Razor Blade Games?

Oxygen99 writes "There's a story on the BBC News website regarding the financial impact on game developers of the next generation of consoles. The article states that while the cost of producing games increases exponentially as new technology comes online, consumer prices stay approximately the same, leading to an unsustainable financial environment for many small developers. With many small development teams already hurting from the crippling costs of development for the X-Box, GameCube and PlayStation 2, what happens when the X-Box2 or Playstation 3 arrives? Are the days of small scale game development over? Will we ever see a new Jeff Minter? Will the games industry go down the route of the razor manufacturers where consoles are almost given away with the games?"

Comments

Give us more, and make it hurt!

[Wvyern]

There will always be a high demand for the latest and greatest games/consoles from the pre-teen to the post-teen age groups. The thing is, we have gotten a taste, starting with Pong, and will never get enough until you jack us straight in, and get a virtual reality that is more than a messy abortion. Addiction is a word that comes to mind, and people will do anything to pay for their addictions.

Re:Pressure = opportunity

[Cap'n Canuck]

When economic pressures like this get built up, that provides an opportunity for someone to deliver a solution to some of these problems that reduces cost and/or time of development.

What you're talking about here is a GDE (Games Development Environment). It SOUNDS like a great idea, but I don't think so. It would mean that every game coming out of the pipe would be the same, homogeneous product, using the same libraries, graphics, sounds, whatever. Blech.

Small players in the console market?

[LWATCDR]

There never really was room for small players in the console market. Look at the old Atari days. You had Atari and Activision and them some other big compaines moved in. There where some little guys but not that many and they sort of lived in the cracks that the big boys did not want. Only home computers let little game makers live. Even then if you where a small company starting off you might do better starting with a less popular computer than the Atari, C64, or Apple. Writing for a getting a CoCo game reviewed might have been easier than getting an Apple II game reviewed.
There is room for small game companies. Just not on the Playstation or the X-Box.

game engines, pricing, expectations.

[AtaruMoroboshi]

Game programers should stop re-inventing the wheel and use common game engines, at least for the graphics. I realize that lots of games have been made by liscensing the Quake 3 engine or Unreal engine, this seems like a potential way for smaller developers to have access to reasonably good looking technology to drive the PS3, xbox 2 or N5.

One of the real problems is that there is little room for games with lower expectations. I'd be really happy to buy a bunch of ten hour games that had less technical wows but much heart, especially if their retail price was reasonable.

How many gamers do you know that buy the latest games at $50? Most games sold at $50 are the blockbusters that sell to the general public rather than the hardcore gamers. But it's the hardcore gamers who buy more than 1 game every few months. I buy a ton of games but I've learned to be patient and buy games a month or two or even 12 later than the release date, simply to get the game for $20 or less. There is a big market for new games at lower prices that is not being tapped.

Not everyone has 40 to 80 hours to sink into the latest rpgs and not every game needs to be Final Fantasy VII. I really love the Ikaruga's of this world. Final Fatasy VII cost $35 million to make and had a staff of over 100 people. On the other hand, 95% of Ikaruga was made by THREE people. (For instance, the music was written by the same guy who did the game's background art!)

I kinda get the feeling that the industry might be heading towards another major evolutionary period, similar to the market crashes of the late atari era... I'm just not sure what it will look like.

.

Re:SDK

[iansmith]

Take the PS2 for example.

For starters you need a $15,000 development station.

Then you need to licence the SDK for an amount Sony will decide.

Then for each game you need to spend about half a million dollars to get it approved and tested by Sony. They can reject you for any reason and make you pay to have it tested until they are happy.

Then you pay Sony $8 for each game you sell, plus the costs to produce the special CD's the PS2 needs.

Then do the same with Microsoft and Nintendo.

Don't forget several programmers, artists and people to figure out the maze of licencing procedures for each console.

Making console games is in no way something a single person can do, sadly. The consoles are VERY tightly controlled.

Re:Enter The Matrix?

[vasqzr]

That's not what he means.

Let's say company A makes characters. Company B can either buy them or sub-contract them to create new characters for their games.

Therefore, letting the game company worry about the game itself. This is commonly done with sound effects and music. (outsourcing, more than licensing though)

Re:Pressure = opportunity

[Monkelectric]

Agreed! Fundamental business model changes are at hand, but I think they'll be a tad bit different then what you suggest.

What has been the trend in all entertainment venues right now? Movies? One of the worst years for movies, average drop of is HUGE. Games? Things could be better. Music? Teetering on bankrupcy.

For whatever reason (bad economy?), consumers are a *little* smarter about what they're purchasing. People are tired of mindless teen movies, boring first person shooters, and bullshit pop music. Now I'm not claiming that every last consumer has wisened up, but that enough are atleast to reduce profits to critical levels.

We are at a low low LOW for creativity on all of these mediums. Normally, companies expect a ceartin ammount of idiots will buy a shitty product no matter what. But now, people hop on the internet, talk to their friends, and now you only need to know someone who knows someone who tells you a game is bad. "Yea dude, this guy I know bought red faction, its fucking lame."

I think what is going to happen is a market is going to be created for Independant movies/games/music. independant music is already here. I'm hearing *good* new inovative music and it just takes a little work to find it. I get to reject corpratism, I get to hear *good* music cheaper then I would, and good artists get my money directly.

A few years from now? I expect independant games / movies should start to show up. However, thats just my hope. It could be that once the economy loosens up, people will go right back to buying shit. But I have hope :)

Re:SDK

[dackroyd]

-1 Wrong:

Then you need to licence the SDK for an amount Sony will decide.
You need approval for your game from Sony in order to buy the development kit - this is to prevent the PS2 market being flooded with crap. Once you have your kit, all the Sony tools are free. (but not as good as the third party tools from Sn Systems.)

Then for each game you need to spend about half a million dollars to get it approved and tested by Sony. They can reject you for any reason and make you pay to have it tested until they are happy.
The testing procedure is paid for by the license fees per disk. Again this is a hurdle to prevent crap being released on the market - or would you prefer publishers to be able to publish buggy games in order to hit their deadlines ?

Then do the same with Microsoft and Nintendo.
Your first game doesn't have to be released on all three consoles - why not just target one.

The consoles are VERY tightly controlled.
Because there are already too many professional games companies making games for the market to support - it is not in anybodies interest in the market for amateurs to flood the market with sub-standard crap.

Choose the GamePark!

[BFKrew]

If you are looking for a handheld console that has a free SDK, can be used with any development environment on Linux, Mac or Windows then have a look at the GamePark 32 which is available in Korea and soon into Europe.

I recommend looking at the GP32 site though as it has better descriptions, reviews, news and gives you a great overview of what is possible. It is the first 'Open' console that's been produced and already has quite a 'bedroom' community that has sprung up around it.

Not only it is open, it just happens to be the most powerful handheld console out there and there's ports of Doom, Heretic on it already as well as Atari ST, Gameboy, SMS, PC Engine and Megadrive emulators. It has a built in MP3 player and you can also plays DivX movies if you pay a small fee (3.50/$6) for the player. All the commerical games for it are very cheap too - most in the 7/$12 bracket.

In short it is superb and runs on standard Smart Media Cards so once you've bought the console you aren't tied to buying proprietry hardware like the Gameboy.

So, you have no excuses now - buy one, start developing and make money! :)

Re:Pressure = opportunity

[DonGar]

Having looked into starting a gaming company personally, it's already really, really hard to do. Especially for consoles.

It requires millions of dollars investment to produce the first game. Our estimates were $3 million of the game we had in mind (for the PS/2 using a from scratch engine).

There are a variety of ways to get money, but it's definatly not possible to do it nights and weekends, or in a garage. A lot of this is the control that the console makers have over every aspect of the game release.

They get to decide if you CAN release, and they get a big chunk of every game sold (bigger than the developer). The result is that you are forced into only doing blockbuster style games with heavy development costs. No $10 cheapies that are simple but fun are allowed. Nothing that doesn't fit into the model they are working with.

The most common way to get funding (and distribution) is to go through one of the big game labels. You sign contracts similar to the record industry. They fund your development, and you have to pay them back out of your sales. They are also conservative on what they will back, and don't like it when you try something new. After all, if you are trying something different, you might fail and not be able to pay back the 3 million you owe them.

Development companies often lose money. They are usually happy to just pay everyones salary during the development cycle, and then break even. Only with a mega-hit can you hope to really make money on the game.

Low end independant PC games on the other hand can be totally different, and are much more interesting to me.