| Louie said: Grand Theft Auto IV for example surely is a huge source of revenue for Rockstar but the estimated development cost (+ advertising) is more than 100 million dollars. Imagine: Babies on the other hand sold 2 million copies or so but was so damn cheap to develop that it probably made almost as much profit in the end. This is probably the reason why Ubisoft has expanded its casual game development by such a lot: Less revenue but also less development costs and just as much profit in the end with a much lower risk (if you only spend half a million dollars on a game you can only lose half a million dollars). This is the deciding factor for developers, not revenue alone. Edit: As a general example look at it this way: You can either develop a game with a budget of 10 million $ that will give you 15 million $ in revenue ( =5 million in profit) or a game with a budget of 1 million dollar that will make you 8 million dollars in revenue ( = 7 million in profit). Which one would you chose? |
You should take fourth dimension into your examples too. How long did they make GTA IV and how long did they make Imagine: Babyz? Or rather how many games Imagine: Babyz team made in the same time period GTA IV was made? And risks are of course much lower. If Haze should have been Puzzle Haze or something casual it wouldn't have destroyed completely free radical. :)
I predict rosy future for casual games and not so rosy future for core games. Well, one way would be make core games by combining small companies/companies and dividing profit, losses and risks
