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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - ZombiU Was "Not Even Close" to Profitable, No Plans for a Sequel

Slimebeast said:
pokoko said:

No, AAA rank is just a projection of how well a game is expected to sell.  Things like production and marketing budget can certainly factor into the analysis but that certainly isn't the whole of it.  Retailers don't care how much a game cost to make, they care about what kind of profit it will generate.  It's a system designed to tell them what to invest in.  When I used to order for my store, looking for AAA beside the name of a game was a fantastic way to separate it from the clutter--and there was a LOT of clutter, especially for the Wii.

People put too much emphasis on AAA status.  It's basically just an educated guess about how well a title will perform.  A game can cost 5 million but they'll give it AAA rank if the experts believe it will make a lot of money for retailers.

It never was intended to be a way for fans to rank games.

Really? The definition is based on sales expectations rather than development cost?

I totally never have thought of it that way in all these years even though I have thought about the business side of game development quite a lot.

Interesting.

This is an example of the order form I used to get from Engram Entertainment -- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/58754489/Where-to-Purchase-Money-Orders-in-Phx

Look at some of the "AAA" titles, like Kirby: Squeak Squad, Eragon, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, a Dragon Ball Z game, a Gundam game, and Red Steel--not to mention the game Cars.  Not really what most people would think of as AAA.



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Nintendo really shit the bed with this console. It's a shame too because it has so much potential.

Here's hoping they'll turn it around like they did with the DS.



Wow looks like 3rd party support really pays out on the Wii U. Ok to be fair the game was kinda shitty so I guess thats their own fault. I wonder how Watch_Dogs will do on Wii U compared to other current gen systems. And how long Ubisoft is going to support it, and with what kind of games?

The Divison and The Crew aren´t comming to the Wii U I wonder how long they will bother to port Assassins Creed over



oniyide said:
TheLastStarFighter said:
JGarret said:
Was about to post this.I saw it on GI (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-08-does-nintendo-stand-a-chance-this-holiday)

There´s also an interview with Peter Moore: "The lack of online engagement that we see on Wii U [is troubling]," says Moore. "It's so integral to what we do. They're so small it's hardly worth running the servers. It seems like a box that's out of sync with the future of EA - which is one that gives a real social feel to our games. The Wii U feels like an offline experience right now."


This statement is to be expected, since EA's major beef with Nintendo is that Nintendo rejected EA taking over their entire online infrustructure.  I find it annoying when people say WiiU lacks online.  It's got eShop, free online matchmaking, netflix, browsing and Miiverse.  What more is needed?

no you misunderstand, what EA was referring to is internet traffic, which they would be right in this instance. COD for WIi U has less than 1000 players weekly, 1000 that is pitiful for the most popular online game outside of WoW. YOu cant even find matches sometimes and that is not a EA game

No, you misunderstand.  He spoke about traffic but then for personal reasons seque'd into saying it's a box that's out of sync and not social.  That's not ture.  Also, COD has way over 1000 players online all the time, let alone in the run of a week.  You are quite simply wrong with that stat.



If they lose Ubi's support they really don't have much left. They need a great holiday season, and they really should have had Mario Kart and a price drop ready for it..



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pezus said:
Conegamer said:
pezus said:
Well, that confirms it. WiiU needs a price cut this year. Next year will be too late. Even Ubisoft is ready to jump off soon

Let's not jump the gun. This is one game we are talking about, and they have a good 3 or 4 games on the way by the end of the year. If those games underperform, then we can worry. But right now it seems a tad pre-emptive to say they're ready to "pull the plug" on the system, because that doesn't seem to be true.

Having said that, if none of their forthcoming titles sell over, say, 200k LT then I could see them ending support.

Did you read the article? Straight from the horses mouth: "We must find a way to ensure the creativity of those games could have a big enough audience. We hope it will take off. At the moment, we’ve said ‘let’s do through Christmas and see where we are from there."

Without a price cut, sales will be too low for their games to come close to taking off on WiiU, especially when they're all multiplatform now.

this, its no wonder that alot of companies are reluctant to even put their multis on the system. Can we really say now we can blame them? Its not a hate Ninty thing, its a its not doing that well thing. No matter what some may say, 3rd parties did support the WIi, even if it wasnt the support they wanted.



The budget for the game must have been to big, cause it's one of the very few 3rd party games on Wii U that didn't do terribly.

On the other hand I'm surprised cause it seems that both Zombi U and Rayman Legends were exclusives with little or no money incentive from Nintendo. I would have thought that the development cost would have been at least partially covered by Nintendo to ensure platform exclusiveness and bigger rather than smaller part.

At least it's obvious that Ubisoft is trying their chances even with the struggling platforms which is admirable.



So it is happening...PS4 preorder.

Greatness Awaits!

osed125 said:
Barozi said:
osed125 said:

The top 10 is definitely higher. This image is old, there are definitely much more expensive games that are not there.

You have games that have costed more than $100 million to make (with the biggest exaggeration of all time which has been Star Wars the Old Republic, with $200 million total in budget). 

The image was made or updated in 2012 (The Old Republic numbers are from January 2012) so it's not that old.
What else should be on there ?

GTA V will certainly be there, but it's not out. GT6 is surely cheaper than GT5 (Polyphony said that themselves). Halo 4 maybe but even then the 10th and 9th and 8th place would be $60m.

Also from various Google research I've noticed that there are many unconfirmed numbers flying around. I would only trust the ones coming from the developers or publishers.

Kotaku says Halo 3 was $55m (that's what's in the image), Polygon says it's $30m (and another $30m advertising costs).
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/25/spencer-halo-4-is-microsofts-most-expensive-game/


I also don't think that Max Payne 3 had a $105m budget.
Here the salary of people in the industry:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167355/
About $80k per year,  which means that Rockstar hired 200 people for 6 1/2 years to work on Max Payne 3 or 400 people for 3 1/4 years (time between announcement and release were 3 years).

Btw. after they shipped the game 35 people worked at Rockstar Vancouver:
http://ir.take2games.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=86428&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1712961&highlight=

Salary is only one of the many things that goes into development cost, given that game took a lot of time to make (plus some delays) I don't see why the game wouldn't cost $105 million (especially given Rockstar record). 

This is the best I could find about Halo 4, it's all speculation, but Spencer said that it's not even close to anything they have made before, and they say that it might have costed $100 million (not sure if that includes marketing).

I remember someone saying that Bioshock Infinite was also very expensive, but I can't find any source.

Read that source again. It says with promotion over $100m.
Marketing costs aren't included in the development budgets.

So what else is there ? Licensing costs for the engine/music and perhaps the voice actors and motion capture actors. That's a tiny bit of the budget.



Sal.Paradise said:
If they lose Ubi's support they really don't have much left. They need a great holiday season, and they really should have had Mario Kart and a price drop ready for it..


Well Ubisoft and WB games are the last frontier of true 3rd party support for the Wii U. I mean Injustice and Arkham City selling terribly on that system. I wonder if they could even make their money back on the ports.



AndrewWK said:
Wow looks like 3rd party support really pays out on the Wii U. Ok to be fair the game was kinda shitty so I guess thats their own fault. I wonder how Watch_Dogs will do on Wii U compared to other current gen systems. And how long Ubisoft is going to support it, and with what kind of games?

The Divison and The Crew aren´t comming to the Wii U I wonder how long they will bother to port Assassins Creed over


hows it going to do? is this a serious inquiry? its gonna get blown away. just most of the multiplats so far. THe real question is how it will do compared to the other next gen consoles, especially since the game will be bundled with some PS4s