Sony is really shutting down The Show's servers? What a kick in the teeth. It's obvious they just want to force people to upgrade. Sounds like one of Nintendo's tricks during their 1980's Godfather like monopoly.

I agree with this, Sony generally does not do such anti-consumer things. It is wrong of them and people should gripe for them to change their mind

It's a pretty big assumption that it will shrink further. Everyone already has a mobile. Still the handheld market reached the size it has now. Even more: handhelds are bigger in japan, and japan is even more into mobiles than the west. Why is that? Because of the japanese handheld games (the western developers for some reason doing no handheld games, and if they do they sell better on handhelds, see Lego). The handheld market dropped already more or less to levels it will stay at. And probably the next Nintendo handheld also can eat up the Vita sales, as I think it is doubtful that Sony will make another go at handhelds.

And yes, many games require at least a million in sales to break even. Look at Yacht Club Games, they made a pretty good brreakdown of development costs of Shovel Knight:

http://yachtclubgames.com/2014/08/sales-one-month/

So the devs didn't get paid for months, get the half pay from the start, the musician didn't get payment until after the release of the game and half the game was put out after release as free update to reduce costs. All of that a real publisher can't do, developers want their payment, customers want the full game. So for a game like Shovel Knight, a game with retro pixel graphics, a game developed by six people we look at realistical costs of 1.4 million $. That was what they calculated themself, and then applying the cost-reducing measures I talked above to get to the real budget. If we assume Shovel Knight would be sold retail at full price, they would get around 10$ per sale. So even this ultra-cheap game need 140K in sales. Remember, for a game which has the same graphics on handhelds, home console and PC. For this game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYfoUWP_0qg

For Kirby Rainbow Curse someone counted 80 names in the credits. Thats more than 10 times this number. And Kirby is surely low end. For other games we could conclude the same. So probably some low end games from normal publisher are between 500K and 1 million in sales for break even, but everything we start to brag about in the forums and that gets multiple threads needs at least a million to sell. Bayonetta 2 was cancelled by Sega although the first did 2-3 millions for example.

There is a reason why gaming studios are closed down.

And no, Indies don't exist because devs can try something. Indies exist because some devs want to make games and are willing to take less payment to fulfill their dream. They all would take a publisher and his budget any day.

Moving goalposts. You said most people would take Uncharted and Halo over ANY Nintendo franchise while it is obviously wrong. Now you talk about console sales that is decided by a lot more than the appeal of single franchises. Just for thought. Maybe some Nintendo-franchises are appealing to more people, but possibly PS4 and X1 have more franchises on their platform in total, so let's use math.

Just so you know it so does not work that way........ Shovel Knight made a profit in its first month with less than 200k copies sold. You totally destroyed your point

As a close friend of Jeff's, the TxK news really pisses me off.

Games like Uncharted and Halo sell consoles. Nintendo franchises have not sold THAT many consoles. The Wii was a success due to becoming a "thing: not because of Nintendo games. If Nintendo games were soooo popular as you are trying to say then Nintendo consoles would sell better....

Ehh, Nintendo stocks skyrocket, not tumble.
And we'll have to wait and see what their mobile strategy will be before we panic

Did you read the blog and what I wrote? The devs halving their payment and didn't even get payment for some time? And I wrote a studio that totally pays would break even on 140K and you write they made winnings at 200K. Aha. So you don't disagree with me. Still, can you see that this game is probably the low end in production price you can get?

The 'thing' were games, namely Wii Sports, but whatever you like. Every game sells consoles. The PS4 and X1 sell more consoles, because they have more games. By the way, they even don't even got Uncharted and Halo yet, so you could say whatever these will sell in the current gen is because of the userbase the consoles got so far, like you made your point for Mario Bros and Mario Kart.