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."

Comments

Hah I'll make 2-4 this year alone

[cthulhuology]

I have my own little indie game company, and I'll produce 2-4 profitable games this year alone, sure we measure our costs in tens of thousands of dollars, but we don't spend more to produce a fun game than we need to. And like the big boys, we develop a lot of our own IP, and then license our tech to bigger companies looking for a cheaper solution. It is amazing how many hours you can waste playing a game where the entire graphics budget was $20k for some custom 3d models done by an artschool kid.

The big boys are suffering from being too big. They spend all this money to keep up with the Jones's throwing more and more tech into the same boring games over and over again. And because it costs so much to produce all that content, you end up with a never ending stream of bugs and patches, and support costs. At somepoint the whole structure collapses under its own weight, and ceases to be fun.

The last two games I've played for fun were Black & White 2 and Darwinia... I terms of pacing, game play, and interface the games tried to do the same thing, but Darwinia actually did it right. Both had clunky interface flaws, but Darwinia's interface suffered only from its intentional quirkiness (a nod to real world OS process management) while B&W2's suffered from intentional crippling (buying broken gesture support, poor palette layout, etc).

Like indy film to hollywood, there is still hope for games.

the little guy :)