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Entertainment Games

Only 80 Games A Year Will Succeed 96

Posted by Zonk from the not-good-odds dept.
0110011001110101 writes "Next Generation reports on the risks involved in game publishing and development. A report has been released suggesting that, in the next generation, as few as 80 games a year will turn a profit. Development costs in the next generation are set to rise from $3 -$6 million per title to $6-$10 million, with some cases surpassing $20 million." From the article: "Screen Digest's analysis shows that in the U.S. in 2004, titles based on licensed IP, such as Madden NFL 2005, sold 23% more units than titles based on original content. However, the short term revenue gains of licensed IP, does not necessarily translate into greater profits. Licensing costs are rising as IP owners become increasingly aware of the growing importance of the games medium."
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Only 80 Games A Year Will Succeed More

Only 80 Games A Year Will Succeed

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  • So? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:01PM (#14047629)
    Fewer than two or three dozen motion pictures will turn a profit this year. What's your point?

    • Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Turken ( 139591 )
      Well, considering that movie studio profits have started to decline as the effects/creativity ratio has skyrocketed, it's only a matter of time that the games industry will also suffer if they follow the same path.
    • Isn't it through "creative accounting" that most movies don't turn profits, enabling them to pay out less to stakeholders in the project?

      Or is this an urban legend of sorts?

      • Considering that they claimed Spiderman didn't make money to avoid paying Stan Lee, if it is an urban legend, its got good sized roots.

  • Does it include... (Score:3, Funny)

    by lord_nimula ( 839676 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:04PM (#14047653)
    Duke Nukem Forever?

  • That's the way it works (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Proc6 ( 518858 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:07PM (#14047670)
    That's the way it works, when, like movies, you are competing not based on the quality of the content/story/gameplay, but on the special effects and celebrities involved. The only way to top the last one is by outspending it.

    Then there's the few examples like Napoleon Dynamite or Pi, that show you just how little money it takes to put an excellent story to the top of the charts and become insanely profitable. But of course the industries look at those as anomolies and go back to cranking out Batman Twelve with Tom Cruise and Lindsy Lohan.

    Let's see some real innovative games, then I'll cry when only 80 a year succeed.

    • Look at Nintendo (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The truth is that the real problem isn't (necessarily) what types of games that are being developed, but that developers are producing their games in a very foolish manner.

      As much as people 'rag' on Nintendo for using the Mario franchise in 'all of their games' the reality is that it saves Nintendo a ton of money when developing a game; a big chunk of the models, textures, animations, sounds and music can be reused which reduces the cost of developing a new game. I would guestimate that Nintendo probably sp
    • Just because Napoleon Dynamite made a lot of money dosen't mean it had a good story..... (ducks behind something large and heavy)
      Primer though....now theres a good movie made on a budget...check it out...
      http://www.primermovie.com/ [primermovie.com]
    • Actually hollywood is spending a lot more money on the "better" movies, which is to say those which are thought-provoking, because they actually make as much as or more than the "blockbusters" based on DVD sales. They might not have the big opening weekend but people like to watch those kinds of movies at home.

  • License == hit??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:10PM (#14047696)
    Could it be that the Madden franchise does well because it's one of the best sports titles ever made, rather than because there's a picture of a fat retired coach on the box?

    GTA had no "license" to exploit, but I dare say it sold considerably better than the "Lord of the Rings" games.

    Want to make a lot of money on a game? Design one that's fun to play.
    • The statistics are flawed. They seem to imply that BECAUSE something is liscenced it will be more profitable.

      The truth is more that there are a lot of true hits - mostly sports titles - that are liscenced and that skews the stats.

      If they took sports titles out of the mix, I think the numbers would be more comparable.

      • Re:License == hit??? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb&gmail,com> on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @09:24PM (#14048923) Homepage
        I think you may be underestimating the videogame purchasing power of people who don't care about videogames: Parents and other relatives of small children. Licenses like Shrek, Spongebob and the like make nice bank in the videogame realm - no matter the quality of the games - because relatives of children are willing to buy those kinds of games on pure spec, figuring that their kids will like it because it has Famous Character X in it. Add in kids shopping with adults, grabbing an adult's arm and saying "Can I have that Batman game?" and you've got nice sales. Enter The Matrix was panned by virtually every "serious" gamer, both for gameplay and for bugs, and it sold tons.

        Trying to judge the overall videogame market by a) what's good and b) people who are so into games that they talk about them on the Interweb ignores a huge portion of real world sales.

        • Re:License == hit??? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @09:53PM (#14049101)
          I just googled it. Top 10 games of 2005, by sales.

          ONE movie tie-in (Spiderman, which some gamers insist did not suck)

          TWO other licensed properties (Madden, which definitely did not suck, and Pokemon.)

          The other seven, while almost all sequels, were popular for the game itself, not for being tied to some summer blockbuster.

          1 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - PS2 - Take II Interactive
          2 - Halo 2* - XBX - Microsoft
          3 - Madden NFL 2005* - PS2 - Electronic Arts
          4 - ESPN NFL 2K5 - PS2 - Take II Interactive
          5 - Need For Speed: Underground 2 - PS2 - Electronic Arts
          6 - Pokemon Fire Red W/ Adapter - GBA - Nintendo of America
          7 - NBA Live 2005 - PS2 - Electronic Arts
          8 - Spider-Man: The Movie 2 - PS2 - Activision
          9 - Halo - XBX - Microsoft
          10 - ESPN NFL 2K5 - XBX - Take II Interactive
          • Really? I see 5 liscenced properties (3 NFL, 1 NBA, 1 Pokemon).
            • Um... only if you count "ESPN" as a "license" which makes kids go "mommy mommy, I want the ESPN hockey game!!!!"

              That "licensing" tie-in is about using the game to promote ESPN, not vice versa.
              • Wow. Wrong again. Sega, and now EA, paid [google.com] ESPN to use their name, style and people in sports video games. ESPN doesn't need videogames to promote their brand considering they have NFL, NBA and MLB games on their networks. Further, even if you had been correct on the ESPN issue (again, you're not), those games still have to pay for the license to use NBA and NFL teams - both the leagues and player associations of each sport get money for that.
                • My point still stands that it's there are no little kids dragging their moms to the store over those license tie-ins. Sports games are being bought by adult gamers who chose based on game-play more than any other factor.
                  • There's no way to tell how much effect the ESPN name had on those who bought NFL 2k5, mainly because of the huge price break compared to Madden. I can say, though, that the presentation seemed to be a big factor in all the glowing reviews of the 2k games over the last two years, and that presentation would have been radically different without the ESPN brand. It certainly increased my enjoyment of those games the past couple of years.
                    • I need to add a PS. Even if the ESPN license was a non-factor, none of the sports games in that top 10 would have reached those heights without the NFL and NBA licenses. So, again, they DO count as games which are sold because they have big-name licenses.
                    • zactly. Adults do say 'mommy mommy I want to play as TO' and TO is only in lizenzed games.

                      Yes, I apparently can't spell lizenzed so I will at least clearly mispell it rather than try to spell it right.

              • Um... only if you count "ESPN" as a "license"

                NFL itself is a license, and so is NBA.

            • And need for speed has licenced cars in it.
          • And? Getting into the top 10 doesn't have to be the goal for a game. In fact, it isn't the goal for most games.

            I just went to Amazon and took a look at a couple of the characters I mentioned above. Shrek 2 - now an "old" game that has reached the $20 pricepoint - clocked in at 113 in video games and 225 in electronics. Pretty good, huh? The #1 gaming product at Amazon today is the Spongebob Squarepants GBA deal. Chicken Little for GBA is on the rise at #25; New Harry Potter at 29, 31, 58; Disney Pr
          • How is Pokemon licensed? Sure, they licensed it to some companies to make movies, toys and trading card games out of it but Pokemon is as much a licensed game as Super Mario Bros is.
            • Umm, because Pokemon is a cartoon. It didn't start out as a game. It had to be licensed from the people who made the cartoon to be made as a game.

              • Umm, because Pokemon is a cartoon. It didn't start out as a game.

                I don't believe your assertion. Please demonstrate its truth. On what basis do you claim that, say, the following statement in the Wikipedia article about Pokémon [wikipedia.org] is inaccurate? "The Pokémon franchise originated with a series of Japanese video games created by Satoshi Tajiri for the Game Boy."

          • That's fine...but way to totally ignore this guy's point. It doesn't matter if it makes it in to the top 10 or not. It matters if it makes a profit. Licensed games can generate sales based on their license regardless of the quality of the game. The top 10 just shows that a good game doesn't need a license to sell well.
    • Want to make a lot of money on a game? Design one that's fun to play.

      This kind of statement is so devoid of content that it is worthless- it's like saying 'make good movies instead of bad ones, and then people will go to them'. So what is a fun game? How does one design a fun game?

      I suspect that the essence of fun cannot be objectively determined, and that whether a game is fun or not can only be determined very late in the production process.

      One proposal would be that a game that turns out to be non-fun

  • $20mil for a GAME? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by csbrooks ( 126129 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:11PM (#14047704) Homepage
    That is just way, way too much money. Something's gotta give.

    Why, I can make you a really top-notch game for HALF that much! (Flash is ok, right?)
    • For a bit of perspective, many new companies in the computer industry design enterprise class products with a hardware component, several hundred thousand lines of software, and a staff of 50+ people including field sales staff, support, docs writers, trade shows, etc... Plus, all the startup costs of growing a new company. They do all that for around $10 million in venture funding.

      If you're an established company, and you don't pay a premium for voice talent, you should be able to make a top-notch game of
      • If you're an established company, and you don't pay a premium for voice talent, you should be able to make a top-notch game of any type for less than $20 mil. $20 million is a *lot* of money.

        Maybe they needed new hats [penny-arcade.com].
      • You're entirely right. With that kind of cash at your disposal, there's really no excuse for not making a good game. If I was going to invest that kind of money into something, I'd do a whole lot of research and whatnot before hand to the point where I'd be damn sure that I'd get good results.

        I just don't understand where all that money goes. There's truckloads of young programmers and artists out there who would love to get involved in the games industry. It's not like there are only six guys in the world
    • Yes, Flash is ok. Just look at how Alien Hominid [alienhominid.com] got started.
    • Your average modern MMORPG runs above that number.
      WoW was in the $22 Mil range, and once they installed the number of servers they actually needed was alot more. EQ2 was close to $30 Mil.

  • A couple things (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:11PM (#14047714) Journal
    "The author of the report, Marc de Gentile-Williams, said, "At 30 years of age, the games industry still suffers from an endemic lack of professional management compared to less mature industries such as the mobile telephony and the internet industries. "

    Translation: Hire me! I'll make sure you have a few of those 80!

    Only 80 [major release] games will be profitable. Dev costs of 3-6 mil, marketing costs up the wazoo, licensing costs eating up more of the pie... the game industry is turning into the movie industry.

    TFA says that there is a lack of good management in the games industry, causing tons of bankruptcies etc. I say, great! I'd rather not have a static set of three game companies creating all the content. Besides, part of the reason that so many gaming companies drop off the face of the earth is that there is actual competition in the games industry... it's put up or shut up.

    Whereas, in the movie industry, the consumer will put up with any schlock as long as it is one step better than the current competition (which changes frequently, due to short theater runs).
    • If you read the movie industry trade rags, you'll discover that the shlock in the theaters is actually the cream of the crop. A movie has to met some standards to get wide theatrical release. There are many low-budget movies that go straight to video, cable or foreign distribution.
      • So are you implying that 2 Fast 2 Furious beat out some other potential racing movies and won the right to appear in the theater? I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of low budget-indy movies out there that are just as much crap as the worst that hollywood shovels out to us, but come on; with a budget of $100 million dollars+, there's no good excuse for everything that comes out in theaters not being totally awesome.
        • with a budget of $100 million dollars+, there's no good excuse for everything that comes out in theaters not being totally awesome.

          First off, there's no amount of money that can simply be converted to a 'totally awesome' movie. You have to work at making a movie and hire a lot of other people to help make it, it takes a long time, and there's a great deal of risk.

          Anyone can say 'I could make a better movie than that for that much money' or say they should have hired someone else that has a proven ability t
          • I realize that movie making, like most things, is easier said than done. I also realize that I'm not likely to be any better or even as good as anyone out in hollywood. Only that if I were going to spend that much money on something, I think I'd be more careful about how I spend it. I mean, how many big high-budget movies are there in a year? Maybe 100? I would think you could find more than 100 competent directors in this country. There are a lot of people to choose from. Same with actors. You have to make
        • No matter how bad a movie is, it could always have been much worse. That big budget allows you to hire people who are good at what they do, build sets that don't look like shit, and have decent production values. It's no guarantee of a great movie, but it isn't likely to be a total waste of film.
      • Sure, but the best of the schlock is still schlock. Those standards that a movie has to make to get wide release? Profitability. A lot of the time, that means low-risk endeavors like sequels or adaptations. Studios fear throwing $80mil or more into a movie that doesn't have wide appeal. Same thing is happening with video games... the companies that can afford the best production quality aren't going to toss millions in dev cash into a high-risk title, until they've pockets deep enough to do so (like Ta
  • And this is what happens when all you do is focus on the new flash and bang graphics, and your own IP, instead of innovating on gameplay and new concepts. You forget that there's a whole world of games beyond your own platform/PC, and that some of them, heaven forbid, do break a profit, just not in the millions, and with dev teams small enough where that's more than enough to keep them in the business, and not necessarily slaved to the major publishers. Go indie developers!

  • Still a young industry (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PIPBoy3000 ( 619296 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:12PM (#14047723)
    At 30 years of age, the games industry still suffers from an endemic lack of professional management compared to less mature industries such as the mobile telephony and the internet industries.
    It seems that the gaming industry is unique in that it is filled with a lot of young gamers who are passionate about games. Most people agree that they could all make more money in other fields, but their drive to make cool games still drives a number of the development houses.

    At times, this pays off quite well. Grand Theft Auto and other innovative games push the industry as a whole into new directions. Then there's the EA's who focus on management, process, and profits, and end up capturing a safe but stagnant part of the gaming market.

    What the industry really needs is a way to keep development costs down, both technically and from a process standpoint. We need cheaper art development, better middleware, efficient distribution methods, and more. Things like Steam are highly contentious, but there's a chance that this changes the environment considerably. Looking at the new Elevation [gamespot.com] partnership, it looks like more development houses may become self-funded.

    For the winners, there's some pretty huge profits to be made. The gaming industry will continue to mature and expand. The hard part will be keeping it fresh and lively, and not stagnating into a series of endless sequels with better graphics.
    • What the industry really needs is a way to keep development costs down

      I suggest that games be made shorter. Quality over quantity, let online play, mod-makers, or cheap unlockables extend the life of the game beyond 5-10 hours, or sell expansion packs/sequels only after making a profit from the earlier game. That assumes more levels and art and so on actually costs a lot more- if a game is half as long but only 10% cheaper to produce then that's a poor tradeoff.

      The hard part will be keeping it fresh and
    • When can you we stop pretending GTA was so innovative?

  • That's a lot. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jclast ( 888957 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:14PM (#14047742) Homepage

    Maybe I'm not the target demographic here, but I know I didn't buy 80 games this year. And I won't have bought 80 by Christmas either. I consider myself a gamer. I play a lot. I own all three consoles and all but one current portable (the PSP). I bought, maybe, 20 games this year.

    As long as I'm not hurting for a good game to play, I don't care how many succeed.

    This number would mean a lot more if we knew which games were counted as successes (for example, it would make me sad if none of the games I bought were counted as successes), but I think it would stand to reason that most of what gamers like (quality titles in all genres) is what's selling. And what's selling is probably what's counted as a success.

    • As long as I'm not hurting for a good game to play, I don't care how many succeed.

      Yes but if game companies aren't making a profit then it could potentionally make it harder and harder for for the companies to make good games. With money from profits game companies could pay for better talent to make better games and spend more money on technologies that could help to make a good game too. Money is no guarantee for a good game as is proven time and time again with some great, independent games that have be

      • You seem to have missed my point.

        Which games are succeeding? I would think that the games that are succeeding are the games that are selling. I would also think that the games that are selling are the games that people (myself included) want to play.

        If the games that people want to play are the ones that are succeeding, economics is working properly. We'll get more of what's good and less of what's bad.

        Innovation != good. Fresh IP != good. Mario games sell because they're good. Zelda games sell because they
        • What about Startropics? Psychonauts? Shadowrun? Grim Fandango? System Shock?
          • After re-reading my post, I need to clarify something. I don't think that innovation and new IP are bad. I just don't think they make for a guaranteed success.

            With that out of the way, are all of those games considered failures? Star Tropics and System Shock both got sequels (I know I enjoyed both of those games). Psychonauts got more critical acclaim than any other platformer in recent memory (I haven't played it yet, but it's on my list). Was Grim Fandango a failure? I loved that game to death. I'm unfami
          • Those are all really niche games. They have a small, but rabid fanbase. A small number of people REALLY like the games, but the general public does not.

            I must say that GENERALLY the games I end up really liking are fairly popular, and fairly successful. Burnout, Halo, Medal of Honor, Splinter Cell...

            Some people (on Slashdot) would ridicule my choice of games, saying that they are crappy, dumbed down, etc. etc. Which is strange, because I, and a good number of other people, feel that these are good game
        • I would also think that the games that are selling are the games that people (myself included) want to play.

          Perhaps -- but what about the people who aren't buying games because there aren't any games that they want to play? The games that are selling aren't necessarily the best possible games.

          • That could be taken two ways.

            1. There are older games that these people like to play.
            If this is the case, maybe they aren't looking hard enough. How long has it been since these people bought a game? Are there any other factors (I don't own console X, and that game's an exclusive)? Other than that, I'm not sure, but at least they aren't buying games that they don't want.

            2. They just don't like games. You can't force people to buy what they don't want. You can make the greatest FPS ever, but you're going to
    • Wow. I say that 1) because you posted something that clearly shows you aren't thinking before you type and 2) because someone modded you up.

      The article says...no wait the summary...no wait, even the title states that only 80 games a year will succeed. It doesn't say "Gamers buy 80 games a year". You are aware, I hope, that people have different tastes than you do. This being the case, some games would be successful that you would not be interested in. And other people are able to purchase games that
  • Surely now is the time for even competing companies to use more a more open approach.

    The more code, graphics and sound that's available freely then the lower the development costs of the games. As a side note more games should be created as the entry bar is lowered but this will likely never happen as no company tends to willingly help the competition. But a man I can dream, a man can dream...

  • This is why I'm looking forward to the Revolution! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Turken ( 139591 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:16PM (#14047754)
    It's already been mention in lots of other articles that Nintendo's revolution will be a lot cheaper to develop for since the focus is on gameplay and not on all the expensive shiny bits.

    Sure, there will be a lot of games for the revolution that won't turn a profit, but with significantly lower development costs, there will also be a greater number of successes. With the revolution, hopefully designers will be rewarded with profits for good gameplay in whatever niche they are aiming for, rather than making a good game that fails because they had to spend way too much money to have it look pretty for the average consumer.
    • Honestly, this whole console talk is insane. How can you support a console and the games that may or may not be released for it before anyone has even seen it?

      Here's another way to look at your argument. Because the PS3 will cost so much more to develop games for, only developers who are willing to put in the investment will make games. These games will be better because of the commitment to excellence these developers will have to make. With the Revolution, the entry for development is much easier and
      • I, for one, welcome the "Tom, Dick, and Harry" programmers for whatever console they can afford to program for. Sure, not EVERY one will be at the standards of the big companies, but if you go back just a few years to when shareware was the way to find new computer games, you could find a lot of good stuff written by unknown and underfunded authors.

  • Why always high budgets? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by syntaxglitch ( 889367 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:17PM (#14047762)
    Given this, I have to wonder again at the possibility of lower budget games and their financial viability--okay, so you lose out on the "gimme eye candy" market demographic, and probably the "I buy the games the magazines tell me to" crowd, but with reduced development costs you don't have to sell anywhere near as many units to turn a profit.

    Mostly I just think it's sad to see the videogame industry spiral into the same bland mire as much of the movie industry--avoiding risk and innovation, pumping huge budgets into a handful of games on the premise that a few will have huge sale numbers and hopefully keep the money flowing in at least as fast as it's bleeding away.
    • I'm not involved in the games industry other than being a mildly interested consumer, so maybe this theory is all wrong, but here it is anyways.

      I'm guessing that since you basically have to license your games with the console manufacturer, you're likely to get a lot of pressure from them to include all the eye candy that can be crammed in there. While gameplay is certainly the most important piece of the puzzle, you can be darn sure that MS doesn't want some crappy looking screenshots from an Xbox360 game p

      • Hell, Snood is a hideously ugly game, but the guy who wrote it has done very well with it because the gameplay was so addicting.

        Snood is a clone of Taito's Puzzle Bobble aka Bust-A-Move. It did well because it was on the PC, meaning unlike with a console game, people could play it at work.

    • People like you really annoy me on here. What world are you guys living in? This is the best time in history to be a gamer. Not only do we have tons of great games coming out, we have 4 major choices in gaming: Nintendo, Sony, MS, and PC (this isn't even including the handheld market). Competition is a good good thing. Go back in time with gaming and you can't go very far. It was impossible to not be innovative 30 years ago because it was a totally new medium. You would have to try extremely hard no

  • 80? Hah! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Plenty more than 80 games will turn a profit, but since they will be made by small producers who *didn't* spend millions on advertising, the media will pretend they don't exist.

    - The Female Game Developer, quite used to people pretending I don't exist ;)
    • Yes! I would mod you up, but my stash is empty. I made profits on my indie game this year. I contract for a small company that has developed several profitable budget retail titles. I know half a dozen indie developers that have small profits from their games. Look past the big dumb corporations and there are still games being sold and generating profits.
  • Perhaps they mean there will only be 80 profitable console games or big budget titles per year, but there will be plenty of mobile phone and web-based games (even more than there are now) that are produced with meagre sums and turn a reasonable profit.

    I guess in this sense, the gaming industry once again parallels the movie industry. You end up with a small pool of mega-studios producing the blockbusters each year while an ocean of indies, hobbyists, and wannabes fill the niche markets.

    • there will be plenty of mobile phone and web-based games (even more than there are now) that are produced with meagre sums and turn a reasonable profit.

      Two problems with mobile phone games:

      • You have to be on specific networks to get them. If a new game comes out after you're already in a contract, and your network provider turns out not to let you buy and install the game (*cough*Verizon Wireless Get It Now*cough*), then you have to pay $960 for a contract with another mobile provider.
      • Which mobile ph

  • Only? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:45PM (#14047969) Homepage
    Only 80 games? That's pretty damn good. The movie industry is lucky to get 1 good movie a week or about 50 a year. I bet the TV industry has even less overall. Does the music industry put out 80 really succesful albums a year?

    If the game industry can "only" put out 80 successful games a year and I only play 12-24 I will remain one happy gamer. Heck I may even pick up 1 or 2 unsuccessful games.

    I wonder how many "break-even" games they make a year?
    • Does the music industry put out 80 really succesful albums a year?

      That all depends on your definition of "really successful". In terms of this article, "really successful" means turning a profit. It doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to see that the music industry makes a large chunk of money spread out over a number of different albums. In terms of "big hits", I would guess that the gaming industry has a much higher percentage of successful games than the music industry.

      Of course, most s

  • Hah I'll make 2-4 this year alone (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cthulhuology ( 746986 ) on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @06:52PM (#14048023) Homepage
    I have my own little indie game company, and I'll produce 2-4 profitable games this year alone, sure we measure our costs in tens of thousands of dollars, but we don't spend more to produce a fun game than we need to. And like the big boys, we develop a lot of our own IP, and then license our tech to bigger companies looking for a cheaper solution. It is amazing how many hours you can waste playing a game where the entire graphics budget was $20k for some custom 3d models done by an artschool kid.

    The big boys are suffering from being too big. They spend all this money to keep up with the Jones's throwing more and more tech into the same boring games over and over again. And because it costs so much to produce all that content, you end up with a never ending stream of bugs and patches, and support costs. At somepoint the whole structure collapses under its own weight, and ceases to be fun.

    The last two games I've played for fun were Black & White 2 and Darwinia... I terms of pacing, game play, and interface the games tried to do the same thing, but Darwinia actually did it right. Both had clunky interface flaws, but Darwinia's interface suffered only from its intentional quirkiness (a nod to real world OS process management) while B&W2's suffered from intentional crippling (buying broken gesture support, poor palette layout, etc).

    Like indy film to hollywood, there is still hope for games.

    the little guy :)
  • If they spent less money on OMG CUTTING 3DGe "REALISTIC" GRAPHICS!22112! then this wouldn't be a problem.

  • profitable != fun (Score:2, Interesting)

    by subl33t ( 739983 )
    So, maybe 80 games a year will be profitable. But how many will be profitable because they have a hype machine pushing them, and how many will be profitable because they are actually fun to play?

  • And people wonder why Nintendo ditched HD... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spaceman Spiff II ( 552149 ) <gabe@gabedurazo.com> on Wednesday November 16, 2005 @08:53PM (#14048731) Homepage
    This is exactly why I think Nintendo made a good choice (or at least, a defendable one) about not having HD support in the Revolution.

    There number one goal is value: for the players *and* the developers. By keeping costs down, smaller companies can afford to develop for them, and maybe even *gasp* take some risks. I'm looking forward to their library. Having smaller companies willing to take a risk and make a genre bending game can only help you, but if the chance of success is so small and development costs are so high, many companies may not be willing to give it a go.

    A big misconception about HD, though, is that by supporting it games will look good. This is patently false. The revolution will be able to output at DVD level qualities. I've yet to see a game that convinces me I'm watchign a DVD and not playing a game. All HD does, is output more pixels so you can see your crap visuals more sharply. A theoretical game for some system in the future that outputs at 480p and convinces me I'm just watching a movie on my home DVD player will blow away your average viewing public more than Call of Duty 2 for the 360 does. I'm sure the Revolution would have an easy time outputting a big red square at HD resolution, but that's not the point. With the hardware we've got, we haven't even maxed out the visuals on standard definition!

    So, keep it cheap, and focus on making convincing textures, lighting, and physics (the things that really matter), and not just spewing out more pixels. The Revolution is where it's at!

  • As if Sony doesn't need any more bad news - I think they have at least as much riding on the success of the PS3 as MS has on the Xbox2.

    The performance of the PS3 absolutely relies on the apps being multithreaded (Xbox2 also needs it but it will survive if they aren't, a lot of first gen Xbox2 games aren't multithreaded apparently) - this is going to require a higher level of complexity for software which will drive up costs a lot. Xbox2 games use DirectX!

    Now it doesn't take a mathematician to work out that
  • Appraently, a small studio realy can't expect to make a profit on their first game. They don't have to. They need to cover most of their costs. Once they have achieved this, they can make back the shortfall on the next game. The next game needs to be bigger, and make enough of a profit to make up the shortfall from before, but at this point, the company has an existing codebase, a reputation, and of they're lucky a game succesful enough to produce a sequel.

    These intangibles are worth quite a lot ot
  • 40 of those games were produced by Nintendo.. ;)
  • 20 million is a lot of money for a game, but it still is a small budget compared with others, namely the movie industry. Of the current top ten movies at the box office only 3 cost that or fewer, all others have higher production budget. To compare it to similar production methods, the last 2 Pixar movies had 90million production budget, I'm guessing that the licensed games had nothing of a kind in terms of budget, and in terms of quality either. Lets taker other popular IP used in games, what kind of NFL o
  • I've been saying this for a little over a year now on /. and it is about the WORST possible thing that could happen to the videogame industry. It is just another step towards a "hollywoodification" of the videogame industry. If that is what you actually want, then this is great... but for true gamers this is about the worst direction you could hope things to go in.

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