3rd parties need follow Nintendo's lead: try crazy new shit and shake up industry. Change or go bankrupt, suckers. Who knows who could pull a successful game out of their ass to be the next Wii Sports? It's either that or sequelitis until EA eats you.

Gamerace said: Oyvoyvoyv said: What I believe is WCS for Ps3, is if this happens: 1. Third parties lose too much money, almost all of them go to Wii and start developing. 2. Microsoft shuts down X360, because it is losing to much money. They have vulnerated this before. 3. Ps3 now has a much smaller userbase, and is higher priced to develop for, in reality, it is doomed. About the 1 console, that won't happen. Microsoft has put heaps of money into their gaming division, I doubt they will leave totally that fast. Sony has a superb brandname with the Playstation. There's no way they will leave. The only reason I see those two leaving, is if 2-3 other companies also join in and make consoles. Therefore, the only "realistic" solution, is that Nintendo goes bankrupt. They can't afford to lose money, so if they start losing money, they have to go out.   This is why I predict a forth (and possibly fifth) major player will join the market.  MS & Sony have left themselves vunerable and Wii has cracked the mass market nut.  If say Apple for example puts out what is basically a Wii HD and markets it as the cool thing (successfully) with graphics close to 360s (but not necessarily as good) developers will happily port all their Wii games over and all their HD games over (with a few exceptions) to this new system.  Gamers finally get the best of both worlds.  Image CoD4 on a Wii-esque system. What could be better?  If such system is successful, and could be just on Wii crumbs (as Nintendo still can't supply adequately), then MS & Sony would either: A) not be able to respond and lose marketshare, and be seen as 'old' tech despite slight graphic superiority, and lose money C) Cut prices drastically to remain competitive in this new order and lose money B) Be forced to launch a 'next' gen system far earlier than they'd like and lose billions on this generation (and even previous for MS) D) Give up

Yeah, people think Nintendo is the company that will be in danger if Apple/someone else launches a system, but in reality, the Wii is so far going it will only lose 10% ish (assuming it otherwise would have sold 100ish), while X360 and Ps3 would a much bigger %.  

In that graph, are the green lines predictions?

Anyway, according to that graph, the average pr game is 40M, right?Let's say the average price for games is 40 dollars. And that the makers get 50% of total money coming in (10% advertise 10% to Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft, 10% to retailer, 20% something I don't remember.)

So 50%. That means they get roughly 20 dollars pr copy sold. Doesn't this mean that the average for games will have to be 2M? Remember that the average is raised a lot due to SMG, Brawl, Halo and so.

But this then also means that a niche title (like Zack and Wiki), which only needs to sell 300K to go even, costs less than 1/6 of the average. I don't know the situation for X360/Ps3, but Twilight Princess needed 1.4M to go even, if I am not wrong. That means the average cost is higher than what Nintendo used to make an 80 (less for some, more for some, I used 100 hours on first playthrough, but say 60 if you want) hours long game, which also won several game of the year awards.

So as far I can see, the average for Wii can't be higher than 750K, so let's say 1M for them. Now, half of the games made are on Wii, so therefore half are on Ps3+X360, right? The average shall be 2M, so 3+1 / 2 = 2.

So unless I have done many things wrong, which I probably have, the average needed sales for Xbox360/Ps3 is 3M. And, for multiplats, it is then 3.3M, due to 10% extra porting.

So by making for Wii, your game needs to sell 1/3 of X360/Ps3, if not less!

Please note: From here and out there are only speculations. These are not facts.

If Apple/someone else launches on that you need 2M sales for, and that is "cool", most 3rd parties will jump to them, and leave MS/Sony, making the competition between Apple (or someone else) and Nintendo this:

Console X: The high-profile 3rd party games, very few niche 3rd party.
Vs
Console W(ii): First party, niche 3rd party, and some high-profile 3rd party.

 

Oyvoyvoyv said:   If Apple/someone else launches on that you need 2M sales for, and that is "cool", most 3rd parties will jump to them, and leave MS/Sony, making the competition between Apple (or someone else) and Nintendo this: Console X: The high-profile 3rd party games, very few niche 3rd party. Vs Console W(ii): First party, niche 3rd party, and some high-profile 3rd party.

Actually if Console X had controls similar to Wii there's no reason for 3rd parties not to port over niche titles (like zack & Wiki) too to get extra sales.   A system aimed squarely at the main-stream it won't matter if the graphics are HD or not on any particular game. 

So that's leave Wii with only 1st party games, a huge lead, and cost avantage (Nintendo would need to also drop price to compete but easily could are remain profittable unlike MS & Sony)

Gamerace said: Oyvoyvoyv said: What I believe is WCS for Ps3, is if this happens: 1. Third parties lose too much money, almost all of them go to Wii and start developing. 2. Microsoft shuts down X360, because it is losing to much money. They have vulnerated this before. 3. Ps3 now has a much smaller userbase, and is higher priced to develop for, in reality, it is doomed. About the 1 console, that won't happen. Microsoft has put heaps of money into their gaming division, I doubt they will leave totally that fast. Sony has a superb brandname with the Playstation. There's no way they will leave. The only reason I see those two leaving, is if 2-3 other companies also join in and make consoles. Therefore, the only "realistic" solution, is that Nintendo goes bankrupt. They can't afford to lose money, so if they start losing money, they have to go out.   This is why I predict a forth (and possibly fifth) major player will join the market. MS & Sony have left themselves vunerable and Wii has cracked the mass market nut. If say Apple for example puts out what is basically a Wii HD and markets it as the cool thing (successfully) with graphics close to 360s (but not necessarily as good) developers will happily port all their Wii games over and all their HD games over (with a few exceptions) to this new system. Gamers finally get the best of both worlds. Image CoD4 on a Wii-esque system. What could be better? If such system is successful, and could be just on Wii crumbs (as Nintendo still can't supply adequately), then MS & Sony would either: A) not be able to respond and lose marketshare, and be seen as 'old' tech despite slight graphic superiority, and lose money C) Cut prices drastically to remain competitive in this new order and lose money B) Be forced to launch a 'next' gen system far earlier than they'd like and lose billions on this generation (and even previous for MS) D) Give up

If fourth major player would enter market then the earliest time they could enter is holiday 2010. Why? Because developing a console and making factory contracts takes a long time and also they would have to secure some game support. Game developers won't even port Wii games unless they think console can be a success. Remember, even Apple has had a failed console before (Apple Pippin). If console would be released without any games then it would be doomed to fail. Because we haven't heard many rumours about fourth player then it's at least 2-3 years away.

 

coolestguyever said: I bet putting MGS4 on one Blu Ray disk is cheaper than putting it on 8 different DVD's.

 No, dvd's are mainstream and cheap. Blu Ray is new and making a Master Copy is more expesive than a Master Copy for dvd duplication. Blu Ray Dvds themselves are not mainstream and thus the productions cost have not come down to the levels of what Dvds cost are.

 

patjuan32 said: coolestguyever said: I bet putting MGS4 on one Blu Ray disk is cheaper than putting it on 8 different DVD's.  No, dvd's are mainstream and cheap. Blu Ray is new and making a Master Copy is more expesive than a Master Copy for dvd duplication. Blu Ray Dvds themselves are not mainstream and thus the productions cost have not come down to the levels of what Dvds cost are.

Yeah, a quick search showed that it would cost me $15 for one blu ray recordable and about $.02 for one DVD recordable(packed in with 100).  I don't pretend to know what discounts a manufacturing company gets or what a master copy costs.  You'd also also have to figure in selling 8 dvd's would cost more packaging to hold 8 dvds.  But all in all blu ray isn't at a mass market price yet.

I really have enjoyed reading the opinions in this thread. I really like and agree with Ghost of RubangB's posts. I also see lots of wisdom in the market theory of Sqrl. This is my take on this issue:

The dev costs of the video game market are offset by great game on handhelds and shovelware, at least in the past. The current model of many publishers is to publish a few low cost games at the same time while funding the "flagship" titles everyone knows. They hope to help recoup the costs of the huge budget of the big name title with some profit off the smaller games (eg. Zach and Wiki).

This model is failing this generation, at least thus far. This is because when the dev houses, not the publishers per se, cannot turn a profit easily. They sink everything they have into one or two big games and hope they are hits. Especially true with small/independent devs where one game may be the entire budget. They have big dreams and goals, but when a game starts to cost around 10-15 million dollars, they are crossing into a gray area of questionable profitability. If that game cannot turn a profit, the small dev may be in serious trouble financially, which opens them up to purchase by Evil Arts or other big conglomerate companies.

The cost of development on the PS360 games are so high that many small dev houses cannot make the games they want for it, or if they try they might get in serious trouble if it doesn't hit. I am particularly pointing out the PS3's difficult to program for Cell processor. How many more delays can we expect to see for MGS4 or FFXIII because they can't get it the way they need it to? The problem with high end graphical consoles is that the expectations for every game is HD graphics and ultra high polygon counts with super-duper perfect lighting! WOW!

While all of these things are great, they do not make a game great. But while they are not necessary to a great game, they are now the expectations of nearly all games on the HD consoles, which greatly increase the costs. If the game doesn't have HD graphics then it is frowned upon by the tech-savvy owners of that console, as "last-gen." This HD expectation increases the game costs further by untold amounts.

My friend and I with the help of a few other friends could indeed make a game with passable graphics and have bold new moves in the game play department. We can't do this for financial reasons mainly, but we are thinking about this and other bold moves. Until the dev costs come down we can't make our game. That and our time table is based around around spare time... which we have less and less of these days...

The point is that Development costs are out of hand, and with no drop in the cost of HD game production in sight, the Video Game Market is in some serious trouble. The real money for publishers is in handhelds, the Wii, and downloadable games (WiiWare, PSN,XBLA). Many of the big publishers use this money to subsidize the costs of the big titles... There is nothing wrong with this approach, but it is not entirely healthy for the entire game market. It puts an undue strain on small devs which are the life blood of fresh ideas and approaches, unless you are Nintendo (Miyamoto et all are geniuses).

This is my two cents. Dev costs rise -> choke out small devs -> game play stagnates -> tons of mediocre/shovleware games -> unhappy gamers.

luinil said: This is my two cents. Dev costs rise -> choke out small devs -> game play stagnates -> tons of mediocre/shovleware games -> unhappy gamers.

You mean you don't blame WiiFit?  I agree with you.  The Wii isn't the reason the the 360/PS3 have poor market rates.  The market stagnation you described would exist in a Wiiless world.  The PS3 and X360 are the powers placing themselves out of the mainstream.

Nah, WiiFit is going to be super smash hit if it is anything close to what I think it is. Perhaps not overnight, but over its entire life, it will be the reason the Wii sales total will be over 150 million.

Didn't atarii games sell for about $40 new?

When you stop and think about it video game prices have not risen much at all in the last 20 years.