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Forums - Gaming - Opinion on future of poor selling quality games

Madword on 14 October 2017
ChaosReich said:
Boutros said:

Persona 5 is at almost 2m copies sold and has PS3 assets so it's not current gen production costs. It's also Atlus' highest selling game ever.

Nioh sold over a million just over month after release and is Koei Tecmo's most successful game ever published in the west. It will also end up being Team Ninja's highest selling game ever and that's all just on the PS4. There's a PC version coming and it should be very popular.

Thats awesome to hear about Persona but like i said, in Niohs case, if that game cost around the average production budget of videogames then selling a little over a million isnt going to cover the likely 80+ million put into it. I could be completely wrong with how much the average game cost or with how much i assume Nioh cost. Like i said, i remember reading about the average prod budget of videogames on some site a few years back and can only assume its gone up

Dont know where you are getting your figures from but these games didnt cost 80+ to make. Nioh probably cost between 15-30.

That 30m is probably around the average, while a AA game will cost you 10-20.

Anything over that is normally the massive big games, in fact GTA was reportidly only cost about 60-80 and actually the cost of marketing was where it went so high, but when you know you have a billion dollar franchise then its not a problem, but thats an Outlier something that is not done by most other games.



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Shaunodon on 14 October 2017

You sound like someone who's be trapped in the loop so long, and you just woke up and realised people on PS4 only play bad AAA western games.

Jokes aside, there are a pretty good assortment of classics on the system (now), even if they don't get the attention they deserve. Plus even AAA devs drop the odd gem (Witcher3, Doom, Overwatch) every now and then. You'll be fine.

If you haven't tried Bloodborne or the Yakuza series, that wouldn't be a bad place to start. Horizon is supposedly quite good too, though that's hardly a cheap niche title.



TheWPCTraveler on 14 October 2017
Azzanation said:

Sales are only numbers. Weather or not the game profits is another.

Eg -
Game A sold 1 million units, cost to make was 10 million.
Game B sold 2 million units, cost to make was 40 million.

 

Game A is in a much better financial position than game B

this

Also consider the possibility that:

Game A sold through most of its units at full price or close to full price
Game B only sold through its initial shipment after a hefty price cut



 
I WON A BET AGAINST AZUREN! WOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

:3

d21lewis on 14 October 2017

I'd love for my favorite series to continue but, at the same time, I just appreciate good games when I came get them. I'm not worried about the next game after Mario Odyssey (for example). To me, it's just a good game I want to play. After I've played it, I'll play the next game on my list. If there's another one, great. If not, there's always something to play.

I love the Metroid series but I play each entry like it's the last one.



Xxain on 14 October 2017

For the record, Japanese developers never spend that much money on development. Even big Japanese games like Metal Gear, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are nowhere near 100 mill. Average Japanese console game will be 15-30mill. Persona 5 was probably 20mill? 25 at most.



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Shaunodon on 14 October 2017
Xxain said:
For the record, Japanese developers never spend that much money on development. Even big Japanese games like Metal Gear, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are nowhere near 100 mill. Average Japanese console game will be 15-30mill. Persona 5 was probably 20mill? 25 at most.

Maybe Dragon Quest but MGSV and Final Fantasy XV?!?

Final Fantasy XV had a notoriously outragous budget because of it's development cycle. At least that if not both are considered big AAA titles.

Edit: Not to mention they both had in-house engines built just for those games, so their budgets must have been pretty substantial.



ChaosReich on 14 October 2017
Shaunodon said:

You sound like someone who's be trapped in the loop so long, and you just woke up and realised people on PS4 only play bad AAA western games.

Jokes aside, there are a pretty good assortment of classics on the system (now), even if they don't get the attention they deserve. Plus even AAA devs drop the odd gem (Witcher3, Doom, Overwatch) every now and then. You'll be fine.

If you haven't tried Bloodborne or the Yakuza series, that wouldn't be a bad place to start. Horizon is supposedly quite good too, though that's hardly a cheap niche title.

Lol nah, it just kinda popped up since ive been only playing Overwatch and kinda Fallout 4 for about a year (both great games with Overwatch being wayyy more fun) and now that im trying other way more niche titles, i started worrying about them. I know great AAA games come out, i own Witcher 3, Doom, Uncharted 4 and a few others. So yea, over all from the tone of this thread, i was absolutely wrong and ive never been so happy to be wrong either.

What would you consider the Dark Soul series in terms of AAA or lower. 



Darwinianevolution on 14 October 2017

Most good games eventually grow a decent fanbase out of word of mouth, and thus, they'll be able to sell better through re-releases. That's the reason P4Golden sold better than the original release. And considering how publishers love re-release stuff, the games will make better numbers.

And besides, most of these games are cheaper projects than the average AAA game, so a couple of million units will do quite enough profit.



You know it deserves the GOTY.

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ChaosReich on 14 October 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
ChaosReich said:

I thought i made it clear but my bad. I was considering success in terms of the average videogame production budget that i read about a few years back. It didnt include advertisements into their figurings either. So with that knowledge, id look at games like Doom, Neir, Persona and Nioh and assume that based on everything ive played and then compare these to them, i couldnt see how they could cost soo much less. Then id look at sales figures and see Persona or Nioh at 1 mil while Watch Dogs sat at 5 mil and i got worried and began prematurely wishing for the good ole days lol.

 

Anyways, it seems like i was wrong over all and you guys all seem pretty unfazed about the future of these niche games so im just gonna go with that and try to put this out of my mind.

Team size has a pretty big impact there. Paying say 50 people over a 3-4 year period is a lot cheaper than paying 200-300 people over that same time frame. The cost for staff can vary as well. I expect the average salary at a UK based dev like Rockstar North is significantly higher than the average salary at say CDProjekt in Poland. Then there's voice acting/motion capture. Games like COD or GTA pay a lot more for those since they often employ celebrity voice actors. On the other hand something like Persona I doubt uses any motion capture at all, the style of the graphics mean it isn't really needed. Then there's cutscene costs, some games do it in-engine which should be a lot cheaper while others use professional CGI/animation companies. I can't remember the exact figures but I'm sure I heard the company that MS used for Halo's CGI charges something like $1m per second of footage or something crazy like that.

Great fuckin points bro! I did actually consider team size but maybe it sounds like not enough.............HOW ON EARTH DOES SOMEONE/ANYONE CHARGE 1 MILLION PER SECOND, i cant even........



Leadified on 14 October 2017
ChaosReich said:
Ka-pi96 said:

Team size has a pretty big impact there. Paying say 50 people over a 3-4 year period is a lot cheaper than paying 200-300 people over that same time frame. The cost for staff can vary as well. I expect the average salary at a UK based dev like Rockstar North is significantly higher than the average salary at say CDProjekt in Poland. Then there's voice acting/motion capture. Games like COD or GTA pay a lot more for those since they often employ celebrity voice actors. On the other hand something like Persona I doubt uses any motion capture at all, the style of the graphics mean it isn't really needed. Then there's cutscene costs, some games do it in-engine which should be a lot cheaper while others use professional CGI/animation companies. I can't remember the exact figures but I'm sure I heard the company that MS used for Halo's CGI charges something like $1m per second of footage or something crazy like that.

Great fuckin points bro! I did actually consider team size but maybe it sounds like not enough.............HOW ON EARTH DOES SOMEONE/ANYONE CHARGE 1 MILLION PER SECOND, i cant even........

I mean...they are some nice looking CGI cutscenes