| richardhutnik said: I had to edit this down somewhere, because I did want to reference it, but not list it all. It touched on a point I was going to raise here. The videogame industry keeps wanting to think it is, or wants to be, the movie industry, because it is doing total sales BOXOFFICE that match what the movie theater is. The issue it is running into is that it doesn't have box office to recover its costs, so it ends up being even more hit-driven than the movie industry. Because it insists on thinking it can budget like the movie industry, and try to put the same level of production value into games, it is going to run into issues. Games DO NOT need the same level of production value to be entertaining. People can do $1 disposable games, and generate enough money for developers to keep going. They won't be able to hire voice actors for their games, or writers to produce scripts, but they can do an Angry Bird or a board or cardgame, or a puzzle game, and people be entertained by it. The industry is learning that, for the most part, they can't be trying to make movies, with the same production value, and expect to guarantee staying in business. They can think more about doing games... that are games. If they don't, look for more Enslaved type titles to pop up, or Brutal Legends. You will get fans of the game posting on here wondering why millions aren't buying the title, and wondering why something like Mass Effect doesn't do 5 million plus in total sales. There isn't enough money out there to support $60 a pop titles to the degree the industry would like. End result is that studios will die, if they keep doing what they are doing. |
Currently, or maybe within the current generation which may be at a turning point, high budget titles are sustainable, provided they were a part of a franchise with proven selling power. Gears of War, Halo, Call of Duty, Assassion's Creed, etc.
This is the only reason why budgets ballooned for the big franchises.
The problem is that there have been an abundance of titles that overestimated their potential audience in terms of budgeting under the assumption that any big production project can sell well enough to recoup costs if not profit, and those projects lost money as a result. Some studios ceased operations in the worst cases.
So maybe we are about to find out what the market is for $60 console games (major release PC games are now commonly priced at $60 as well) and $30-40 portable games and whether production values on those titles is set to shrink along with budgets. Personally, I agree that there is a good deal of uncertainty.
I also think it's on the smaller studios with untested IPs or more niche IPs to be more realistic when it comes to production budgets as far as how large the potential audience is for their project. Most can't and shouldn't be spending to match top, proven IPs under the assumption that "this is just what it costs to produce games these days."
As for the publishers who are releasing lower quality games at full $60 retail price, presumably they're just trying to get whatever sales they can at full price before the inevitable and quick price reductions at retailers. Given the number of high quality games available at any given time, I'm not sure why these are still even being made unless they're still able to recoup costs or post a profit.
And while there are a lot of people railing against smartphone games and $.99 apps, the truth is there is a lot of entertainment value in many of those games both for the overall market as well as for those who probably don't see the need to buy a $60 game that they're probably only going to play through once. You have to look harder for the gems, and they are gems because they are the exception rather than the rule, but I know that I've personally played some $.99 apps more than some of the games I paid a full retail $60 for. Design can and often does trump production values when it comes to re-playability.
As for the movie analogy, plenty of production companies have gone out of business over the years due to budgets that exceeded drawing power. If it weren't for the rental and DVD/BD/DD sales, probably more would have gone out of business as many productions practically rely upon that revenue to recoup losses. That's really on the studio heads that approve such projects, or rather approve the budgets for such projects.
