Slashdot Mirror
Only 80 Games A Year Will Succeed
0110011001110101 writes "Next Generation reports on the risks involved in game publishing and development. A report has been released suggesting that, in the next generation, as few as 80 games a year will turn a profit. Development costs in the next generation are set to rise from $3 -$6 million per title to $6-$10 million, with some cases surpassing $20 million." From the article: "Screen Digest's analysis shows that in the U.S. in 2004, titles based on licensed IP, such as Madden NFL 2005, sold 23% more units than titles based on original content. However, the short term revenue gains of licensed IP, does not necessarily translate into greater profits. Licensing costs are rising as IP owners become increasingly aware of the growing importance of the games medium."
Fewer than two or three dozen motion pictures will turn a profit this year. What's your point?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Then there's the few examples like Napoleon Dynamite or Pi, that show you just how little money it takes to put an excellent story to the top of the charts and become insanely profitable. But of course the industries look at those as anomolies and go back to cranking out Batman Twelve with Tom Cruise and Lindsy Lohan.
Let's see some real innovative games, then I'll cry when only 80 a year succeed.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Could it be that the Madden franchise does well because it's one of the best sports titles ever made, rather than because there's a picture of a fat retired coach on the box?
GTA had no "license" to exploit, but I dare say it sold considerably better than the "Lord of the Rings" games.
Want to make a lot of money on a game? Design one that's fun to play.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
That is just way, way too much money. Something's gotta give.
Why, I can make you a really top-notch game for HALF that much! (Flash is ok, right?)
Game Company Database
"The author of the report, Marc de Gentile-Williams, said, "At 30 years of age, the games industry still suffers from an endemic lack of professional management compared to less mature industries such as the mobile telephony and the internet industries. "
Translation: Hire me! I'll make sure you have a few of those 80!
Only 80 [major release] games will be profitable. Dev costs of 3-6 mil, marketing costs up the wazoo, licensing costs eating up more of the pie... the game industry is turning into the movie industry.
TFA says that there is a lack of good management in the games industry, causing tons of bankruptcies etc. I say, great! I'd rather not have a static set of three game companies creating all the content. Besides, part of the reason that so many gaming companies drop off the face of the earth is that there is actual competition in the games industry... it's put up or shut up.
Whereas, in the movie industry, the consumer will put up with any schlock as long as it is one step better than the current competition (which changes frequently, due to short theater runs).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
At times, this pays off quite well. Grand Theft Auto and other innovative games push the industry as a whole into new directions. Then there's the EA's who focus on management, process, and profits, and end up capturing a safe but stagnant part of the gaming market.
What the industry really needs is a way to keep development costs down, both technically and from a process standpoint. We need cheaper art development, better middleware, efficient distribution methods, and more. Things like Steam are highly contentious, but there's a chance that this changes the environment considerably. Looking at the new Elevation partnership, it looks like more development houses may become self-funded.
For the winners, there's some pretty huge profits to be made. The gaming industry will continue to mature and expand. The hard part will be keeping it fresh and lively, and not stagnating into a series of endless sequels with better graphics.
Maybe I'm not the target demographic here, but I know I didn't buy 80 games this year. And I won't have bought 80 by Christmas either. I consider myself a gamer. I play a lot. I own all three consoles and all but one current portable (the PSP). I bought, maybe, 20 games this year.
As long as I'm not hurting for a good game to play, I don't care how many succeed.
This number would mean a lot more if we knew which games were counted as successes (for example, it would make me sad if none of the games I bought were counted as successes), but I think it would stand to reason that most of what gamers like (quality titles in all genres) is what's selling. And what's selling is probably what's counted as a success.
e2 | LJ
The truth is that the real problem isn't (necessarily) what types of games that are being developed, but that developers are producing their games in a very foolish manner.
As much as people 'rag' on Nintendo for using the Mario franchise in 'all of their games' the reality is that it saves Nintendo a ton of money when developing a game; a big chunk of the models, textures, animations, sounds and music can be reused which reduces the cost of developing a new game. I would guestimate that Nintendo probably spends half as much making a Mario Party / Mario Baseball / etc. game than another company could.
Another thing you will notice when you look at Nintendo's games is that they are very focused in scope and do not needlessly add features (for the most part); for the most part Nintendo creates games that are either a really strong single player game (Zelda/Mario/Metroid Prime) or a really strong multiplayer game (Mario Party), the games that are both usually have the same core gameplay shared between their single player and multi-player components (Mario Kart / Mario Tennis / etc.).
Now what does this mean to smaller developers. First off I would say you have to know the scope of your game, don't try to make a better single player FPS than Half-Life 2 combined with a better strategic FPS than Counterstrike with a better Arcade FPS component than Unreal Tournament 2004 (You will spend a lot of money and produce a bad game). The second thing I can say is, being that you can't produce 12 similar games to save on content costs, developers really have to start sharing content; there needs to be a library of models / textures / animations that is well maintained, free and constantly updated so that developers do not spend all of their money trying to reproduce the content someone else has already produced. I know, it sounds goofy; kind of like haing programmers spend their spare time producing an operating system where the source code is shared that will be freely distributed (obviously no one will go for that).