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The Worth of the GTA Franchise
GameDailyBiz has a piece analyzing the value of the Grand Theft Auto Franchise for developer Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Entertainment. At something like $900 Million over the next five years, the franchise is almost 80% of Take-Two's market value. From the article: " ... While it's hard to blame Take-Two for its reliance on a blockbuster franchise, eventually gamers are likely to tire of the GTA formula, or the games will no longer feel fresh when placed side-by-side with titles that perhaps improve on that formula. To be fair, Take-Two has made attempts to diversify itself through acquisitions and new IP, but the publisher's value right now is heavily dependent upon GTA and that could be a double-edged sword for potential suitors, or investors in general. "
GTA's not worth a cup of hot coffee.
GTA, IMO, is one of the best games ever. Not just for it's content but for it's gameplay. It is open ended in ways other games only wish they could be. I'd love to see Take Two team up with someone like Square to product a really open ended RPG style game that has a Final Fantasy feel and GTA's attitude. Something for us big kids. I think GTA itself is destined to become a great online game. City of Villians wants to be but doesn't have what it takes but I think GTA could do it because it's already open ended and fun. They just have to make it multiplayer which doesn't seem to much of a stretch for the game. You don't need to be the hero in GTA so the stories work better for the masses than in a game like Final Fantasy online. Gang wars, lone gunmen, etc could all be a lot of fun.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I think we're starting to see the inevitable dilution of the GTA franchise. GTASA was a good game, but I'm not sure really how much further they can go with the same idea over and over. It's not enough to have better graphics and stuff, they need to evolve the gameplay, and not just in minor tweaks. I know the prospect of GTA LCS was not enough to get me to buy a PSP, because it didn't really sound like anything new.
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
I couldn't bring myself to spend the time to finish Vice City, or get more than a few hours into San Andreas. They didn't seem like anything new, just more.
I recall GTA: London 1969, which is still probably my favourite GTA game - simply because it let me play at being Michael Caine. I drove madly around that map on a variety of exciting heists all the while singing The Self-Preservation Society very loudly. And then got on a scooter and zipped around with some Mods. And then there were James Bond missions. All a wonderful parody of a certain era.
It was too short. It was too easy. But damn, it was fun while it lasted.
So: my proposal for the next instalment of GTA?
GTA: Tokyo 2050.
Just imagine it. GTA... except the most expensive sports cars can fly, and if you piss off the military then they turn up in tanks that transform into mecha. A futuristic GTA playing off anime and SF cliches, with fully destructible buildings - which will, of course, have been mysteriously repaired by the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division when you come back to the same spot ten minutes later...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The next game should be "GTA: Minding your own business".
Instead of starting off as a smalltime thug trying to make it big, you're an upper-middle class guy driving home from work to his nice house, wife, dog, and 2.5 kids when suddenly some smalltime thug yanks you out of your Lexus at a stoplight and speeds off. You aren't going to take this lying down, are you? After all, you're 40, underappreciated, and the guy in the next cubicle over keeps smacking his gum all day long. You're overdue for your midlife crisis, and it's time to snap.
You're going to take on that gang single handedly. Your PDA's got a lock on the lojack signal, and no smalltime thug is a match for your fearsome arsenal of staplers, tps reports, and the powerful LAW(yer) rocket. You're getting that car back, if it's the last thing you do.
Besides, you've still got $15k of payments to go on that baby.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Well, iD seems to be barrelling along just fine on the strength of the same game. Epic is doing Gears of War but that's probably the first non-Unreal game to come out of them in the past 8 years. (To be fair, both of these companies, to my knowledge, derive or derived income by licensing their game engine).
McDonald's seems to be doing OK only selling hamburgers.
Take Two's reliance on a blockbuster franchise is only bad if having one bad game can crumble their company. If they can publish a GTA game that sells only "OK" (say, 1 million copies) and still run the business profitably, then they're fine. Otherwise, they're a bloated company with few cash reserves. GTA is not the problem in that case.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I love that Idea, sounds vaguely like that terrible movie, Falling Down. I'm thinking GTA: Bangalore, where you can outsource your jackings for like 1/4 the price of a domestic jacking.
music lover since 1969
...which is what I think they were getting at. I bought every id game from wolfenstein3d to ...wolfenstein redux. I did not buy doom 3 nor quake 4 and have no desire to do so; I'm just not interested in either one anymore. Walk, get spooked, shoot, repeat. Graphics look awesome but it seems to me just a rehash of the games I played in the early 90s.
Same thing with GTA...GTA 3 was fun, Vice City was *really* fun, SA was neither here nor there for me. Besides, where can they go with it?
I went nuts with Unreal Tournament, even designing some levels, but UT3 and 4 didn't impress (why they take away the *best* weapon in the game (snipers rifle) is beyond me). I still play the original UT because it "felt right". Years after the fact and I'm still haunting the halls of CTF-November.
The only franchises that I've seen work over time are the "story"-type ones of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and the like. If Doom had a story (I mean a *real* story, a la Half-Life) I might be interested to see "what happens next", but they didn't do that.
Sadly, the one true franchise that relies on a continuous story, Shenmue, doesn't seem like it'll see the light of day.
People will come back for more if there's a reason to come back for more. In the age of OpenGL-based desktops, dual core processors, gigabytes of ram, SLI video cards, etc. etc., graphics are no longer the "more" and any franchise that doesn't see that is doomed.
Games just aren't long enough, don't have enough content, or are too short between the sequals.
... Once I spend the time developing a basic proficiency in a game, I want to enjoy as much content in that game world as possible.
When I play a game, I have to develop a whole new skill set. Each game has it's own physics, rules, key-configurations, etc.
Most of the games I enjoy, I could play them for years without getting bored, so long as someone kept developing new content. My favorite games are GTA series, or Morrowind, or games with big open worlds and lots of content. But if a FPS had a subscription services where I could purchase new levels each week (and especially if it was all part of some continuing story), it would take an extremly long time to get bored.
And I think a lot of people agree with me. Look at MMPOGs... people like them because of the human interaction of course... but people also like them because the game content never runs out (once you complete the quests, you can play meta-games such as guild politics, trading for profit, and there will also be expansions coming along)
Ooo... I smell a cross-license deal!
"Grand Theft Auto: Falling Down."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.