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| Soundwave said: Actually do name all of these graphics driven showcase titles that are made specifically for PS5/XBSX only or RTX 20+ series cards only that are selling huge numbers that aren't, |
Games aren't made and advertised for specific generations of PC GPU's.
| Soundwave said: 1.) Made by Sony and generally with a Marvel license attached to it. We know Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart broke even but from Sony's internal leaks it looks like it barely made a profit, they have pushed back a 4th game and cut the budget from what Rift Apart had, for it which indicates the game didn't make big money. Sony's own games obviously get a ton of marketing attention and bundles which a regular publisher is not going to be able to match. |
You aren't looking at the bigger picture here...
This is an industry-wide phenomena where during COVID, the entire gaming industry went stupid with sales, people also started to work from home which necessitated some changing in staffing and investment.
During post-covid, people are going outside and spending less time inside, where video games exist.
Add on the massively high expenditures that pretty much every government on the planet performed, printing "free" money which devalues the dollar as there is more currency in circulation (Called inflation), means that the costs of goods and services goes up and peoples ability to spend on "luxury" items like video games gets reduced.
Right now, every big player in the industry is cutting costs because it's a necessity, the extra staffing isn't required.
But in saying that, games like Call of Duty, Diablo 4, Hogwarts Legacy, Elden Ring, Mortal Kombat and more all did fine last year.
Have you ever thought that maybe, sales aren't being accrued because they aren't standout games that beg to be different? Look at Baldurs Gate 3 for example, fairly average budget... But absolutely brilliant game that was simply different and ended up selling like hotcakes.
Sales are a tricky thing, but right now the big issue is inflation.
| Soundwave said: 2.) Or have a unicorn license attached to them like Harry Potter. Most developers cannot afford to simply slap Spider-Man or Harry Potter or Star Wars onto their games and there's only a handful of IP like that even available to begin with. |
Historically Movie/TV based video games have done fairly average in the sales department.
Hogwarts was a massive success because it's actually a very good game and not just because it's simply Harry Potter.
| Soundwave said: Alan Wake II - Graphics showcase. Has won GOTY awards, has Nvidia marketing behind it, still has not broke even. |
Some games don't need to break even, that's not the point of their existence.
Alan Wake 2 was exclusive to the Epic store on PC, where the vast majority of PC gamers don't exist.
It was meant to accrue gamers to that specific platform, which means it can be a loss leader.
Not only that, but Alan Wake 2 hasn't started to accrue royalties and DLC which will garner extra revenue.
We also need to remember that PC games have long legs... A simple sale can sky-rocket a game to the top of the sales charts even if it's 20 years old.
You need to look at the bigger picture rather than just the news headline.
| Soundwave said: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - Graphics showcase. Huge IP, had a marketing co-deal with Playstation. Charted one time at I believe no.6 on Circana and then dropped off the face of the earth. Further to that we find this: Meanwhile, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which released last month, has seen 1.9 million players thus far, according to Henderson, accruing around $133 million in revenue, which is quite a step down from what developer Massive Entertainment’s previous releases managed in their early days, with The Division bringing in $330 million and The Division 2 bringing in $264 million. So even with one of the biggest movie IPs ever attached they had underwhelming performance compared to something like ... The Division (lol). |
Debuted at number 1 on many charts. I.E. Australia.
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/459424/australia-weekly-week-49-2023/
It's marketing was also scaled back.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Avatar/comments/1af19tn/avatar_frontiers_of_pandora_was_intended_to/
The sales charts only tend to track physical sales, not digital, we are in a post-physical media world now if you hadn't noticed.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/95135/digital-to-make-95-of-video-game-revenues-in-2023-or-174-5-billion/index.html
Nice try at trying to twist some facts though.
I do need to give you some praise that you finally learned to link to some evidence for the first time in the history of this entire thread, so bravo. You are learning.
| Soundwave said: Final Fantasy 16 + Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - Two fairly large budget next-gen games with a big name brand and FF7 itself is hugely iconic. Sales results are very disappointing here. |
Again. These are meant to drive platform growth, not accrue individual sales.
Final Fantasy tends to be synonymous with Playstation, so if Sony can attract 1 million customers to the Playstation 5 with that game... And Sony has an average attachment rate of 10 titles per console sold, then Sony in the long term just sold 10 million copies of video games.
That is how "loss leaders" can continue to be justified and is a common tactic in many markets.
For example, many Supermarkets across the world will heavily discount a heap of items for the week, potentially selling them at a loss in the hopes it will attract customers who will also make extra supplemental sales.
| Soundwave said: Starfield - One of the most expensive and hyped games ever made, nice graphics sure, but no where near the success of other Bethesda games, despite being their best looking game ever made by a good margin. $400 million dollar budget. Has done nothing to drive XBox hardware. |
Starfield has actually done well.
Was it to the level it was hyped at? No. But... It was still a big seller.
Same with Cyberpunk, didn't sell at the level of expectation on launch, but was still highly profitable.
| Soundwave said: Senua's Saga: HB2 - Another Unreal 5 Engine title, Microsoft paid $120 million for this studio no doubt hoping for a visual showcase that would drive XBox sales. Instead this is a total flop, Steam numbers below HiFi Rush which sold so badly it got that studio axed altogether. Lets hope Microsoft is generous and won't pull the plug on this studio so fast for the sake of the people who work there and need that paycheque. |
Again. Senua's is a loss leader franchise meant to accrue gamers to Xbox.
| Soundwave said: I'm sure there will be graphics heavy games in the future that do sell well, but there are enough examples here to show that the modern industry is changing also and graphics are not the driving force for sales or even a reliable way to make money in the game business anymore. And it's not even like all of these games had poor reviews, the only one that really had outright terrible reviews would be Forspoken and it's not like games with poor reviews have never sold well, there are plenty of examples of games selling well without 9/10 reviews. So that can't be used as an excuse here, if people want next-gen graphics so bad, they sure as fuck aren't buying of the next-gen only games that really try to push the technology. |
We are still in a cross-generational period. Case in point: Call of Duty.
Gamers are still hanging onto the Xbox One and Playstation 4 and that is perfectly fine, the cost to justify a hardware jump for many households just simply isn't tenable with the current financial climate.
It's Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo's job to incentivize upgrading, so I am interested to see how Nintendo manages to do that with the Switch 2.0 being just another Switch, but with beefed up, but still very low-end hardware.
Sony and Microsoft need to do better and likely will, Microsoft hit it out of the park with their recent showcase.
| Soundwave said: There is factual evidence presented here, and you're trying make up alternative facts, so I could throw that Trump analogy right back in your face. |
You have not provided evidence for 99.9999% of your claims. You have only ever provided a single link in this entire thread.
And until you can provide evidence for your claims, it cannot and will not be regarded as fact, regardless of your proclamations.
| zeldaring said: No one knows the future hey i thought we would get every game at /1440/60fps on ps5 cause i thought graphics were good enough and thats all i really wanted but it looks like i'm gonna have to upgrade to a ps5 pro at some point. probably for GTA6, wilds and black myth wukong if they are great and can provide a much frame rate, but in the future they find way to make ray tracing godly and developers need much better hardware we could see huge strides in graphics. |
The Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 are trying to push new rendering technologies like Ray Tracing and they simply are not up to that task.
They don't have the GPU power for it... And they are RAM constrained, 12.5/13.5GB of Ram for games out of 16GB is not enough... Especially when you are chasing 4k with all the bells and whistles.
| Norion said: Right now maybe but 10-15 years from now the best quality graphics of today won't cost nearly as much. With how insane UE5 is UE6 might let indie devs have access to photoreal or at least close to photoreal level visuals. |
Better graphics doesn't always cost money anyway, often it does the opposite and decreases cost and development time.
Global illumination removed the need for artists to create assets by hand with lighting details baked into textures to make a scene look good.
Tessellation removed the need for modellers and artists to spend a significant amount of time building terrain, they can use the tessellator to scale and add in those smaller geometric details.
--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--
