| Ail said: To NoName2200 ( don't want to quote the whole post). PS : Quoting EA profits as a reason for focusing more on the Wii is a half truth. EA has had an issue making decent profits even at the end of the last gen as it failed to come up with new successfull IPs. The fact they still have issues now is not really a surprise. Madden is getting old and they have yet to find anything to take its succession.. Some developers that have betted heavilly on the HD console have however experienced record profit last year, to name two : Activision and Ubisoft...
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A couple of points: as sc94597 points out, Grasshopper hasn't released any HD games. It has released games for the last generation consoles. Those games haven't done so well for larger developers, but for a small, low-budget team like Grasshopper, they were profitable. No More Heroes is more than merely profitable for them: it's their best-selling title ever. I'd like to point out that this happened despite its receiving roughly zero advertising in the US by its publisher, Ubisoft.
I'd also like to point out that Zak and Wiki is a cel-shaded point-and-click puzzle game about a boy pirate and his flying magical monkey sidekick, and that the game also received next to no advertising outside the internet and gaming magazines. Is it really shocking that it didn't go platinum? Do you honestly believe it would have done better on the HD consoles? And do you think Capcom would be creating a sequel if it didn't sell as well as it expected it to? For that matter, since when do companies go so far as to throw a party to make us believe their game exceeded expectations, like Grasshopper and Marvelous did? To paraphrase you: Looks more to me like you do not want to admit the titles did as well as expected.
And why are you comparing sales to the userbase? No developer I know of cares about what percentage of the userbase it reached: they care about their games' sales. If we go by your standard, every single PS2 game is an absolute flop. Every. Single. One. Even Grand Theft Auto fails to go much over a tenth of the userbase.
But why am I speaking hypothetically? Again, look at some of the links I gave you. Marvelous, for instance, isn't reaching even a tenth of the userbase, and yet they seem happy with their sales. Ditto and likewise for Hudson. Capcom's platinum games are under five percent of the userbase. None of them care about that figure: it seems like you're the only one around who does.
As for your next assertions, I had originally thought of addressing them in the other post, but I thought it was already long enough. However, since you've brought it up, I'll address it here. Yes, EA had difficulty at the end of the last generation (which, coincidentally, is when they first started shifting resources into the HD consoles...). But notice that their revenue last year was monstrous, vastly exceeding their expectations. And yet they still failed to turn a profit.
You imply that their problem is that their games are getting stale in the public's eye, and that that's responsible for them not making a profit this year. But their revenue implies that their absolute sales are doing just fine. You don't make over a billion in revenue if people aren't buying your products. No, a loss arises when your revenue is dwarfed by your expenses. And THAT is EA's problem. A question for you: if they're truly so happy with their HD profits, why are they saying that they "bet on the wrong horse"?
Finally, it is true that Activision and Ubisoft saw very good profits last year. It's also true that both of them are heavily into the HD consoles. But while you end your analysis there, I urge you to look deeper into those figures. I'll cut and paste this from an earlier post I wrote:
http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=309134
"This year, the Wii has accounted for 21% of their console revenue, the PS3 checks in at 18%, the 360 at 27%, and the PS2 at 21%. I'd like to point out also that the PS3, PS2, and 360 had more Activision games available than the Wii, and that the 360 and PS3 both have Call of Duty 4, which is their best selling game by far. I'd also like to point out that these figures are for revenue: PS3 and 360 games cost more than Wii games do, so more Wii games must be sold to equal the HD consoles totals... Furthermore, even with those two handicaps, the Wii still sold more for Activison than the PS3."
I'd also like to add to that the fact that Activision, like EA before it, is growing monstrously large by consuming several other developers. Again, look at the link I put up in my last post, where HD development costs are being blamed for the rise in consolidation. I bring that up again here because much of Activision's revenue and profit this year came from their expansion, not from their old developers magically becoming more profitable. Or do you think that acquiring Vivendi, and its Blizzard subsidiary, won't make your bottom line suddenly look much better? Much of Activision's change in profits are not from their suddenly becoming more efficient this generation, but from their having more studios under their yoke.
Ubisoft, I'll admit, is less clear. They did post record profits last year, and they do focus more on the HD consoles than they do on the Wii. But there are a couple of reasons Ubisoft isn't the prime example you believe it is. For starters, while their revenue from the Wii is smaller than those of the HD consoles individually, a very large chunk of their profits, 27%, came from the very lucrative DS.
http://www.ubisoftgroup.com/gallery_files/site/270/1042/1708.pdf
And we know, from one of the links I posted, that Ubisoft spends less than two million dollars on their average DS game (sometimes less than one). In fact, they claim their average development costs for that system are $785,000-$1.57m. So we have Ubisoft making cheap DS games (which retail for half of an HD game) which nonetheless account for more revenue than the PS3! I would submit, in fact, that it is the DS, not the HD consoles, that are where Ubisoft is making the bulk of its money, since they spend little make their games while bringing in the second-largest chunk of their income.
I would also like to point out that Ubisoft, like Activision, should be making more money than before, since it, too, is expanding aggressively. Or have you forgotten how many new studios they've opened in the past few years, and how much they've enlarged their current ones?
http://corp.ubisoft.com/co_past.htm
2003
| The Growth Continues! The first few years of the new millennium see Ubisoft recording the most rapid growth in its history. During the 2001/2002 year, Ubisoft opened new subsidiaries in Canada, Switzerland, South Korea and Finland, further solidifying its position as a truly global game maker. It operates in 22 countries around the world. |
And this is a trend that they're continuing to this day. Shoot, they just tripled their studio in Morocco, and there are plenty of other examples of Ubisoft getting bigger. Growth under those circumstances should be expected. What you didn't notice is that their increase in profits doesn't appear to be increasing with their increase in employees on a 1:1 basis...
If you're willing to come forth with data that proves any of my points wrong, please do. I'll admit right here and now that much I've posted is deduction or inference, and that it's possible that I'm wrong about the whole thing (most suspect is the Zak and Wiki sequel: a lot of reliable sources say it's coming, but it hasn't officially been confirmed yet). But I've presented you my analysis, and the data it's based on.
If you have any data that says otherwise, bring it forth, and I'll be happy to examine it, as you can't get better if you keep making the same mistakes. And please PM me about it, as I have to finish the article I'm working on very (frighteningly!) soon, and can't keep procrastinating as I have been, so I won't be able to see your counterpoint for a few days. I do, however, look forward to hearing what you have to say.
