Third Party Devs have made up their minds about the Wii.

[NJ5]

Netyaroze said:

NJ5 said:
@Netyaroze:

The companies' financial reports don't have enough detail to show this, but if you just look at everything they say about development costs, and then look at their revenue, it's painfully obvious that development costs have risen much faster than revenue.

If you compare to the last generation alone, development costs have risen between 3-4 times according to many statements from publishers... no way revenue has risen that much. Game prices (on the PS3 and 360) have increased by about 20%, and the size of the gaming public hasn't increased anywhere near 3 times (and it rose more on the Wii platform than on the HD platforms vs the PS2).

 

Yes I know that they dont have enough detail so maybe everybody should atleast show a sign of uncertainty if he made claims like they are going down because of HD consoles etc.

 

Development cost have risen yes. 3-4 times yes maybe but the numbers have risen too maybe not enough but that makes the gaming companys to just produce high profile titels. 

 

And you forge that there are several ways to decrease the costs. Like using always the same engine makin multiplatform title. Using ingame engine instead of cutscenes. And yes the real big games cost 50-60 Million but this is not the average First part games from sony need lesser units sold to break even because they dont have to pay themselfs licensing fees. DLC content is another way to get money back. And most of the costs are fix costs that means that if they payed once for things like Hardware and special educations and if they developed tools the costs will go down its always like this in the beginnig there is a jump- PS1 games were 1.5 Mln PS2 games 5-10 Mln this jump is always but costs decrease with the time. We just have a lot of development at the moment Online gaming is big DLC is new digital distribution those things needs huge investments but next or the gen after there wont be much to improve everything will stagnate.

 

They calculate properly. Everytime something changes someone lose and someone wins. This will happen in the future too.

 

most games cost 20 Mln even some of the best. 50-60 Mln is special. And maybe 35 Mln for a Multiplat title. Thats 17.5 per version i bet games like wipeout cost maybe 12 Million or 15 Million or Siren blood curse. The companys know that they if they know that a title costs more to make then it possibly sells they wont do it. I think it will stabilze in the next 2 years 2rd party devs will be in the black if all the most are still in the red then it indicates a major problem its still ok. 1-2 Companys arent the whole market. 

 

 

How many actually made losses the in 2009 ? 

 

 

 

I know there are some good things happening as well, but in general the industry is getting into trouble for its development costs.

How many made losses? We can definitely count EA, Take 2 and THQ. Activision-Blizzard made money, but who wouldn't with Blizzard and its WoW cash cow (though this year, Activision itself should contribute a lot due to COD).

Then there were many closed studios/publishers, and layoffs:

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=83767