule stating that just because a game can eat up $10 million budget, that that is the minimum that has to be spent to make a technically sound, playable and marketable game.
Further-furthermore, each hardware generation has a larger user base, offsetting the
Looking at the wrong devices (Score:3)
For example, there's a huge boom in Symbian and J2ME devices with the new mobile phones at present. Could code for that - that can't produce the effects which take up all the time on a big-hardware gmae, but it can sill be extremely playable. Sort of back to the late 8-bit/early 16-bit stages.
The Gameboy Advance can use homebrew cartridges - why not have a crack at writing something for that? It's about up to the standards of the old SNES (I think it's identical except for sound channels, though I'm prepared to be corrected on that), and the old SNES had some truly brilliant games.
I'd suggest that if the cost of developing for one platform starts heading for the stratosphere, then look around for platforms that don't have that problem.
Cheers,
Ian
Choose the GamePark! (Score:4, Interesting)
I recommend looking at the GP32 site [gp32x.com] though as it has better descriptions, reviews, news and gives you a great overview of what is possible. It is the first 'Open' console that's been produced and already has quite a 'bedroom' community that has sprung up around it.
Not only it is open, it just happens to be the most powerful handheld console out there and there's ports of Doom, Heretic on it already as well as Atari ST, Gameboy, SMS, PC Engine and Megadrive emulators. It has a built in MP3 player and you can also plays DivX movies if you pay a small fee (3.50/$6) for the player. All the commerical games for it are very cheap too - most in the 7/$12 bracket.
In short it is superb and runs on standard Smart Media Cards so once you've bought the console you aren't tied to buying proprietry hardware like the Gameboy.
So, you have no excuses now - buy one, start developing and make money!
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
This really doesn't seem like the end of the world.
Re:Consoles are already given out (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Consoles are already given out (Score:3, Informative)
The only consoles to be sold at a loss were the Dreamcast and the XBox. The XBox is no longer sold at a loss.
Re:Consoles are already given out (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Consoles are already given out (Score:2)
Re:Consoles are already given out (Score:2)
Hmm, I didn't know that. Couldn't Google anything real quick either.
How about GameCube?
Re:Easy - send the development to India (Score:3, Funny)
"Fight!"
Madhusudan Vishnu vs. Muhammad Amin, round two.
Re:Port It (Score:2)
Nintendo is, today, doing a lot of classic game resuscitation, though it mostly seems to be for the GBA.