| Intrinsic said: Nope.... what is killing the industry isn't that AAA games are actually really big or shooter heavy. Its that they have AAA marketing budgets. The gaming industry is in a constant summer movie blockbuster flux. If you want a game to sell very well? there are two ways to do it, start with low expectations and build the IP over the course of 2 or 3 really good iterations of the IP or go big and throw $100 worth of marketing money at it. Mind you, this doesn't always work. |
^This. It is the fault of the smaller companies themselves. Know your audience and budget appropriately. There were lots of smaller titles that did well in the past not because everyone bought them but because they were budgeted appropriately. For example, SMT, Tales and Disgaea have been going on for a while with no big budgets or big sales. It can be done and still gets done.
How to do it wrong despite starting the way I recommended: see Valkyria Chronicles series. It was first released on ps3 with a relatively small budget, started slow but amassed a mil + thanks to word of mouth then a brilliant strategist at Sega decided that it was better to switch to PSP for lower dev costs. Now that may seem in line with what I stated earlier but remember how I said "know your audience"? VC2 on PSP was a terrible idea despite lower dev costs because the vast majority of VC1 sales were in NA where PSP was already dead and buried.
"Dr. Tenma, according to you, lives are equal. That's why I live today. But you must have realised it by now...the only thing people are equal in is death"---Johann Liebert (MONSTER)
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives"---Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler
