Only took 14 years for PC to get official HD release. Congratz PC hermits.
FYI: I'm a PC hermit.
Brainhunter's forum posts
I'm looking at Sony more and more optimistically as we are about to jump into next-generation. Its love and dedication for indie gaming is what may secure its place as the publisher of choice for indie game development on a dedicated gaming system (aside from PC, of course).
Take a look at the following article (not for the TL:DR types out there), it offers a detailed and colourful overview on Sony's off-hands approach to indie game initiatives such as Sony's Pub Fund.
CLICKY - "Support, steer, don't interfere." -Shahid Ahmad, senior business development manager, SCEE
Thank you Sony. Thank you based Kaz.
Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-27-sonys-indie-initiative-how-the-hardware-giant-is-courting-small-team-talent?utm_source=eurogamer&utm_medium=header-promo&utm_campaign=Inside+Sony%27s+indie+initiative
What can console manufacturers do?
Sony is considering funding its exclusives through a subscription-based online service (this means no more free online for PS4). As much as many of us may frown upon this, the industry is headed in a direction where additional funding is necessary to fuel the juggernaut that exists within development costs into next gen.
If the service is anything like PS+, providing gamers with heavily discounted games and a regular rotation of free games, then we as gamers lose very little as a result (for some, it may even count as a gain). And because it is a subscription, it will provide Sony with a consistent cashflow funding next-generation game development for its studios, especially since they do not benefit from multiplatform sales.
Jack Tretton, SCEA's President and CEO, has promised us that next-gen PS4 titles will cost the same as today (that is, no more than $60), which, coupled with inflation, means that PS4 games will be in fact cheaper than PS3 games.
Today, console developers get under 50% cut out of sales (depending on how big of a bite their publisher takes from the pie), but on PC, this margin is most certainly higher. Digital services like Steam take no more than 30%, there are no console licensing fees, the cost of digital distribution is little compared to the cost of running retail, and there are no retail markups.
The videogame industry has gained significant visibility in light of the world embracing videogames as a mainstream form of entertainment. Yet with this recent explosion in popularity, a momentous loss in gameplay innovation and imagination followed. It is disheartening to see studios sink and employees losing their jobs because quality games could not reach the figures projected in its projected financials. The videogame industry is following Hollywoods movie route: sequels and rehashes are but one of the few sure ways of remaining profitable in a field where only the most popular formulas guarantee profits (Im looking at you, Call of Duty).
So many studios have closed down since 2006: take a look.
And who is to blame in all of this?
Is it the publishers like Activision and EA, for desiring money? Or for those like Square-Enix who financially back small-time studios to undertake risky reboots and new IPs? Is it the developers like Infinity Ward, for failing to break the mould and creating truly innovative gems? Or the small time devs like Clover Studios (of Okami fame), for poorly marketing their products?
Or is it us, the gamer populace, the ones who vote with our money and our time and our mouths, those whose expectations have reached such a ridiculous standard of perfection that the smallest bug or glitch, the smallest resistance to an artist's sense of story direction would all but throw us into a fit and tear down metacritic scores in contempt? Who ultimately decides the success of the Call of Duties over the Okamis? The Assassins over the Ni No Kunis? The old, same Devil May Cry over the risky reboots? Many arguments can be made, both for or against. Yet in the end, we are at war with ourselves and with the industry.
I leave that to you, System Wars, to decide.
A look at Square-Enix's recent financial results
Tomb Raider (current MetaCritic score of 86) sold 3.4m units in a month, a fantastic figure for a rebooted IP with a single-player focus, a relatively unpopular form in today's heavily online gaming communities. By gamer standards, this is spectacular sales performance. Heck, most of us would be impressed for any single game, AA-AAA or not, reaching the 1 million milestone. Yet Square-Enix barely broke even in development costs, and is actually reporting a net loss on the product.
How can a game which has sold 3.3m units possibly be a negative?
There are many factors, which I cannot possibly cover on my own. Marketing, distribution costs, retail markup and console licensing fees jack up the price, and are entirely overhead expenses. So what really happens to a game like Tomb Raider, is that the company breaks even in development costs, and proceeds to lose out significantly in overhead.
Absurd sales expectations may also factor into it. Square-Enix may have been a little too bold in forecasting sales upwards of 7m units for Tomb Raider, and budget allocation for development may well have factored into this grossly overstated figure. Yet it may also be this gross budget allocation that afforded Tomb Raider's AA-AAA status to gamers worldwide. We cannot digress the fact that its level of polish is largely due to the large budget, and the massive marketing and promotion worldwide via exclusive deals with AMD's Never Settle bundles certainly is a contributing factor to its widespread appeal and success.
Take a look at the screenshot above: AMD's recent GPU bundle promotions have been offering some of the best full-priced games, for FREE! In this same screenshot, we see that 3 of these titles are Square-Enix IPs!
PC players who would have bought the game no longer need to pay a heavily discounted price, lest even full price, for many of these titles.
System Wars, set aside your petty arguments on platform superiority: let's put down our firearms for the moment and meditate on the past few months amidst the backlash met against EA, Square-Enix and other inflammatory publishers. Let's look at the dark, harsh reality that drives high-profile game development costs and sales.
What Analysts Say:
Financial analysts like Billy Pidgeon (reported in this article) have actively stressed the fact that AAA titles are now becoming massively expensive to develop, barely recouping its costs if these are sold at less than the current $60 pricetag, and without at least a few million units sold at retail.
We've seen this with some high-profile AAA games like Grand Theft Auto IV & Bioshock Infinite either revealed or rumoured to carry development costs upwards of $100m, combined with extensively long development cycles (3-6 years).
Jade Raymond from Ubisoft Toronto indicates that the game industry can no longer sustain more than 10 AAA titles per year, due to consumers' divided attention, competition from developers to buy a gamer' time, and limited consumer budget allowances.
Admit it: we've all faced a period where there were just too many games to play, and not enough time.
Assuming we consider a $100m development cost, with a console developer only getting under 50% of the actual sale of a unit, the company needs to sell at least 3.33m units at $60 in retail to break even. We have yet to delve into the overhead costs beyond development.
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