nemo37 said:
This seems to be becoming a trend with pretty much all large third-party publishers. They are reducing their output and focusing on a few big games, which they support with content for a longer period of time (aka games as a service). I don't know if increased development costs without an increase in video game prices has anything to do with this trend or if it just comes down to reducing the number of projects and focusing on only a few in order to reduce costs (its probably a mix of both of these things, as they do overlap with each other), but it seems like large third-party publishers have largely become risk averse and hesitant to work on projects that are smaller than their big established AAA games. |
I mostly agreewith this, in a very general sense. One of the big exceptions would be Ubisoft. They still crank put much smaller games regularly.
The reality is that these Publishers have become huge companies. They're not run by gamers, because they pretty much cannot be. They have to be professionally managed by business people, and those people can't run a 10000 person company on emotion. They have to be data-driven. They have to deliver quarterly and annual results that please the shareholders. They are legally obligated to try their best to do so. Risking money on unproven IP, unproven mechanics, or really anything unproven is just not something that can be done very often when you're talking about tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the long run, I think this just creates more opportinities for smaller competitors to succeed. if you're working on a game at an Activision studio and that project is canceled, you don't decide to go take a job bagging groceries. You find a gig somewhere else in gaming, most likely. You still have your talents, and all the knowledge that you gained while working on a big-budget production. Now you just apply it elsewhere. That's a big win for smaller studios.
