Western Publishers are struggling

[theRepublic]

nintendo_fanboy said:
Most of your arguments are good, especially Naznatips'. But I still think you're concentrating too much on high development costs instead of thinking about milking franchises too. Remember what we heard about High Voltage's search for a publisher. Everyone wanted to get the game out as fast as possible in order to make some money, instead of taking enough time to polish it and make it a huge seller.
Remember also that EA apparently is stopping their Need for Speed series which was a huge seller only one gen ago, but it's overdone now. Now add high development costs to franchises that are not selling as well as expected anymore and to others that are not popular yet and a mentality to get a game out in time no matter how bad it is and you get the reason why western publishers are struggling.

Agreed.  I have mentioned this before, but keep forgetting about it in this thread.  Yearly franchises are slowly hurting the industry.  Although some assets can potentially be reused, the slow degradation of the sales of these games eventually make it not even worth it.  Now publishers like EA are scrambling to find new IPs at the worst possible time.

I think publishers could take a lesson from Nintendo on this one.  A franchise should be used once or twice a generation at most.

The one exception might be sports games.  I would need to look into it more on this one.

BengaBenga said:

The issue is that they need to NOT do what Nintendo does. Nintendo is the most successfull game developer in the world. Period. The last thing you want is compete with them on their territory. 3rd party devs need to make stuff that Nintendo doesn't; like sports/shooters/RPGs. Some are doing this; Nintendo would never make a game like MadWorld or the Conduit but more companies should do this. Not ONLY this, but smart companies in all other businesses are used to spread risks. It's a miracle to me how juggernauts like EA and Ubisoft have such weak strategies that gamled on one idea. That while these mega-publishers have the funds to develop for all platforms.

Microsoft and Sony have made these fanboys themselves by claiming it's about the graphics. It's their own fault that people are underwhelmed by God of War III, which by any standard looks great. Everything is overhyped to the point where it can't deliver on the promises anymore. The way out of this is hard, but necessary. The HD userbase is too small for 20 AAA games in a year. I hope that will also bring game development back to basics.

First Paragraph:

If enthusiasts on the internet can see this, why can't people who do this for a living figure this out?  It is truely amazing.

Second Paragraph:

I made a similar point earlier in the thread.  Microsoft and Sony started this graphics race, and it is dragging down the industry.  All games on their consoles are expected to have amazing graphics, but not everything can be a big budget game.  The economic realities do not support it.  Now that HD fans have been spoiled by this unsustainable model, it will be very hard for them to take lower budget games that don't look as good.