What I was trying to say, actually, was that simplistic and extremist viewpoints tend to lead to a lot of problems when you try to put them into practice. In hindsight, just saying that outright would've been much simpler, huh?

Attach rates are meaningless when profits are considered. Assuming the same total costs, a game that sells a million on a popular console A is as profitable as when it sells a million on a not so popular console B. Hence it's a success. Success is not about sales relative to the userbase but whether some absolute value has been reached.

The only thing that gets violated are some personal standards of somone's ego which are completely irrelevant to the business world.

I think theprof's point was that you can't aim every project at the center of the mainsteam. Entertainment media needs variety and niche products to serve niche markets, otherwise they leave the market in search of something that satisfies.

It's true that Deadly Creatures is limiting itself to niche status with its subject matter alone, but as long as THQ has that factored into their budget, and as long as the niche is large enough to support the game, that won't be a problem. It only becomes a problem when niche is mistaken for mainstream and over-competed for.

Publishers like Marvelous pretty much survive on serving niche markets. There's nothing wrong with that.

kylohk, that is true, but when company A analysts, who have proven time and time again that they don't know shit, look at the market they say, hey let's devote more money to cheaper games and forget about those chance-y games.

@sky, yeah that makes a lot more sense and even quite astute.
I recall Obi-wan, before he was known as Ben. He said, only a sith lord deals in absolutes, ne? :P

EDIT: haha ringo, i had meant to say that, but kept forgetting to write it lol.

You're kidding right? Well, I'd love to play as a creepy bug. That's been my dream every since I was 6.

I think so many of you are wrong. If this is marketed correctly every 10 yo boy will beg his parents for a copy of this game.

Jesus, to run around as a spider and eat insects, crawl on walls and all that. MY GOD, you are all mad if you don't think this appeals to the Wii crowd.

Regular games, mini-games, 100 hour RPGs, who cares what the developers decide to make as long as I think they're good games.

 You don't seriously think the developer and publisher are making $50 off of every game sold? Really?

 Although there are no solid numbers in the video games interest to my knowledge, looking at my experience with the music retail industry I'd imagine a RRP $49.99 Wii title such as de Blob is bought by retailers for approxiamately $27 per copy. Then you have to make deductions such as production, royalties, shipping and taxes before the money reaches the publisher. On that basis I'd say a $5 million project on the Wii needs a sell through of 400k - 500k, I doubt de Blob cost that much though.

 de Blob was profitable and no doubt a great success (Albeit I saw alot of marketing for it in the UK, including TV adverts, so maybe not the money cash-cow some people suggest). However the point of my post was more to drill home how stupid your figures were.

 All my figures are guesstimates, if anyone has any better sources / figures feel free to correct me, I'd love to have some solid numbers.

Wow that's kind of like bribery ya know. If they advertise it correctly they'll get what they want from the game. If they don't then it'll suffer. But this is a hard game to really get the masses to buy because its quite a niche concept. But they can do it with a cool marketing trailer.

I agree that marketing is key here. de Blob struck the right chord, can they do it with Deadly Creatures? Only time will tell