By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Mummelmann on 24 December 2009
Edit Thread
MaxwellGT2000 said:
Mummelmann said:
Maybe it is silly that a million seller isn't a blazing success but you can't blame developers for wanting sales like Modern Warfare 2 for instance, that game is selling like nothing else ever has (3rd party multiplatform that is).

The issue is everyone took the Halo idea where everything is hyped beyond belief and it makes it like there's a summer blockbuster film coming out every week and is marketed as such, if you want to know why attach rates are so high for 360 thats the reason, but even that can't make enough people to buy enough of the big games so every game can break even.  

Only a select few get the needed sales to be a rousing success, most can get a million maybe two which last gen would be nothing to scoff at but this gen that seems to be the line to keep your head above water, its just the game industry is going to spiral into oblivion at its current rate with developers and publishers dropping like flies/posting HUGE losses, what does it really matter if you can get Halo 3 type sales if every other game you release negate those big sales and you end up going in a hole.

I'm not saying its very clever the way things are run, just that I understand why they'd strive to make a blockbuster in the first place. There's also the issue of many developers making pure shaite and releasing it, that also costs them. Things like Rogue Warrior is bound to set back any developer, I don't even understand why they spend money on developing something like that.

The movie industry is in the same boat though but its doing fine, even with its claims of being near sunk by piracy. The game industry in its current form won't disappear any time soon but I don't like the fact that a few big and more wealthy developers buy the small fries and force them into making silly stuff for Iphone or whatever, or simply stealing their talent and abandoing the studio all together. Bankrupcy is nothing new though, there was also a surge of red numbers in the mid and late 90's where many of the developers from the golden era of PC gaming, for instance, perished or were bought and abused (Westwood is the perfect example, butchered and stripped and made to make whatever tosh EA set them to).

Everyone in here is ranting on about how this is the best generation ever (I disagree though) but how can it be that developers have made some of the finest games ever if they're going under and how can practically all sales records from previous generations be shattered? The industry is doing fine, a lot of (or most of) the crashes we're seeing are related to the financial crisis, the world of green has gone to shit lately in case no one has noticed. It reminds me of when we got the new smoking prohibition here in Norway, every nightclub, bar and pub owner screamed bloody murder and said they'd all surely perish if no one was allowed to smoke inside. Some did perish, but most of them would have anyway due to bad decisions having been made earlier on and shoddy leadership/running of daily affairs. In fact; the amount of places that went under was the yearly same (yes, more developers than usual have gone under but like I said; financial crisis, nearly all industries on earth have taken massive hits) as before the prohibition but it was a nice scapegoat for them to use when they ultimately failed.

My point is; a lot of developers were headed for shit valley as is and a lot of publishers and developers go under all the time due to the nature of the competitive market and with the financial crisis still looming over us, having among other things decreased Japan's export rates by nearly 55%, its a small wonder that not even more go under. Is the industry in trouble? Parts of it, yes, as always. But the same goes for all other industries at the moment. They don't need to radically change, the market is largely the same, they simply (allthough I don't know if its actually simple) need to smarten up and think harder about what they're doing and perhaps ponder their ideas a little more before wasting millions on them (again, Rogue Warrior seems like a fitting example). Besides, the "savior" of the industry, Nintendo, has proven to be a challenging ground to do battle on as well and I'm not sure that the industry at large agrees that Blue Ocean is so cool unless you have Nintendo branded on your box (no 3rd party effort will ever move Nintendo numbers, that's just a fact). Damned if you do, damned if you don't, at least in here.