Rumour : Insomniac going multiplateform

[mibuokami]

Squilliam said:

Reasonable said:

Squilliam said:
Going multiplatform would probably kill their MO of releasing a game every year given the increased development effort and possibility for one or both consoles slowing them down. Furthermore they probably haven't got a clue as to how to reap a high performing engine out of the Xbox 360 as they have never touched the architecture. It'd take too much time to get up to speed and I relate this back to the first point that it would kill their ability to release a game a year.

That's a good point.  It's easy to forget their basic approach is different from most developers getting a game out every 2 to 3 years.  They release one a year like clockwork, which is clearly going to be easier working with one engine tuned to one platform.

It's also interesting to note their total sales since releasing Resistance 1 are 8.25 million units.  While, Resistance 1 apart, their titles seem to be selling approx 1.5 to 1.7 million each, the costs of their titles releasing 1 a year has got to be much less that the 2 to 3 years spent on most big titles.  8.25 million units isn't too shabby since Resistance was released in November 2006.

I suspect many who look at each title individually think their performance sucks, but that's basically over 8 million units (plus an unknown number of PSN downloads as well for Booty) in just over 3 years - and the latest ratchet game looks set to sell plenty more units as it's early in its lifecycle next to the previous one.

 

They were voted one of the best places to work several years running so that also comes into it as well. I suspect that any criticism of their performance should be leveled at their management level people for simply spending their resources in the wrong areas but at the same time they are showing obvious signs of growth so theres no need to be too harsh there.

Their campus has 200 people so considering a large comfortable environment condusive to earning 'best place to work awards' their operating costs may be around $20-25M per year. So based on the rate of sales they are probably earning a decent level of royalties to bank on from Sony even throughout this generation as 2nd party contracts only pay up once development costs are paid for. I can't say that their performance sucks as 1.5-1.7M is much higher than the benchmark 1M given to break even this generation.

Insomniac overall overhead with regards to development is well below most third party and even second party. Not only do they recycle engines (which can sometime be as much as half the development budget) but their contract with Sony easily nets theme some financial solvancy.

They also have a very consistent development cycle that ensure overall viability, as their game is release yearly on the clock, thus a maximum of 2 year cycle with around 100 empolyee (give or take depending on stage of development) which means the cost of mean power over time is well below most big budget development. 1.5 million units sold per game under these circumstance would make nice and profitable projects.