| IamAwsome said: EA officially saying Dead Space 3 had to sell 5 million. Square Enix games "failing to hit sales targets" after selling several million. This rumor from E3 2013. All signs pointed to Destiny. You also have multiple publishers basically getting Sony/MS to pay for aspects of a game like development, marketing, and DLC. That wasn't necessary in the past. Now it's necessary because development costs are rising. Witness Titanfall, Street FIghter 5, and Dead Rising 3 practically existing because of Sony and Microsoft. Is the bubble "bursting"? No, but just about every publisher exept Sony is starting to take less risks. Just look at games like Just Dance getting annualized and the rise of season passes from pretty much every third party publisher. Look at the complete evaporation of Japanese AAA development. Sega, Capcom, Koei Tecmo, Namco Bandai, and now Konami have pretty much dissapeared from the mainstream AAA landscape. Square Enix will be next up if their next few games don't do well. The bubble isn't bursting, but we ARE getting to a point where publishers will take zero risks, nickel and dime consumers, and every single new IP will get an overly massive marketing campaign behind it just to ensure the game sells. All because nobody wants to lose money. Just look at the failed publisher push to end used games. That wouldn't be as much as an issue if publishers weren't hungry for the money. |
http://www.destructoid.com/bethesda-dishonored-sales-exceeding-expectations--239407.phtml
http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/05/dead-island-sales-surpass-5-million-copies/
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-08-13-dying-light-sales-top-5-million-copies
There has never been a generation that did not have a slew of bad decisions, budget overruns, mistakes, and failures. Yet, every time an issue like this comes up, only the negative examples are trotted forth, which results in a false analysis.
