PullusPardus on 06 October 2013
KingdomHeartsFan said:
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Basically what others said, but to put it simple its that they lost money, not gained any yet.
in comparision, GTA V spent 265 million dollars on developement and they gained double that with preorders alone and 800 million in one day so they gained 535 millions of dollars in profit in just a single day.
NIS of course isn't as big as Rockstar, so they have a bigger risk of being in the red
but here is what they can do,
- they can reuse their resources (which is why Disgaea 4 still looks like Disgaea 1, and unlike GTA people wont complain if the game looks the same)
- they can reuse the gameplay aspects (unlike GTA where they always try to do some new gimmick)
- they can rehire the same voice actors or have in house voice actors (much cheaper)
- they can release the games on one console at a time costing them less to publish it.
- they can translate the games in house (cheaper)
- they can re-release it over and over adding content
- they can have micromanagement (and disgaea have wayyyyyyyy too much of that)
- the dev team is smaller so they pay less, and the dev team and publishers are basically the same people (NIS / NIS America)
- they wont worry themselves about marketing since they will do it in house, and this is what mostly makes game developement budgets rise very high, marketing is very expensive, NIS relies on their fans , the Internet and the niche, Rockstar relies on super expensive global marketing.
I'd say developing a Disgaea game with all these points maybe costs 20-30k dollars thats really nothing even I can make that much, so a team of 10 people can afford the loss and be in the red while still be able to make new games and "rely on legs" , these smaller companies also never overship their games, so every shipment is almost a guranteed sale , which brings us to why these niche companies love doing the "Special Edition" games, since they are a small team they can easily make these special editions and upping the price greatly giving the gain from a sold copy much higher than normal , they just add maybe an artbook (which can be made easily with print paper just so you know) and maybe a t-shirt with a logo on it, which is also easily made, but the fans even though they know its a rip off, they want to buy those special editions because they love that humble company and they don't mind giving extra money to them, again companies like these rely on their fans (like ATLUS , boy do ATLUS fans have raging boners for that company)
tl;dr smaller companies can survive for as long as they want being in the red, while big companies dont because they're less flexible and owe debts to many different sources
its all about management
