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Forums - Sales Discussion - Western Publishers are struggling

Cueil on 17 December 2008
KylieDog said:
Guess they need start releasing some good games then, Atari especially. Oh how they deserve to burn after Alone in the Dark.

 

 They picked up Riddick so you shouldn't bad mouth them... Alone in the Dark did fairly well... it had some problems, but the game was fun over all.... and the bosses... f'n awsome



 
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BengaBenga on 17 December 2008
yushire said:
Gamerace said:
This is an excellent discussion. Which we had ones of this quality more often.

In reading the replies I can't help but think of Miyamoto who says that you have to keep giving the consumer some new experience or they will get bored. Wii and DS were totally designed around this premise as were there main games: Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Music, Nintendogs, Brain Age. All are mega (10m+) sellers (except Wii Music but it's still a hit). Now Nintendo also releases new versions of classic franchises too (Mario, Zelda)

With western developers they have simply lost all innovation. And for good reason. The problem is the western's world pursuit of graphics and realism. This has driven costs sky high. With costs so high developers/publishers are scared to try new innovative game play ideas. They'd rather do sequel 10 or yet another FPS or realistic action game instead. That's okay except... everyone is now doing it. First off, the preception is the sequel needs to be bigger, badder and more graphically powerful than it's predecessor. But then it also has to out muscle your competition's game too. So there's little to no innovation and lots of rising costs.

THIS ISN'T A NEW PROBLEM. We had this same problem last generation for the exact same reason. Same games over and over with ever rising costs and ever dropping profits. These same companies were all losing money then too. Just not as much. The HD consoles are merely bring this to a head. Bringing PC games to consoles also made this problem worse.

 

 Now that I think about it, how many years before developers make a profit and HD console development becomes cheap? Its been 3 years already, so 3rd parties still cant handle the development cost of the 360?

The single most expensive part in game devlopment (and in almost any business) is manpower. These high resolution textures, improved engines, AI programming etc need more manpower than the previous gen. That's something that's hard to cut back on. Sure middleware will decrease the development costs over this generation, but a character won't design itself.

 



Cueil on 17 December 2008
Zlejedi said:
theRepublic said:
naznatips said:

It's not as simple as "let's just make everything on Wii and it will be all sunshine and daisies" either.  World at War bombed on Wii.  Someday it may recover sales, but it will take a long time, and shooters will never sell as well on Wii as they do on the HD consoles and PC.  And here we have the problem: Western developers don't know how to make anything else anymore.  If it's not a shooter it's a bloody action game.  If it's not a bloody action game it's a bloody action RPG.  If it's not a bloody action RPG it bombs (Poor Prince of Persia). 

Publishers are screwed. The developers they employ can only make a certain style of game that happens to cost out the ass and not sell enough to make up for it.  How can they scrap their whole staff and start over?  What can they really do?  You talk about Japanese publishers having no influence, but you're completely wrong.  Japanese publishers are the ones who will still be around in a decade. What good does it do you to sell millions now if you are a dead company in 5 years?  Gaming is a business, and those who know how to stay in business are the ones that will matter in the future.

Oh, I agree, although I probably didn't make it too clear.

The problem that I see on the HD consoles, is that everything that gets made is almost forced into being a graphical powerhouse.  Without the pretty screenshots, these games have no hype and don't sell.  Even if they do have the pretty screenshots, they need to hope that they don't get lost in the shuffle of the big name franchises.  It seems like everyone is trying to make a big budget blockbuster.  The industry can't survive like that.  There needs to be a lot of low to mid budget games to support those big blockbusters.  Those games don't exist on the HD consoles, and I don't seem them ever being made, or selling, given a userbase that is so graphically obsessed.

I don't see that as a problem for the Wii.  The bar is set lower graphically, so much smaller budgets can make an average looking Wii game, and it doesn't take as much effort to really stand out if you have the budget.  Lower development costs have meant that niche games can and do make money.  That's what we really need.  Profitable games.

I just don't see 360 and PS3 fans accepting lower budget games for the sake of profitablity.  They have been spoiled by an unsustainable business model.

 

The problem is most of those current gen games have absolutly nothing to offer other than pretty graphics.

Do we really need something like 20-30 shooter games made each year ?

 

There are genres where you don't need uber graphics like RPG, Strategy, Adventure but those are avoided by most big developers.

Adventure games were almost always ahead of the times in graphics because they didn't need to have lots of things going on and there was alot of static background.  RPGs are much the same... it's not the idea of uber graphics that I think you're trying to say, but uber realisim... when you try to make it as realistic as possible you come into all kinds of problems... when you go artistic you don't have those same problems, but that doesn't mean you don't have awsome graphics.  Graphical fidelity is always important to the user... text adventures were fun, but after playing Kings Quest it was hard to go back and enjoy Zork as much as I use to.

 



 
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HappySqurriel on 17 December 2008
BengaBenga said:
yushire said:
Gamerace said:
This is an excellent discussion. Which we had ones of this quality more often.

In reading the replies I can't help but think of Miyamoto who says that you have to keep giving the consumer some new experience or they will get bored. Wii and DS were totally designed around this premise as were there main games: Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Music, Nintendogs, Brain Age. All are mega (10m+) sellers (except Wii Music but it's still a hit). Now Nintendo also releases new versions of classic franchises too (Mario, Zelda)

With western developers they have simply lost all innovation. And for good reason. The problem is the western's world pursuit of graphics and realism. This has driven costs sky high. With costs so high developers/publishers are scared to try new innovative game play ideas. They'd rather do sequel 10 or yet another FPS or realistic action game instead. That's okay except... everyone is now doing it. First off, the preception is the sequel needs to be bigger, badder and more graphically powerful than it's predecessor. But then it also has to out muscle your competition's game too. So there's little to no innovation and lots of rising costs.

THIS ISN'T A NEW PROBLEM. We had this same problem last generation for the exact same reason. Same games over and over with ever rising costs and ever dropping profits. These same companies were all losing money then too. Just not as much. The HD consoles are merely bring this to a head. Bringing PC games to consoles also made this problem worse.

 

Now that I think about it, how many years before developers make a profit and HD console development becomes cheap? Its been 3 years already, so 3rd parties still cant handle the development cost of the 360?

The single most expensive part in game devlopment (and in almost any business) is manpower. These high resolution textures, improved engines, AI programming etc need more manpower than the previous gen. That's something that's hard to cut back on. Sure middleware will decrease the development costs over this generation, but a character won't design itself.

 

 

The primary thing that is eating so much man power is the production of graphical assets for HD games. It is something that can be cut back on, but developers would have to make it one of their primary focuses ...

Years ago I started to think that there were two reasons why Nintendo made so many "Mario" games, one was because consumers trust the quality of games that have Mario in them, but I also started to think that Nintendo did this in order to use the same models and textures from game to game. If you build a large enough library of these assets, 60% to 75% of all models and textures you need to produce a new game may already exist and you can focus your efforts on producing the content which is actually new.

There are side effects to this approach ... Your games have very limited capacity to look unique when you do this, and if you go for a "Realistic" look your games are (probably) going to look more and more generic as time goes on.



Metsadah on 17 December 2008
disolitude said:
Is it going to be 1983 all over again?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

no, thats just dumb.

There are no parallels, and the market back then was way smaller and less professional then it is now. Ok, the wii may have some bad games, but most games that are released now live up to the expectations. Last year was a tremendous year for the avarage gamer. I dont get why people always link to events in the past and think the exact same thing is going to happen.

A crash might be possible (chances are very slim), but it will be for a whole other set of reasons that have nothing to do with 1983

 



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Nate on 17 December 2008

If novelty didn't sell games then think about it, we'd just play our old games over & over again. That's the long-term problem for the industry, competing against it's own legacy....

At the end of the "life after the video game crash" article there is a list of the top 30 shows of 1983. I guarantee you that the TV industry was far more profitable/healthy then than it is now. Look at the number of night-time soap operas on the list, they haven't made one of them in years & years. And sitcoms have been played out, IMO Everybody Loves Raymond may very well be remembered as the last great one. Bottom line, there's plenty of good stuff to watch on syndication & on DVD which dilutes the market for new products.

The broader point is: Is there a limit to originality? Nintendo seems to be the only company dedicated to pushing that limit on the console side of the gaming industry. By the time that limit is reached Nintendo will have godly amounts of money while everyone else will be bankrupt.



noname2200 on 17 December 2008
Commando said:
psrock said:
The only issue is: In the US Most companies are losing money right now or feeling the economic pressure.


I should know, i work for a bank.

 

 same.  Credit Union instead of bank though.

 

I'm also unsure of hou Japanese companies deal with their workforce in troubled times.  I would imagine given their reputation for intricate and numerous contigency plans, and the extreme lack therof in America, that would highlight this contrast in virtually all business ... uhm.. figures.... Damnit PSrock your avatar is distracting!!!

Granted that losing money is all the rage right now for businesses, but that's because most sectors are seeing declining revenue. The gaming industry, by contrast, has been setting records for revenue each year for several years, yet they're still losing money hand over fist. To me, that's a huge indicator of an unhealthy business plan.

As for the Japanese, I can't begin to say, but as Bodhesatva pointed out earlier, many more of them are profitable than their Western counterparts at the moment (perhaps due to their smaller sizes?). They're not doing uber-fantastic, for the most part, but they'll survive. That's something a lot of Western developers can't guarantee right now.