JEMC said:
I agree with you but 1) Publishers have the wrong idea that they need AAA games to earn money. To clarify, an Indie developer can launch a game for 20 $ and still gain 5 $ per game. Enough for them to subsist. But publishers need bigger margins (10-15 $) so they need to launch their games at a higher price. But we, the consumers, expect more of a game of a higher priced game and that forces the publisher to launch bigger games that cost more to develop and thus makes them even more pricier. And that's what leads to AAA games. 2) Completely agree. And using your GTA example, Rockstar could use most of the assets of the next GTA V to launch a couple of expansions like Episodes of Liberty City or even develop a new Midnight Club within the city of Los Santos. |
1) Why exactly do publishers need bigger margins? Publishers like Paradox and 1C have proven that you can constantly drip out AA titles to the market and make a killing. They made Magicka, Hearts of Iron, and a lot of other sub-AAA games at various price points, most of which have done great. It'd be more profitable in the long run to develop unified engine and technology, and perimate your development teams with the technologies, allowing them to leverage better tech for less cost since there are less 3rd party fees involved.
2) Exactly. The problem I see is that developers aren't seeing their games as worlds and services, but simply as a singular, boxed IP. That is what will kill them - you can't pump $30 million into a game that may sell 200,000 units or 10,000,000 and assume you'll be successful all the time. Look at Dead Rising 2 with Case Zero and Case West - both games were hugely successful in their own right (Case Zero with about 1m sales and Case West at about 300k, but at twice the price) - both using the same engine and tools as DR2 and made at a fraction of the cost.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
