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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Why small developers are going under - interesting article

shio on 26 January 2009

Anyone noticed how Iron Lore's games started selling much better AFTER they closed down?? The timeline of 2008 is actually funny (and tragic):

February 27th: Iron Lore closes down.

March 4th: Soulstorm is released. It becomes nº1 selling PC game in most PC weekly charts, and entered in several european Overall Top10's including UK (was 8th in first week, then 10th in second week!).
Soulstorm also charted in Steam and Direct2Drive's Best Selling Games.

June 28th: Diablo 3 is announced, sends Titan Quest sales sky high! Titan Quest Gold reaches top10 of Steam/Direct2Drive and stays there for a couple of weeks, plus increases the game's sales on Amazon by the hundreds of percentage.

Throughout the rest of the year, Titan Quest and Soulstorm keep appearing on D2D and Steam's best sellers several times, sometimes because of Weekend Deals, others just because.

January 20th: Dawn of War 2's Beta is starting, Steam drops 75% off Soulstorm and reaches once again Steam's top10. Today it is currently 7th on Steam.

 

Seriously, am I the only one who thinks this is weird?



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richardhutnik on 26 January 2009
Words Of Wisdom said:
Ari_Gold said:
theyre goin under because their products aren't good enough.

Seriously.

Titan Quest was a Diablo-clone and a second rate one at that.

I am of the belief now, that if you do even a mediocre game today, the average person will be generally happy with it.  Even a game like Titan Quest, a Diablo-clone, would appeal to people.  The end result would be competent products end up hitting the bargain bin section, and have the potential to drive down the expected price people pay.   This is what piracy does.  To counter it, companies look to market heavy and make their product stand out as special and shouldn't be discounted.

 

 



Slimebeast on 26 January 2009

Pirates killed Iron Lore Entertainment, they said that themselves in an interview in PC Gamer.

But I think they can blame themselves. Stupid of them to make Titan Quest, a decent Diablo rip-off, only for the PC and without a popular multiplayer mode (TQ had co-op online I think, but personally I didn't wanna spend $30 just for co-op so I only went with single-player).



famousringo on 26 January 2009
shio said:
Anyone noticed how Iron Lore's games started selling much better AFTER they closed down?? The timeline of 2008 is actually funny (and tragic):

February 27th: Iron Lore closes down.

March 4th: Soulstorm is released. It becomes nº1 selling PC game in most PC weekly charts, and entered in several european Overall Top10's including UK (was 8th in first week, then 10th in second week!).
Soulstorm also charted in Steam and Direct2Drive's Best Selling Games.

June 28th: Diablo 3 is announced, sends Titan Quest sales sky high! Titan Quest Gold reaches top10 of Steam/Direct2Drive and stays there for a couple of weeks, plus increases the game's sales on Amazon by the hundreds of percentage.

Throughout the rest of the year, Titan Quest and Soulstorm keep appearing on D2D and Steam's best sellers several times, sometimes because of Weekend Deals, others just because.

January 20th: Dawn of War 2's Beta is starting, Steam drops 75% off Soulstorm and reaches once again Steam's top10. Today it is currently 7th on Steam.

 

Seriously, am I the only one who thinks this is weird?

 

Weird isn't the word. It's alarming that these games can look so successful, yet their developer goes under. Suggests either a seriously flawed business model or some bad exploitation on the part of publishers.

Wasn't THQ Titan Quest's publisher? They haven't really been rolling around in the green lately...



"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event."  — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
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JaggedSac on 26 January 2009
famousringo said:
shio said:
Anyone noticed how Iron Lore's games started selling much better AFTER they closed down?? The timeline of 2008 is actually funny (and tragic):

February 27th: Iron Lore closes down.

March 4th: Soulstorm is released. It becomes nº1 selling PC game in most PC weekly charts, and entered in several european Overall Top10's including UK (was 8th in first week, then 10th in second week!).
Soulstorm also charted in Steam and Direct2Drive's Best Selling Games.

June 28th: Diablo 3 is announced, sends Titan Quest sales sky high! Titan Quest Gold reaches top10 of Steam/Direct2Drive and stays there for a couple of weeks, plus increases the game's sales on Amazon by the hundreds of percentage.

Throughout the rest of the year, Titan Quest and Soulstorm keep appearing on D2D and Steam's best sellers several times, sometimes because of Weekend Deals, others just because.

January 20th: Dawn of War 2's Beta is starting, Steam drops 75% off Soulstorm and reaches once again Steam's top10. Today it is currently 7th on Steam.

 

Seriously, am I the only one who thinks this is weird?

 

Weird isn't the word. It's alarming that these games can look so successful, yet their developer goes under. Suggests either a seriously flawed business model or some bad exploitation on the part of publishers.

Wasn't THQ Titan Quest's publisher? They haven't really been rolling around in the green lately...

Or maybe ranking in a top 10 list is meaninless unless number of units is given for them.  The number 1 game could have sold 1000 games.  That makes the rest of the list rather unimpressive.

 



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JaggedSac on 26 January 2009
famousringo said:
There were some juicy bits in that interview, for sure. A couple of my favourites:

"With the average full-scale console or PC title now costing around $14 million to develop plus additional marketing expenses, a game may sell a million copies without the developer earning any royalties."

"People can say what they want about the number of PC gaming machines being sold each year but the reality is that most titles released for both PC and Xbox 360 see higher sales of the console version, in some cases more than double even with a simultaneous release."

 

That is very very informative.



LordTheNightKnight on 26 January 2009

Quality is not the same as business success. If it was, Mac would be outselling Windows 20 to 1 (and I actually prefer Windows). So whether Titan Quest was any good is irrelevant to what happened to the company.



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

coolestguyever on 26 January 2009

I didn't read the whole thing but I hope small developers go under. Small as in shitty shovelware making companies.



JaggedSac on 26 January 2009
coolestguyever said:
I didn't read the whole thing but I hope small developers go under. Small as in shitty shovelware making companies.

They can make some innovative things though.  Small developers are a very good thing.  Maybe with Steam and growing DD they will be able to more easily thrive.

 



noname2200 on 26 January 2009
famousringo said:
There were some juicy bits in that interview, for sure. A couple of my favourites:

"With the average full-scale console or PC title now costing around $14 million to develop plus additional marketing expenses, a game may sell a million copies without the developer earning any royalties."

"People can say what they want about the number of PC gaming machines being sold each year but the reality is that most titles released for both PC and Xbox 360 see higher sales of the console version, in some cases more than double even with a simultaneous release."

Yeah, those two facts are the ones that immediately struck me as well. I think we can see why developers are seeing so much difficulty staying alive, even with record revenues.

NintendoMan said:
a very interesting read, reckon that $14 million must be for the big HD games, unles costs really have increased in the last couple of years

No, it says "average," and from the budgets I've heard theorized for the bigger HD games I think that's about accurate. It also meshes with other numbers we've heard from the few publishers willing to speak on the matter.

Pretty scary, huh?