@Nintendo Fanboys

Was that a serious article or were you joking? that did not show 30 titles you claimed sold a million copies on the WII...also I cant believe you posted an article which was quotin NINTENDO PRESIDENT...like um o course he's not going to downplay his own corporation...just like Sony would lie and Microsoft would lie also....like I said no facts...im out of here

Hey, he already said he's leaving. Assuming he actually follows through (this time), I say we let 'em go and mark this one up as a win for, well, everyone really.

And in a likely futile attempt to get this thread back on-topic, I would really like to know more about this line:

"Budgets for next-generation development have continued to rise steadily across the board."

It's that "continued" part that concerns me so much. Prices need to go down, and now. I knew full well that those saying that development costs would decrease to reasonable levels when developers finish making their engines/tools were full of it (have those methods ever halved development costs through a generation?), but the thought that they're still going up is bad mojo indeed.

Still, there are some things in this article which seem either poorly researched, horribly phrased, or some combination. So I'd really like to know how to contact this guy to get a few more details about what he means.

Suddenly, what Microsoft has been doing with its first party makes a little more sense. Everything from them doing it once the losses were too large to ignore, to looking for a historically successful model in a similar industry (rather than creating a business strategy tailored to the gaming industry) falls in line with what I would expect from the company.

I personally think the gaming industry should never have focused so much on visuals. I think perhaps some games should emphasize realism, but what separates the gaming industry from everything else is interaction. Gaming is defined by interaction, and therefore should not try to compete in visuals with the industry that is defined by visual experience (movies). Nintendo definitely has the right idea in providing new ways of interacting, but the problem is not solved until companies start focusing their creativity on interaction instead of on all the other places they are spending mountains of money on. And for that to happen, expectations for these extraneous elements in games needs to decrease (in the minds of both consumers and developers/publishers). I think my best hope is handheld gaming, which is closest to providing this optimal environment.

It's not complete but here's some data

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=18868&page=1

I'm not convinced by this article.

> Games weren't always expensive to make: In the early days, a boy with an Apple II could rule
> the world.

Boys and girls still can. Cellphones? Handhelds? Does the Nintendo DS ring a bell? Not every game has to be MGS4.

> be heavy initial investment costs to retool—Electronic Arts spent a record $372 million on
> research and development during 2008's third quarter—they expected returns on that
> investment, something that's so far failed to materialize.

EA's problems are homegrown: overreliance on less-than-stellar ports, plus derivative forms such as sports spinoffs which get churned out every year, and are really extended fan service to a limited audience. The studios in trouble are the ones which are most like Hollywood studios, actually.

> The big Hollywood studios, by contrast, make movies by giving money to temporary production
> companies, which then hire temporary crews with one-project contracts. The temporary entity
> will make the film from start to finish. And once production is complete, the studio receives
> a finished product that it can distribute to theaters—without the continued overhead
> expenses that game publishers often face.

The article leaves out one crucial point: Hollywood gets lots of its money from private equity and pools of leveraged capital, especially from the Eurobanks, and that honeypot is gone forever. Live by leveraged credit, die by leveraged credit. The games industry should absolutely NOT be like the Hollywood studios, which are dinosaurs heading for extinction, but should depend on us, the consumers: create good games, and we'll buy them.

> Make the story shorter. Use lower-quality graphics. Recycle proven tools and technology.

In other words, churn out overpriced crap, because us consumers are idiots and are desperate to subsidize an unworkable business model. Not. Going. To. Work.

The videogame industry is fundamentally healthy. Sure, some big names need to cut back, but that's normal in a $50 billion annual industry. There will be churn, some stars rise and some fade away.

> though, doesn't seem to have absorbed the lesson of this success story. EA doesn't need to
> find its own Grand Theft Auto—it needs to let 1,000 Portals bloom.

Not at all. The GTAs and the Portals can and should coexist. There is no single biz model which dominates the game industry, nor will there ever be one in the future - the thing is too big, complex and fans have too much power for any monopoly model to ever work again.

There's definitely a herd mentality in a lot of the entertainment industry, and video games are no exception. Every time something hits big, you've got a dozen companies rushing to make copies of it with varying successes that usually (but not always) fall below the original's. Look all the super-heroes movies that have come out after X-Men and Spider-man made big money, or all those damn Boy Bands, or all the GTA III knock-offs last generation.

A big part of the current herd mentality in a lot of the gaming industry seems to be make more expensive and pretentious versions of traditional games in some sort strange attempt to deny video games simple entertainment roots and transcend into interactive art. I know it sounds weird for me to suggest that stubborn pride is a big contributor to this rampant spending, but look at EA. They have a reputation has unimaginative company who purely viewed games as business only, and even they ended up blowing a lot of money to compete in this bizarre interactive art arms race. They bought BioWare, they made Dead Space and Mirror's Edge, they bragged about how their Metacritic scores of their games was much higher then last year.

Think about how many more companies list Metacritic scores in their financial reports, as if it somehow means the game will sell better. Think about all the traditional game developers who act like the Wii is some sort of abomination because it stands in contrast to this herd ideal. Think about all the lofty unrealistic promises that come with a lot of high-profile HD games. Remember all the talk about Euphoria and DMM before The Force Unleashed came out? Or Bethesda talking about “radiant A.I.” in Oblivion? It can't just be something fun anymore, it also has to be amazing and unique in every aspect.

Look at Midway. Rumor is that Midway spent about 30 Million dollars to make Stranglehold. It sold poorly, but it didn’t deter their desire to make the next big game on the HD consoles. They released Area 51: Blacksite on the HD consoles during the same time period. They published Unreal 3; they made Mortal Kombat Vs. DC, and were going on to make This Is Vegas. All on the HD consoles. What did they have on the Wii? Cheap dirty rehashes of old games and a blatant copy of Wii Play? What did they have on the handhelds? Anything? They spent themselves into massive debt for what looks like a claim to fame.

I think it’s why there’s such a huge push on DLC for big HD games. It’s the most efficient way to drum up revenue on costly games built on unrealistic expectations without compromising the original concept.

It just seems crazy to me. Did Sony really spend four years and a lot of money on Killzone 2 because people pointed hour their E3 Demo in 2005 was CGI? Because if they did that's just insane. Would most people who don’t frequent gaming forums have cared if it didn’t look better then Gears 2, or whatever?

What's really killing the game industry is the fact that HD games cost $59.99. If they were to cost $39.99 I'd have a much bigger collection, and then developers could use that hard earned money to pay bills and not lay off a bunch of workers. Either you make more sales off a $39.99 price tag, or only a few with a $59.99 price tag. I'd go cheaper if I were them. It's better to make a smaller than expected profit than to gamble so much with a high price tag.

Wouldn't they get exactly the same amount of revenue out of you and just end up paying to press and ship more discs?

Just out of curiosity, what are your problems with the article?

By the way, here is his email: evan.embedded@gmail.com