What about those studios who made high production values games, sold well enough but not _incredibly_ well and still came out with sequels indicating they made some profit or count to make some.
I'm thinking of the ongoing development of Uncharted 2, the Ratchet and Clank franchise, God of War 3, Mass Effect 2... did they do / are they doing anything different, or is it all in the partnership with MS/Sony?

http://platformers.net/2009/02/npd-january-2009-life-to-date-numbers/

NPD:

Yakuza 1 - 56k
Yakuza 2 - 24k

Doesn't seem worth it to me...

It's allright as long as companies continue to develop quality titles and not only focus on crappy games.

Yes like cutting out the super uneeded graphics... for starters.

They said they were happy about Madworld sales.

Hardcore and Casual somewhat seems like a

HD vs Wii split in this almost.

Unless they were lying about Madworld.

The problem is with dev budgetsbeing so high.  The risk to reward ratio is all f'd up.

Games cost twice as much if not more then last generation to make... but only bring in an extra 20% and even all that prolly doesn't go to them.

It's a new generation with bigger risks, bigger rewards. Some companies and developers are going to bite the bullet. Some won't be able to stand the test of time.

Some will pass with flying colors. I'm sorry but Sega hasn't made that many wonderful games (Recently) as far as I'm concerned.


Some companies are going to go out of business but to act like the whole industry needs to downscale and de-grade in graphics is absolutely hysterical and stupid. Only the developers who cannot develop quality HD caliber games need to downscale.


Plenty of other studios are doing just fine. (Rockstar, Blizzard, Valve, Guerilla, Naughty Dog, Bungie, Insomniac, Epic, to name a few).



The jump into HD is/was/has been expensive no doubt about it. This is true for Cable TV, Movie Production, Etc. Although it's moving forward not backwards. The further this progresses the cheaper everything involved with it, becomes.

The bigger rewards don't match up with the bigger risks however.

Hence record revenue...

yet almost nobody making a profit.

I scratched off the ones who aren't 3rd parties or aren't doing well. What remains is basically PC based developers.

i don't think we need to worry too much about this....what's the worst that can happen.........sony's ten year plan comes into action...........we get to play our PS3/360's for a while and don't have to fork out for another unit.....

i don't think nintendo mind right now.......

and whichever company makes a great new character/game that people really like are going to be quids in......same as it ever was......

Well if they make all cheap ass crap games it will be the game crash of 83 all over again :(