Figgycal said:
They only have so much resources to go around. Why bother with DLC support if the game itself didn't bring in a profit. It isn't to the best interest of Ubisoft to support the Wii U-- they could be using those resources on PS3/360, Xbox one and PS4 and instead they're releasing products that result to 2% of their total sales. Why bother developing DLC for a game that sold 130,000 copies (like Black Flag). It makes no sense, businesswise. They might've covered porting cots with that 130k, but they could've used that tiny revenue to create content that brings them a lot more money. And funny enough, yes the PS3 was in a similar situation, in terms of subpar ports, in its first few years. But even then, sales of third party games weren't abysmal like they are on the Wii U. Nintendo fans should be grateful that they're receivng any support considering how much money third party games are bringing in. And unlike the Wii U, PlayStation gamers are actually uying the games and are therefore more likely to buy the DLC. Everything costs money to make, including DLC--many third party publishers doubt that the cost to produce the DLC < the revenue they'll make. Sales of a game is pretty indcadive of how well the DLC will do. |
Imagine once upon a time that DLC was just something you downloaded, it patched into the original game enough to show it was there and then that was the total amount resources necessary.
The REALITY, the REALITY is that by now, all these bits of software and the tools to create them should be inexpensive and commoditized. Like when a car is made, they make loads of them, the tolerances are tight and they are churned out quickly and relatively inexpensively.
The claims by many in the videogame industry appear to be that these games are still very much like fashioning an airplane. There is a set of plans but in the end, it is almost like they are completely custom creations crafted rather than manufactured.
The industry can choose that path if it wants and many publishers are going broke as a result. That isn't the fault of Nintendo or anyone else. I just know that the numbers outside of the videogame industry are massive. Apple is selling as many iOS devices in a quarter as there are Xbox 360's sold lifetime as an example. Within that OTHER industry, the costs seem to scale appropriately, everything works well enough and the costs always seem to be going down, not up.
The videogame industry keeps claiming the opposite of productivity and efficiency gains. They keep turning around and making each solution the problem. Each time the cost keeps going up. That isn't Nintendo's fault. Outside of consoles the servers don't cost so much they require a yearly online fee. Outside of consoles DLC doesn't need massive numbers of employees and teams just to make an add-on pack. These excuses are lame and don't match reality.
Outside of consoles someone can release a game with online play, in game ads, for free and make $50k a day while EA needs to charge micro-transactions just to somehow make it through the financial quarter.
It's bullshit and it isn't Nintendo's fault.
