Most FPS games lose money, says TimeSplitters dev

HALO..... ive said enough. Halo 3 is one of the highest selling games of all time, everything above it is a multiplatform game

No imagination just plain money. Hope the game industry will end the black days soon.

yah crytek lost so much money with crysis2 they just had to make crysis 3? dont add up

This guy cant be serious, lets go back to when Activision didnt want IW to make Modern Warfare but they did and look how that paid off. Maybe this guy should be more confident when he trys to sell the game to someone.

@dogman7 Im not saying they should somehow magically get the money. they need to earn it. this is a problem from two different perspectives. one from the devs which do want to try new things and are being hindered by the publishers, who, two want to make money and dont want to stray from a beaten path. Realize that someone before them had beaten that path. call of duty isnt some innate thing that has always been, it was molded by the community and multiple dev teams into what people wanted. that is the key. activision was apart of atari who at the time was not allowing devs to try new things because they didnt want to fund the cost of innovation but guess what the dev team did? they broke off from atari and created activision. they went onto create numerous hits all of which had original ip in the beginning. valve and steam are another great example of trying new things and making them successful. dont you think people were weary of a download only purchasing service when it first hit the market. but look its awesome it worked out great. Gabe Newell funded that out of pocket. no publishers. when people do amazing things they are rewarded, then people try to copy those things and we end up with more of the same stuff, no innovation. IE the early 80s when video games almost died, due to guess what, no original ip and over saturation. dont defend laziness because there isnt money to be made. sometimes you have to struggle to get reward. not everything in life is a cakewalk.

@TheMudora I'm saying to you the same thing... Stop judging Crytek over some guy's excuses or other idiot's idea to ban used games.

@moldyspud Usually when they state how much a game has sold they don't just sum it up to the first 3-4 months you know?

This guy is spot on!!

I HATE YOU SO MUCH CRYTEK! Stop having people make up excuses for you!

@moldyspud Since gaming has become a multi million investment and companies like Rockstar have budgets over 100 millions of dollars for their games and us ltr high tech...

@R083R70 Well here's th problem because the publishers are the ones that do not want to risk it and want to play it safe.

Also those sales I quoted were quarterly sales where all copies were 60$... so in the 4 month period after release, they sold 3m copies... they were well over that in total. Whether it was under 60 or not... that's just more money.

I don't believe that their budget didn't include the costs for developers and everything else... otherwise it would have been a much bigger game. Since when is equipment to make a game 22million... get real.

@Darnasian Bulletstorm, Rage, and Stalker were all great original fps's, but since they didn't make COD amounts of money two are now shelved and one has an uncertain fate. I honestly think if publishers would encourage developers to make the best games as possible and experiment with new ip's they wouldn't make as much money at first, but once they get some great new series made they could make much more money.

yeah i agree with him just look at Brink it's an alright game it sell very well but i doubt they will bring another one

@kiramasaki It's still a no one...and you know why? Because he isn't the only lead developer there and because he is just one man and not the one in charge of Crytek so it's still a BS thing to judge Crytek over this idiot's words. Just saying...he is just one man..

Then they should stop making so many disposable FPS titles.

@Zensword I think he was referring in comparison to the over 30 million of sales of MW3... I mean it's still 3 to 1 if you put it like that.

@moldyspud I forgot there's also propaganda, I mean, how do you think sites like Gamespot and IGN largest profits comes from, those propaganda's on their site the company pay to them to put them on these places, only in few cases these sites pay the company to use a video.

@mikeyvp87 Portal is a FPS?!?!? WTF that's a freaking platformer! XD Where's the shooting part if not? XD

So Bioshock, Metro 2033, Borderlands, Farcry 2, Half Life 2, and the recent Halo games didn't make any money? I wonder why sequels are currently in development... It's true what he's saying about the general lack of innovation and publishers' fears of taking financial risks, but that doesn't mean ONLY military shooters are being funded (thank god for that). And as many people have pointed out, most FPSes are not very good, which might explain why they are unable to recoup development costs. Seriously, name one FPS that was excellent that failed to make its money back. Still, I think the gaming world would benefit it people stopped buying COD games for a while and invested their money in something that's meaningful and interesting. Seriously people, you're dragging us all down with you.

@darn - it wasnt some gopher, who gets water for people at Cyrtek, it was one of there lead developers from what I got, someone who does have influence in the company, so I wouldnt say its a nobody

when he said crysis 2 was a good game I knew he wasn't all that well informed

Nothing he said is new, but I can understand where he is coming from.

Kickstarter that s*** b*****

Medal of honor probably didn't do so well and barely made a profit in their eyes.

halo was different and succeeded, and borderlands. Timesplitters was great! People love quirky and new! That's rediculous to think that people only want call of duty type games! That isn't true at all!

Oh,even crappy FPS like Sniper Ghost Warrior and Homefront sell well. Sniper 2 is coming out in June. Bulletstorm sales was good, but not amazing according to Epic. Battledfield 3 sold over 10 millions copie and this guys is saying it just did "OK". Wow, so any games that sells under 10 mil doesn't make money. Not only is this guy ignorant, he's also greedy.

For those who say that new and creative IPs are the solution to this... Anybody remembering BRINK? A whole new and intriguing IP that didn't live up to the expectation. I remember 60% of the people that commented on each of BRINK's review or news page said something like this "I'm never gonna buy a new IP game new" Hre you have it! You scared the developers to much and now they don't gie a sh*t about new IPs.

You can try to make every game a clone of a successful model, but the more you make, the more the profits are going to dilute. Publishers need to realize that although there's a lot of people wanting to play any given game, markets for these things are limited in the end. We don't have infinite hordes of 12-year-olds wanting to shoot foreigners with infinite amounts of their parents' cash. Making another CoD-like game isn't going to win you another equally large pie, it's just going to get you a slice of what's already there. If anything, this should be MORE of a reason to experiment with new types of games, and maybe win over other kinds of gamers. I don't really play too many fps, for example, but I grabbed Bioshock and Crysis 2 because they both looked novel and interesting.

So Borderlands, Crysis, FarCry, Bioshock, Killzone, Halo, Portal?, and Medal of Honor, (to name a few), all lost money. Could've fooled me. I swore the sales numbers were very good and lucrative for both devs and publishers.

@moldyspud the 180,000,000 isn't profit you forgot that the budget, is only the equipment to create the game, there are the royalty of the engine developer(yes they get royalty), the royalty of the system the game run(Sony, Xbox, Windows etc...), the payment for the publisher, the royalty of the store that is selling the game(yes they get royalty too) and the importing and licensing taxes(national and international), and the salary of the workers(the development isn't just a single guy working 24/7), and the production(this and the store royalty only applies if the game is retail, the rest applies for everything digital distribution or retail, and this is the cheapest thing to pay) and after all is done, the remaining is the profit...NO, there are the taxes, when that is done, the remaining money goes to the company to become the root of a new game.

"look at Crysis 2: great game, but there's no way it came anywhere close to recouping its dec costs." Stopped reading there.

@himsaad714 It's really not as easy as you make it sound, to make games now a days it's a very major monetary investment and because the Call or Duty style shooter has such an established formula publishers (the people with the money) won't risk their money on something that isn't as established, just like the article says, and you saying that "Oh, just get the money by any means necessary and stop making excuses" is pretty unfair. I think it's sad that developers need to change what makes their games unique just to be able to be published. CoD has really screwed things up if you ask me.

It's true that publishers are scared to try anything risky these days; I know fps's have great games like borderlands, bioshock, etc. but those games are already proven and being made into sequels. You don't really see too many new ip's these days, and that could hurt games pretty bad because quality will slip and you'll never see anything new. Hopefully this changes and we'll receive new series to enjoy in the future.

This has nothing to do with stepping away from genre standards, and everything to do with quality of the titles that do. These half-@$$ devs push out something intriguing in theory but shoddy as hell in execution. If you can give us a AAA game with both original gameplay and stellar development/support, that game would make you quite a bit of money.

Seems like a bit of a copout excuse. Just like blaming the used game market for your game not making the money it "should" have made. But at the same time He does make a very good point in saying "No one wants to take a risk anymore and only want to put money into a formula that is surly going to work"

@Dante200X Actually I don't think Bioshock 2 sold that well. I certainly did not reach expected sales levels, though it may have been profitable.

@Darnasian: Agreed. It's too bad STALKER2 got canceled.

Oh oh oh pick me, I know the answer to this one... ...its because most of 'em suck!!!

its pissing me off to read stupid things like this

@himsaad714 Dude I'm not saying I don't agree with you but you do realise 100% of those of you right here who comment would do the FKING same thing and play it safe just for the sake of profits. It's business man. You think it different from a consumer and fan perspective but once you're on the lead you start to take on the lead o money.

Then they should stop over-saturating the genre.

@moldyspud Who said every person from that over 3 million bought Crysis 2 when it was 60$ ? The same goes for the first Crysis. Do your maths better because you should know that only a maximum of half of those sales wer supposedly sold at 60$. Not to mention many of the gamers waiting for price drop.

but yes i do agree more RPGs but please dont over saturate that market as well. its a fine line in a very frictionless sand.

Nothing is gained without risk. Damn wed still be playing pong if no one thought outside the box and did things that hadnt been established prior. being a human means trying things and failing, learning from your mistakes and trying again. F*ck these lazy devs. this is such a cop out excuse. and you know what excuses are like @ssholes everyone has one. no wonder no one has funded your game, with this attitude. take tim schaffer at double fine for example, he is part of a dying breed of adventure games devs, publishers dont want to produce a point and click adventure, they dont sell well, but there are still a tone of hardcore fans. so what did tim do, he went to the people asked them if they like to donate and help create a game they would want to play. If you want it dont you will make it happen. do what you love with all your heart and people notice and reciprocate.

This is sad news :( No TS4...

@Zensword Never said thy didn't. They are one of my favourite series due to their outstanding approach from a standard FPS game. But it's too bad the studio couldn't initialise th STALKER 2 project.

Thumbs up for Ellis for even taking the time to talk about what's going on behind TS4 closed doors.Maybe us as fans can "kick start" this whole thing towards a TS4 release? Sad day when publishers only want clones of what is selling well and not take an interest in such a gem that the TS franchise is. I totally get what Ellis is saying, and maybe the general gaming public can help TS4 see the light of day.I know I am in if it can happen.

Crysis 1 sold 3 million copies Crysis 2 is well over 3 million... Multiply that by 60$ per copy... 360,000,000$$ and I'm going by 6,000,000 copies sold on old data... which could be well over that. With crysis 1 having a budget of 22 million... I'd say 180,000,000 was some pretty crazy profits... Can't find any solid info on Crysis 2 budget, but if it's the average 40 million, they still made 180,000,000 at 3m copies sold. They also made quite a few other games... and have plenty in development. Whoever this Ellis guy is... he's an idiot or a liar.