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Analysts Foresee Another Banner Year For Videogame Industry
Analysts observing the videogame industry forsee 2008 being another blockbuster year in sales. Sales during the month of February were considerably up, according to the NPD group. Early in the year is historically a very slow time in the game sales calendar, making the 34% jump for the month highly significant. Grand Theft Auto IV is likely to be an engine for sales throughout the year: "The game, which will be available on the Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, is expected to boost sales of both consoles. Pre-orders have been better than expected, according to its publisher, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan, expects the game to sell about 9 million units during the company's fiscal year, which ends in October. Roughly 6 million of this, he added, will be to Xbox 360 owners."
From the article:
Going strong since its launch in 2000, Sony's PlayStation 2 continued to outpace its successor. The PS2 sold 351,800 units compared with 280,800 for the PS3.
Somehow, this indicates that the HDTV conversion isn't going according to plan.
..but: "forsee"? Shouldn't the title be "foresee"? Apologies for spelling Nazism, usually, I don't care about that sort of thing, but it's the title, for God's sake, put in a little effort...
However, GTA4 won't do it alone. I'm not sure why the article hinges on GTA4s success. GTA is a huge franchise, I'm not going to argue that, but no GTA game has outsold the Halo or Smash Bros franchises (which produced the #1 and #2 best selling games of last generation). Halo 3 saw release last year to enormous success, and so far Smash has been exceeding sales expectations this year. Combine Smash Brawl with GTA4, Mario Kart Wii, MGS4, and the remote possibility of a 2008 Final Fantasy US release (unlikely, but possible), and you have a good solid framework for 2008 sales. 2007 saw many huge things though, so I'm not sure it's as cut and dry as the article suggests, but there's a good possibility. And I'm not even going to dig into the huge Nintendo DS sales that simply defy all conventional explanation.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I believe Brawl will be one of the best games of the year. Nintendo has consistently had blowout sales on its super smash bros. franchise, and Brawl is definitely the best yet. It's way better than melee(no wavedashing, etc.) and brings a gameplay more similar to the first one. The characters are well balanced, but lend themselves to certain styles of playing. The graphics, although not what an Xbox 360 or PS3 fan would consider good, are still impressive. It is definitely evident that nintendo took some time to make this one perfect, even if it meant months of delays. And as far as I can tell, its pretty much everything I hoped for and more.
Could be... or it could mean the 360 is just hacking into Sony's former mindshare. I think it's probably a combination of both, actually. The continued success of the Wii is probably the #1 indication that HDTV adoption (or should I say, SDTV abandonment) isn't going as planned.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
It's interesting how high sales are despite a stalled economy. Maybe it's cheaper to sit at home and play video games instead of going out, given the price of gas.
Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
Why? Do you plan on mangling your fingers and eyes out of boredom?
It is very likely that economy is sliding into depression. No record sales in such environment, sorry. Wall Street has been convulsing in a crisis for 6 month now, and things are getting worse by the day. We just had one of the largest investment banks collapse on Friday. Events of such significance have not happened since the Great Depression, and don't for a second assume this will not pull the broader economy down.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
More like buying Wii's- Wii has a 44% marketshare, with a 5 million unit lead on 360 and 12 million on PS3
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Except that games are cheap. People need entertainment, even in recessions. If money is tight, expect high prices entertainment like trips to a movie theater to go down, and spending on games where you can get hundreds of hours of entertainment for your purchase to go up.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
An engine, I believe, is a game that further drives sales. I don't think there is any way to drive Wii sales higher, considering they are selling them as fast as they can make them.
I don't want to be viewed as a fanboy, it's just that unless Nintendo invests in another factory (which they won't), their sales really have nowhere to go but down.
Entertainment always does well in a recession/depression. Perhaps a little historical revision is due. People stop putting gas in their cars, stop paying their mortgages/rents/credit cards, stop buying clothes, but yet they still manage to find a few dollars for "escapism". It used to be Hollywood films - the box offices did quite well in the "Great Depression", but now I think you could add computer games to that category.
And yes, I'm a day trader, I follow the news, I know about the 25 basis point cut and JP Morgan buying Bear Sterns for 1/10th of what it's worth, and the 20 B "guarantee" by the fed , etc. The economy is in the shitter, and I keep making money every day. Mostly shorting stock, but sometimes I buy at the bottom too.
I sure wish I had had some TTWO before EA threatened a takeover though. $7 a share is very nice indeed. Oh well. I'll keep making my money 5 cents at a time.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So...
Games on the Wii and DS cost significantly less to develop. They have a larger user base than the PS3 and 360, so publishers make back their investment faster. And it's a sad truth, but shovelware, which is quite abundant on the WIi right now -- because of its huge popularity -- generally earns more money for the publisher than higher budget games. The Wii is basically on track to replace the PS2 -- the current shovelware king -- in this area.
I have a R4DS, but I still buy DS games -- I use it for SCummVM/Hombrew. Here in the states -- the biggest game market -- flash carts owners are a minority. Most households won't know where buy one, know how to use one, let alone be able to find "pirated" games for it.
The Wii and DS are decimating the 360 and PS3. Developers are jumping ship to the Wii,since overall sells for the PS3 and 360 aren't good enough. MS's 360 isn't even doing as well as its original Xbox, which had sold more units in the same period of time.
<]=)
Oh please.
I'm a grade-A long-haired sandal-wearing granola-eating pacifist hippy, and even I don't think you have a leg to stand on here.
GTA is not presently, nor ever has been marketed at children. The video you linked to was made and uploaded by Joe Random and has nothing official whatsoever to do with GTA or Lego. I suspect that the uploader of that video is more likely to be sued than endorsed by the respective owners of the properties involved.
What happened to hand eye coordination? As far as I can see it's alive and well and making record profits on the Wii.
What happened to puzzle games? Not sure.. perhaps they've undergone something of a record resurgence of late, with web based 'casual games' for the PC, various offerings on Xbox Live, and the usual 'classic game' compilations for all major consoles, not to mention the DS and titles like Puzzle Quest..
As for dribbling and passing.. I'm not much of one for sports games myself, but unless basketball and football have changed very dramatically since last I checked then I'm pretty sure those are still available in whatever the latest seasonal update to the big sports franchises is (is the FIFA series even still going?). In fact, I hear there's also some kind of crazy high tech virtual reality system where you can go to a store, buy a REAL ball, and pass or dribble it outside with your friends - and it doesn't even need a network connection!
When did we turn our minds off to videogame butchery? You're a bit late getting on this bandwagon my friend. Apparently you totally missed Mortal Kombat, Bloodstorm, Robocop*, Hitman, Carmageddon, all of the previous GTA games, and a million other titles which temporarily escape my mind.
There's a simple solution to this - if you don't like the games, don't play them. And if you're letting underage kids play games like GTA then you're downright irresponsible.
I don't mean to sound all smug and glib about this, even though I know I probably do sound that way. Personally I have a similar issue with movies - I find the torture-porn genre which has become so popular of late (Saw, Hostel, Captivity, etc) to be utterly repulsive on just about every possible level. I can't understand for the life of me why anyone would want to watch movies like that, let alone make them.. but at the same time I wouldn't try and take away other people's right to watch that kind of thing if that's what they're into, so long as they're mentally capable of dealing with it in a mature way (i.e. they're an adult, for one thing)
*Yes, the Robocop game (from the 8/16 bit days) caused a minor storm, in the UK at least. "The movie is 18-rated! How dare you let children play this!", the daily mail readers screamed...
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
What you have said is true. I feel that it is important to note that this signals an important shift in the gaming industry that is happening faster than ever. These numbers support the fact that gaming is heading more towards the mainstream market (As it has been doing since its inception, has it not?) where price is king and most video game purchases are made at wal-mart by people who dont know what a polygon is or what quality textures add to a game. It is nice to see the masses making video games a little bit less nerdy one step at a time!
Wow. That is some serious revisionist history. The first and biggest problem with the recounts of "The video game crash" is the redefining of a video game. A game console IS a computer. The C64 was a gaming platform. The revisionists stories always refer to the C64 as being a pull away from video games. It wasn't. It was simply the gaming platform that helped bury the Atari 2600. Saying that price drops on a next gen gaming system that lead to huge sales was what turned a recession into a full-out crash is kind of silly.
As for knock off games on the 2600 compared to today... I don't know if you saw some of the crap that has been released on the NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, PS2, XBOX, and GameCube, but crap did not end with the 2600. (I don't own any of the current gen system so I can only speculate that they have games that are crap just like the previous generation.)
"Because of these issues, modern console makers hold absolute control over their consoles. No one creates a game for their console without express approval from the console manufacturer. In addition, the console makers produce high-quality first-party titles and seek out desirable third-party exclusives in an effort to keep consumer confidence high. This careful control of the market ensures that the market conditions of the 1980's are not repeated"
This is simply not true. In fact, prior to Atari 2600, it wasn't even considered that third party games would even exists. It was when developers from Activision left Atari to form the worlds first third party game publisher, that Atari sued, thinking that they could retain control of the platform. It was because sueing did not work in keeping a monopoly that the following systems have included technical lock-out systems. Looking at the crap that was available for virtually every system, shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that "quality" was not the reason for the monopoly practices of the system manufacturers. It also does not make sure that the market conditions of the 80 do not exist. The Pacman and ET problems certainly did not kill video games. At best they help put the 2600 out of its misery. Remember, Pitfall came out the same year as Pacman and ET on the 2600. It was the best selling game the 2600 ever had. Again. It wasn't gaming that went away. It was just a shift to the next gen system, the C64.
I'm not counting on people going back to the PC for gaming. I'm just saying that if the console systems went under, people would likely keep gaming by moving to the PC.
I also don't know what kind of computers you thought existed in 83, but 3D graphics is really a questionable claim. Yes there were things like Bards Tale and Ultima's dungeons, but the same effects had been done on the 2600. The C64 did have much better graphics and sound quality, and certainly had more storage space, but 3D graphics were not the driving force to move people off of the 2600 and on to the C64. There are also benefits to PC gaming beyond it's superior graphics. One is it's dramatically lower cost. Partly due to the fact that you already have a computer for other purposes. PC gaming is far from dead, and is unlikely to ever go away. It just doesn't draw the revenue that the consoles draw. In fact, Solitaire on windows, may be the most played video game ever.
Again, as you even note, there wasn't a crash. There was just a shift to a new platform. Maybe we should just rename "the video game crash" to "the Atari 2600 crash", as that would be far more accurate.
Google it my friend, It's not hard. Here's a quick search. Would you care to back up why being lazy is acceptable... ;)
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Wii+%2B+development+cost&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
;) :p
:p
Read this article about how the Wii costs about half the price of the other toys to develop for, it's fun:
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/cost-of-development-greatly-favors-wii-say-publishers/69714/
There's nothing marginal about 50%+ less for Wii dev cost.
And $2000 for a SDK is not an arm an a leg. Here's another link to save you the aggravation of searching:
http://www.warioworld.com/apply/wii.html
As noted by the other response to your post, the Wii shares many similarities to its predecessor, which make it easier and cheaper to develop for, especially for the studios that put their time in on the Cube. And just to clear something up, there's nothing last-gen about a Wii's performance or the tech it uses, which is 6 years more advanced.
A publisher doesn't need to sell nearly as many units on a Wii as it does on the PS3 or 360 in order to see a return on their investment. This this is do to the lower development cost and simpler hardware configuration. **Namco stated that it needs to sell 500,000 PS3 games to make a profit as an example. Compare this to 165,000, which is what I've read is needed for the Wii.
** http://www.gamespot.com/news/6162509.html
So just because a game sells more units on a 360 as an example, that doesn't mean it has made a profit for its publisher/developer. With the Wii's HUGE user base for its relatively short life on the market along with its "significantly" lower development cost, publishers/developers have a better chance of seeing a profit on a Wii game than the PS3 or 360.
OMG!! I'm using this 12 year old kid term, because you used HARDCORN -- now I must rant. First off, let me present you with a link that disproves your myth that kids that like to aim with their thumb and deem blood as mature, buy more games. The supposed hardcore gamer is a joke. I've been gaming since the age of pong. There's nothing hardcore about most console gamers, since they're used to games that have generally been dumbed down do to the limiting nature of a gamepad. Compared to the games I played in the eighties and ninteies, games now days are a walk in the park. Sure, they look way better, but they're way less sophisticated... I loved the complexity that is SYSTEM SHOCK, I hated the simpleton that is BioShock.
Anway, here's the link, read fact number "4."
http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php
The average age of the most frequent game buyer is 38 years old. In 2007, 92 percent of computer game buyers and 80 percent of console game buyers were over the age of 18.
Also notice that the average gamer is age 33, not the teenage kid publishers have been marketing to for the past 8 years, so guys hat are in their twenties now.
Kids won't have access to a flash cart -- unless they have parents like my friends. Guys my age buy our games and on that note, buy your DS games you pirate!
<]=)
No. Sony usurped Nintendo for exactly one reason: they remembered how the market and the business model works.
To make a long story short, the Nintendo model had these main points:
- Games come on cartridges
- We, Nintendo, make the cartridges
- You, the developer, beg us to make cartridges for your games
- Minimum order of X hundred thousand. Three to six month turn around time. And you can only have five games a year. Oh, and we, Nintendo, approve those games.
What this meant was that, for example, if your game did better than you thought, there'd be a three to six month lag before you could get more product on the shelf. If you wern't sure how a game was going to do, you couldn't test the waters with a small run.In other words, Nintendo was being a fairly typical market big boy.
So Sony comes along, builds the Playstation, and says 'Hey, let's use CDs. More space, sure, but mainly, a) it's $.50/copy to press rather than $20 just to build the cart, b) you can crank out a few hundred thousand over a weekend, and c) lets ask the devs what they want!
It's the most amusing of irony that PS1 beat Nintendo, the PS2 turned Sony *into* Nintendo, and the PS3 was beaten by Microsoft in pretty much exactly the same way that Sony beat Nintendo. The Xbox is, and always has been, about the developers. The 360's capabilities were decided, in part, by screenshots of Gears of War at various processor/memory/gpu combinations beside cost figures.
It's actually all quite fascinating; if you're interested, read Game Over by David Scheff (I think that's the name spelling), Revolutionaries at Sony, and Opening the Xbox, and Inside the Xbox 360. In that order. I think those are the two Xbox titles; they're both by Dean Takahashi, so you should be able to find them. I think that's how you spell his name. You'll have to excuse me, the Lysdexia is strong with me today.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don't even see the code. All I see is Goliath, carrier, zerg rush...