Third party Switch ports don't necessarily need to sell as much as PS4 to be successful

[DonFerrari]

Mnementh said:

GoOnKid said:

Well, if we are talking about this specific thread, then it was me who said that Activision's decision to not even think about checking if a Crash port on the Switch is possible at all was dumb.And I truly think that it's dumb.

Well, this is a bit more complicated I think. It may warrant it's own thread, but there are different levels. From the standpoint of a gamer it is dumb: every game on every platform is a win. So we tend to see a port or a game which doesn't actually makes loss as a good thing.

For a company it is more complicated. See, no manager ever will be fired because he didn't release a game. Think this scene: an activision shareholder demands that the CEO is replaced, because he didn't greenlight a new big open world RPG. That probably will never happen. But what may happen, that if said CEO greenlighted said open world RPG and it sold mediocre, that the shareholder will demand the CEO must go because of that. So from a view of a manager: a project not greenlighted is never a risk, only the greenlighted projects are risks.

That said Crash probably never was a big deal. Even as it sells pretty well, it is a one-off thing. Call of Duty releases regularly and is always big, Skylanders may not so big anymore, but still releases regularly and brings in extra profit with the figurines. Crash simply doesn't matter overall. What managers decide with such projects is nothing the shareholders really care about. So the managers make such decisions with their gut feelings or their personal gaming preferences.

Yep no matter how much data and projection you make a project the decision call will always involve some risk avoidance and gut feeling (for a good and experienced professional it will be the sum of his past experiences results and may be quite precise for others it may be a wrong decision, but those usually are on lower level of the chain).