Ha, I'd love to see Nintendo put a competent team (as SK is no longer one) on that franchise. Wonder who the writer(s) was/were... if they still work at SK or if it's someone they could get back. Then who cares about gameplay - that's easy enough to duplicate with another team (and probably improve on, there were certainly things that could have been better).
Of course, the legal aspects of all that stuff is always tricky. Does Nintendo own full rights to the franchise, or just the trademark? As in, SK can't make "Eternal Darkness 2", but they could have made something that was essentially ED2 with a different name...
My hope is that Nintendo has Retro working on Eternal Darkness 2.
The PlayStation 4 announcement last month immediately led to a PS4 vs Xbox 720 debate, but perhaps Sony and Microsoft's next-generation consoles are competing for second place.
"Compared to gaming PCs, the PS4 specs are in the neighborhood of a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU side," said Nvidia's Tony Tamasi to TechRadar.
As Nvidia's senior vice president of content and development, he sees the PS4's specs as outdated, even today.
"If the PS4 ships in December as Sony indicated, it will only offer about half the performance of a GTX680 GPU (based on GFLOPS and texture), which launched in March 2012, more than a year and a half ago."
It only gets worse
Tamasi also notes that consoles, by definition, are closed platforms and not upgradeable.
"What you get today in terms of performance is what you're stuck with five - 10 years down the road. PCs don't have these problems," he told TechRadar.
"They are open and can be upgraded at any time to harness the power of newer GPUs for more performance and to take advantage of newer, modern graphics technologies."
The gap between console and PC gaming has become more apparent this console generation, and Tamasi expects more of the same when PS4 and Xbox 720 get here.
"If history predicts the future, then these next-generation consoles, while being more powerful than the current ones, will very quickly end up more than an order of magnitude behind the PC."
PS4 not worth the cost to Nvidia
The comments from the Nvidia senior vice president are noteworthy because they aren't just from an industry rival trying promote PC gaming vs PS4.
The remarks come from the same company that powers the PS3's graphics chip.
Nvidia isn't buying into the PS4, however. Sony announced specs that include an eight-core AMD processor and a custom Radeon GPU.
"I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on," Tamasi told GameSpot, "and we came to the conclusion that we didn't want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay."
Instead, Tamasi said that Nvidia, with only so many engineers and so much capability, will be able to focus on another portion of its business that it wouldn't be able to if it did chips for Sony.
Nvidia's projects include delivering high-end graphics cards like the GeForce GTX Titan and supplying Apple computers with GPUs.
It's also looking to capture mobile processing with its Tegra 4i system on a chip for smartphones and tablets, and by releasing its own handheld gaming platform, Nvidia Project Shield.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
First hit on Newegg for a GTX680 was $480 by itself.
I really hate this kind of crap, as all it does is lie about the realities of computational power and keep the "console" wars fueled.
I'm still skeptical that it's really worthwhile for AAA titles to try to crowd into Christmas 2, much less 'single A' titles, which just get trampled. It's not like there's that much loose money floating around during the period, compared to christmas.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Nvidia says consoles are hardware-inferior to PC, surprising nobody.
Nvidia says consoles are hardware-inferior to PC, surprising nobody.
On its own, it also doesn't really mean much. Consoles are vastly more efficient due to being able to program direct to the hardware. At which point the big limiting factor used to be RAM, which the PS4 appears to have in spades.
RE: Price. The 680 is a silly comparison, but the thing to bear in mind is that graphics cards prices don't scale linearly, but exponentially, and they drop like rocks over time. A 660 can give you most of the performance of a 680, but for far less cost (A 680 is basically priced the way it is more for its limited availability). And in a year, the next gen cards will be out and the price of those cards will drop even more. I believe the point he's somewhat awkwardly trying to trying to make towards (possibly) is that whatever superiority the PS4 is going to have is going to be short lived.
To be honest though, I think this is all just that Sony didn't offer them what they felt was a good deal on the hardware they wanted Nvidia to provide for it.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
You can get a GPU that will run everything on the market without real trouble for under a hundred bucks at the moment.
I would estimate you could comfortably future proof yourself for under $200.
But anyway the point he is making is that the specs on the PS4 aren't impressive next to current PC specs, and they are static across the entire generation.
Not that I really mind, it just means I won't have to do much upgrading over the next decade.
March/April/May. Late enough that people have recovered from Christmas, and when people start getting their tax returns back.
Plus it's caused by a bunch of publishers figuring they should avoid Christmas because of the huge crush of games and delaying them a few months, which results in another huge crush of games in springish almost as bad as the actual Christmas.
Word Mark: ETERNAL DARKNESS
Status/
Status Date:
FIFTH EXTENSION - GRANTED
12/20/2012
Serial Number: 77932350
Filing Date: 2/10/2010
Registration Number: NOT AVAILABLE
Registration Date: NOT AVAILABLE
Goods and Services: computer game programs; computer game software; electronic game programs; electronic game software; interactive electronic game programs; interactive electronic game software; interactive video game programs; interactive video game software; video game programs; video game software
Mark Description: NOT AVAILABLE
Type Of Mark: TradeMark
Published For Opposition Date: 5/25/2010
Last Applicant/Owner: Nintendo of America Inc.
Redmond, WA 98052
This means that if the rumours of Dennis Dyack shipping around a sequel to publishers was true, he was surely doing so without permission - Nintendo aren't going to let ED2 be published by anyone else, especially since that'd likely lead to multi-console release. So either it was never going to be actually called ED2, or Silicon Knights were heading towards another glorious lawsuit
Essentially, all the work they spent making the demo of Eternal Darkness 2 ensured that their X-Men game would suck AND had no chance of becoming reality without Nintendo's blessing.
Game publishers need to take a hint from movie studios and how they shuffle their big releases around to dates that are free from competition. Nobody is going to try and open a film the weekend the new Harry Potter opens, and I have no idea why game publishers all basically try to do exactly that.
Everything is crammed in a 6 week window of Nov. 1st -Dec 15th, and another 5 week window of Feb 15th to mid-late March. It's unreal how stupid these fuckers are.
May 21st! Release a big blockbuster game you want to sell gangbusters on that date. 2 weeks before school is out. No competition. Profit. June 11th! July 2nd! All viable and you'd own it. Kids don't play outside anymore and they can't afford your games. Adults who buy shit work year round and don't care what season it is.
Cramming things in for Christmas makes sense because there is a lot more money spent then. Christmas II makes no sense at all unless you just want to avoid delaying the game into your next fiscal year because stock analysts are dumb enough to fall for stuff like that.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
There's probably some kind of empirical data, patterns in the purchasing habits of people, to support the notion of releasing gaming software during very specific periods of time.
I would imagine that's more of a result of confirmation bias than anything else though. Nobody wants to release their nine figure games during a period of time which has been "proven" to be a lull, a kind of financial coffin if you will, and because of it see lower sales. Thus all the big 'uns tend to get release during specific timeframes, holidays for the most part, and there genuinely isn't anything else on the market for much of the rest of the year - reinforcing these "lulls" and keeping the common wisdom alive.
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
The whole "certain seasons are better" thing is stupid though. What do you think would happen if in July, there was suddenly "Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4"? Yeah, now July's looking pretty good... Similarly Assassin's Creed always sells well in the holidays... that's not because of the holidays. It's not like a summer release of Twilight suddenly made them no money compared to a holiday release.
Now yes, if you have a middle of the road game, maybe you don't want to aim it badly, but they do that anyway trying to target the "safe" season. Like Rayman launching the SAME DAY as Assassin's Creed. The hell?!
On the other hand, if you don't advertise it at all and release the game in the middle of 5 other big releases... don't be shocked when nobody even knows your game exists.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Game publishers need to take a hint from movie studios and how they shuffle their big releases around to dates that are free from competition. Nobody is going to try and open a film the weekend the new Harry Potter opens, and I have no idea why game publishers all basically try to do exactly that.
Everything is crammed in a 6 week window of Nov. 1st -Dec 15th, and another 5 week window of Feb 15th to mid-late March. It's unreal how stupid these fuckers are.
May 21st! Release a big blockbuster game you want to sell gangbusters on that date. 2 weeks before school is out. No competition. Profit. June 11th! July 2nd! All viable and you'd own it. Kids don't play outside anymore and they can't afford your games. Adults who buy shit work year round and don't care what season it is.
Thing is, movies will be in theaters for 2-3 weeks and then you're out of luck and have to wait for the home release, so other movies can release the week after or maybe 2, and they'll be fine. I think videogame windows are much bigger, because of the larger price so people won't usually be buying two $60 games within 2-3 weeks of each other.
Agreed. There is also the fact that if you can be the one game that rises to the top within that window, you can sell absolutely ridiculous numbers of copies very quickly. It's a great system, if you are the one winning.
You can get a GPU that will run everything on the market without real trouble for under a hundred bucks at the moment.
I would estimate you could comfortably future proof yourself for under $200.
But anyway the point he is making is that the specs on the PS4 aren't impressive next to current PC specs, and they are static across the entire generation.
Not that I really mind, it just means I won't have to do much upgrading over the next decade.
Agreed. The slowing and thus cheapening of upgrades for PCs is the best thing ever.
It makes a certain amount of sense to couple the largest spending period with a product that has very little tail. I think they should work on expanding the tail, personally, which DLC has done somewhat, but it's more straightforward and reliable to work with what you have.
Just look at that opportunity cost, what they saved getting out of getting out of selling NVIDA chips to Microsoft/sony for 10 years. Really dodged a bullet with that one. . . :rotate:
Philippe about the tactical deployment of german Kradschützen during the battle of Kursk:
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
Just look at that opportunity cost, what they saved getting out of getting out of selling NVIDA chips to Microsoft/sony for 10 years. Really dodged a bullet with that one. . . :rotate:
Maybe they did. We don't really know what terms Sony was offering.
I suspect one core part of whatever financial calculations they made would have been simply that they'd be selling (relatively) low end chips to the console manufacturers, and those are only going to devalue as the generation goes on. Profit margins are much slimmer on low end chips than high end ones, and you've got to be certain that devoting manpower / resources to the manufacture of them is worthwhile compared to where else it might be spent. For all we know it could simply be that they don't feel the PS4 isn't as profitable an avenue as say, the mobile market (especially since hardware on the mobile market is updated at a far greater pace).
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Considering they just spent an incredibly long console cycle providing GPUs for the PS3, I imagine they're in a perfectly apt position to decide if it's worthwhile for them to do it again.
I have the impression that DS2 and LGP2 sold less than expectations, and ME.. I think I remember it launching later but I may be wrong?
DS2 did really well and it was really only EA that might have been disappointed with sales. LBP2 definitely sold well and pleased Sony. ME2 came out on January 26, 2010. I would have included Lost Planet, but that was back when video games weren't being pushed to March-May to make stock portfolios look better.
Edit: Actually, doesn't that just prove my point? I don't know. I always felt Lost Planet sold really well because people wanted something to play on their brand new 360s since it was still barely over a year old.
Game publishers need to take a hint from movie studios and how they shuffle their big releases around to dates that are free from competition. Nobody is going to try and open a film the weekend the new Harry Potter opens, and I have no idea why game publishers all basically try to do exactly that.
Everything is crammed in a 6 week window of Nov. 1st -Dec 15th, and another 5 week window of Feb 15th to mid-late March. It's unreal how stupid these fuckers are.
May 21st! Release a big blockbuster game you want to sell gangbusters on that date. 2 weeks before school is out. No competition. Profit. June 11th! July 2nd! All viable and you'd own it. Kids don't play outside anymore and they can't afford your games. Adults who buy shit work year round and don't care what season it is.
Thing is, movies will be in theaters for 2-3 weeks and then you're out of luck and have to wait for the home release, so other movies can release the week after or maybe 2, and they'll be fine. I think videogame windows are much bigger, because of the larger price so people won't usually be buying two $60 games within 2-3 weeks of each other.
Retail space is obviously not as constrained as the number of screens in a multiplex so the competition isn't as direct, but video games are really front loaded in sales. You can see it directly in the Japanese sales charts and in the US, a release at the end of a reporting period doesn't mean that a game is likely to chart the next month. Basically if you aren't in the exact same genre (think Saint's Row going up against GTA) then a week should be enough to avoid problems.
On a totally different subject, we know that publishers use metacritic scores to determine bonuses for outside developers. Do we know for sure that they use them to determine bonuses for their own employees and/or management? I'm wondering how important SimCity's metacritic score is.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I'd imagine video games are less front loaded than movies. Isn't a good second weekend drop off for a blockbuster considered around 60-70%.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I still say the rapid drop in a game's price is a big factor in its longevity. I mean.. if you know a game is gonna be cheaper if you can wait a month or two, then you aren't gonna buy it at launch unless you REALLY want it, right? So the first week/month sales are made up of people who love the game/gotta have it, then the longevity is provided people who want it but are just waiting for a sale. Steam's learned how to turn the latter into a long-term moneymaker, but that's because they don't need to worry about physical stock. Nintendo's learned to make money off of longevity, but a lot of that is due to their quality and track record - Mario Kart DS was a consistent seller throughout the DS's life, even if it wasn't at the top.
In my ideal world, games would launch between $30 and $70 based on quality, longevity, and development cost. Annual releases should be cheaper across the board than bigger, years in development sequels (I'm thinking $40-50, or maybe a discount if you own the previous year's). These prices would then stay consistent through at least 2-3 quarters.
I haven't bought a game at launch since, I don't know. Two years ago or something like that.
Even waiting one week is usually enough to knock off £10 for me. Just one week.
Which is to say nothing of how I abuse Steam sales to save ludicrous amounts of money. Each game I want to play I put on a list, a text document on my PC, and then I only buy it if it is less than £20 on Steam. Sometimes I've waited six months. I don't need to get any at launch because I already have my perfect multiplayer game for socialising and that is CSGO.
I've probably saved thousands of pounds by adhering to this policy. Never buy something you don't already want. Never pay full price. And with upwards of a few weeks cooling off on hype, I've never been burned on buyer's remorse, and sometimes decided against buying games that weren't 'essential' because pre-release marketing has worn off. I might have bought Sim City in another universe had I not got this system in place. Dodged a bullet there.
I am everything publishers hate, and one of the reasons they're all going under. But really? Fuck them for charging me Old World prices when America gets games for nearly half what I'm expected to pay. Fuckers.
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
I'd imagine video games are less front loaded than movies. Isn't a good second weekend drop off for a blockbuster considered around 60-70%.
Back when NPD was better about publishing numbers, wasn't the conventional wisdom that a typical game (not including long-tail games like Call of Duty or Mario Kart) made half of its total sales in the first week or two?
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I'd imagine video games are less front loaded than movies. Isn't a good second weekend drop off for a blockbuster considered around 60-70%.
Back when NPD was better about publishing numbers, wasn't the conventional wisdom that a typical game (not including long-tail games like Call of Duty or Mario Kart) made half of its total sales in the first week or two?
When I was at GameStop, what we were told was (IIRC) something like 40-50% of sales in the first 48 hours, 90% in the first week. Could be different now, since it's been six years since I worked there, but that was the case for the twelve years I was there.
Back when I paid more attention to the sales themselves (i.e. back when we got at least the top 10 NPD numbers), it was pretty consistent that some fan of a game would pop into the neogaf Media Create sales thread and claim that everyone should stop worrying about their game's sales because, "it was only on the shelves for 2 or 3 days not a whole week". Thing is, because of when games are released and when MC reports, that's true of every game's first week and still the first week dominates sales.
Of course that's for core games with some hype. Casual games, games that are more of a surprise and some of those Nintendo evergreen titles can have long legs.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2013
Well. I think something that Activision does well, and something other people should take note of.
Is that even if their games are published and released they continue to advertise them.
And I'm not even talking about big TV spots and the like, sometimes reminding people that your game still exists is enough. Especially with how quickly titles come and go for gamers.
I'd imagine video games are less front loaded than movies. Isn't a good second weekend drop off for a blockbuster considered around 60-70%.
Back when NPD was better about publishing numbers, wasn't the conventional wisdom that a typical game (not including long-tail games like Call of Duty or Mario Kart) made half of its total sales in the first week or two?
With movies in the cinema has the multiplex's and screens for the films showing reduce depending on the releases at the time. A blockbuster film may have 8-10 screens on opening weekend but that can half within a few days as cinemas adjust to audiences tastes during the calendar (I know my local cinema chain has more screenings for horror movies on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for example).
Videogames generally retain the same retail space for at least 7 days before the next release as stores don't have to adjust retail space in the same way.
However the front loading does come in videogames when you look at releases. Say a customer likes the look of a title just released but doesn't purchase it on the opening few days, retailers and other media outlets are pushing the next week/months releases so aggressively in the same time period a customer would rather not bother and wait for the next release. This system is creating an artificial front loading for retailers to keep this idea that customers have to purchase a game in such a short space of time. you could even say cinema prices for movies won't change for the duration of the films release (upto 9 weeks) where as games will drop price as early as a week into release to match demand/push units.
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CuvisTheConquerorThey always say "yee haw" but they never ask "haw yee?" Registered Userregular
The PlayStation 4 announcement last month immediately led to a PS4 vs Xbox 720 debate, but perhaps Sony and Microsoft's next-generation consoles are competing for second place.
"Compared to gaming PCs, the PS4 specs are in the neighborhood of a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU side," said Nvidia's Tony Tamasi to TechRadar.
As Nvidia's senior vice president of content and development, he sees the PS4's specs as outdated, even today.
"If the PS4 ships in December as Sony indicated, it will only offer about half the performance of a GTX680 GPU (based on GFLOPS and texture), which launched in March 2012, more than a year and a half ago."
It only gets worse
Tamasi also notes that consoles, by definition, are closed platforms and not upgradeable.
"What you get today in terms of performance is what you're stuck with five - 10 years down the road. PCs don't have these problems," he told TechRadar.
"They are open and can be upgraded at any time to harness the power of newer GPUs for more performance and to take advantage of newer, modern graphics technologies."
The gap between console and PC gaming has become more apparent this console generation, and Tamasi expects more of the same when PS4 and Xbox 720 get here.
"If history predicts the future, then these next-generation consoles, while being more powerful than the current ones, will very quickly end up more than an order of magnitude behind the PC."
PS4 not worth the cost to Nvidia
The comments from the Nvidia senior vice president are noteworthy because they aren't just from an industry rival trying promote PC gaming vs PS4.
The remarks come from the same company that powers the PS3's graphics chip.
Nvidia isn't buying into the PS4, however. Sony announced specs that include an eight-core AMD processor and a custom Radeon GPU.
"I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on," Tamasi told GameSpot, "and we came to the conclusion that we didn't want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay."
Instead, Tamasi said that Nvidia, with only so many engineers and so much capability, will be able to focus on another portion of its business that it wouldn't be able to if it did chips for Sony.
Nvidia's projects include delivering high-end graphics cards like the GeForce GTX Titan and supplying Apple computers with GPUs.
It's also looking to capture mobile processing with its Tegra 4i system on a chip for smartphones and tablets, and by releasing its own handheld gaming platform, Nvidia Project Shield.
Frankly, they're right. People have been creaming themselves over the PS4's specs, but I just look at them and think I have roughly equivalent hardware in the Steambox hooked to my TV right now. And my Steambox was pretty cheap.
Ah well, at least PS4 and the next Xbox will push the lowest-common denominator forward a little, so maybe I'll get some games that will tax my gear.
It really feels like people who look at the next generation specs and go "Pfffft, my computer is WAY better than that" haven't been paying attention to the last 30 years of the industry.
Cramming things in for Christmas makes sense because there is a lot more money spent then. Christmas II makes no sense at all unless you just want to avoid delaying the game into your next fiscal year because stock analysts are dumb enough to fall for stuff like that.
Cramming things in for Christmas makes sense because there is a lot more money spent then. Christmas II makes no sense at all unless you just want to avoid delaying the game into your next fiscal year because stock analysts are dumb enough to fall for stuff like that.
Well, also tax return.
Yeah, but total sales in November and December dwarf those in late winter/spring.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
It really feels like people who look at the next generation specs and go "Pfffft, my computer is WAY better than that" haven't been paying attention to the last 30 years of the industry.
But we're at a point in time where games are being released for both consoles and PC's. Often simultaneously.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
It really feels like people who look at the next generation specs and go "Pfffft, my computer is WAY better than that" haven't been paying attention to the last 30 years of the industry.
But we're at a point in time where games are being released for both consoles and PC's. Often simultaneously.
And in many cases look and run better on even a mid-range PC.
It's also nearly a decade that we've been using the same hardware. I expect there'll be a little more than parity between PCs and the PS4/next Xbox for at least some period of their lives.
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CuvisTheConquerorThey always say "yee haw" but they never ask "haw yee?" Registered Userregular
It really feels like people who look at the next generation specs and go "Pfffft, my computer is WAY better than that" haven't been paying attention to the last 30 years of the industry.
But we're at a point in time where games are being released for both consoles and PC's. Often simultaneously.
Also, I'm not talking about some high-end $2000 monster. I'm talking about something that cost me, all told, $500 tops.
That's what I'm saying though.. PC's have pretty much ALWAYS outclassed consoles. Go back to, say, the SNES. Compare Doom on the SNES to Doom on the PC released two years earlier: Doom PC rocks the shit out of Doom SNES. PC's have always had the performance advantage over consoles. Consoles advantage has always been in standardization and accessibility.
Posts
Preach.
I really hate this kind of crap, as all it does is lie about the realities of computational power and keep the "console" wars fueled.
On its own, it also doesn't really mean much. Consoles are vastly more efficient due to being able to program direct to the hardware. At which point the big limiting factor used to be RAM, which the PS4 appears to have in spades.
RE: Price. The 680 is a silly comparison, but the thing to bear in mind is that graphics cards prices don't scale linearly, but exponentially, and they drop like rocks over time. A 660 can give you most of the performance of a 680, but for far less cost (A 680 is basically priced the way it is more for its limited availability). And in a year, the next gen cards will be out and the price of those cards will drop even more. I believe the point he's somewhat awkwardly trying to trying to make towards (possibly) is that whatever superiority the PS4 is going to have is going to be short lived.
To be honest though, I think this is all just that Sony didn't offer them what they felt was a good deal on the hardware they wanted Nvidia to provide for it.
I would estimate you could comfortably future proof yourself for under $200.
But anyway the point he is making is that the specs on the PS4 aren't impressive next to current PC specs, and they are static across the entire generation.
Not that I really mind, it just means I won't have to do much upgrading over the next decade.
Plus it's caused by a bunch of publishers figuring they should avoid Christmas because of the huge crush of games and delaying them a few months, which results in another huge crush of games in springish almost as bad as the actual Christmas.
Essentially, all the work they spent making the demo of Eternal Darkness 2 ensured that their X-Men game would suck AND had no chance of becoming reality without Nintendo's blessing.
What a maroon.
Nvidia got pissy about not being offered more money by Sony to work on the PS4.
engadget.com/2013/03/14/nvidia-playstation-4/
Everything is crammed in a 6 week window of Nov. 1st -Dec 15th, and another 5 week window of Feb 15th to mid-late March. It's unreal how stupid these fuckers are.
May 21st! Release a big blockbuster game you want to sell gangbusters on that date. 2 weeks before school is out. No competition. Profit. June 11th! July 2nd! All viable and you'd own it. Kids don't play outside anymore and they can't afford your games. Adults who buy shit work year round and don't care what season it is.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I would imagine that's more of a result of confirmation bias than anything else though. Nobody wants to release their nine figure games during a period of time which has been "proven" to be a lull, a kind of financial coffin if you will, and because of it see lower sales. Thus all the big 'uns tend to get release during specific timeframes, holidays for the most part, and there genuinely isn't anything else on the market for much of the rest of the year - reinforcing these "lulls" and keeping the common wisdom alive.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
Now yes, if you have a middle of the road game, maybe you don't want to aim it badly, but they do that anyway trying to target the "safe" season. Like Rayman launching the SAME DAY as Assassin's Creed. The hell?!
On the other hand, if you don't advertise it at all and release the game in the middle of 5 other big releases... don't be shocked when nobody even knows your game exists.
Thing is, movies will be in theaters for 2-3 weeks and then you're out of luck and have to wait for the home release, so other movies can release the week after or maybe 2, and they'll be fine. I think videogame windows are much bigger, because of the larger price so people won't usually be buying two $60 games within 2-3 weeks of each other.
Agreed. The slowing and thus cheapening of upgrades for PCs is the best thing ever.
Just look at that opportunity cost, what they saved getting out of getting out of selling NVIDA chips to Microsoft/sony for 10 years. Really dodged a bullet with that one. . . :rotate:
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
Maybe they did. We don't really know what terms Sony was offering.
I suspect one core part of whatever financial calculations they made would have been simply that they'd be selling (relatively) low end chips to the console manufacturers, and those are only going to devalue as the generation goes on. Profit margins are much slimmer on low end chips than high end ones, and you've got to be certain that devoting manpower / resources to the manufacture of them is worthwhile compared to where else it might be spent. For all we know it could simply be that they don't feel the PS4 isn't as profitable an avenue as say, the mobile market (especially since hardware on the mobile market is updated at a far greater pace).
DS2 did really well and it was really only EA that might have been disappointed with sales. LBP2 definitely sold well and pleased Sony. ME2 came out on January 26, 2010. I would have included Lost Planet, but that was back when video games weren't being pushed to March-May to make stock portfolios look better.
Edit: Actually, doesn't that just prove my point? I don't know. I always felt Lost Planet sold really well because people wanted something to play on their brand new 360s since it was still barely over a year old.
Retail space is obviously not as constrained as the number of screens in a multiplex so the competition isn't as direct, but video games are really front loaded in sales. You can see it directly in the Japanese sales charts and in the US, a release at the end of a reporting period doesn't mean that a game is likely to chart the next month. Basically if you aren't in the exact same genre (think Saint's Row going up against GTA) then a week should be enough to avoid problems.
On a totally different subject, we know that publishers use metacritic scores to determine bonuses for outside developers. Do we know for sure that they use them to determine bonuses for their own employees and/or management? I'm wondering how important SimCity's metacritic score is.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
In my ideal world, games would launch between $30 and $70 based on quality, longevity, and development cost. Annual releases should be cheaper across the board than bigger, years in development sequels (I'm thinking $40-50, or maybe a discount if you own the previous year's). These prices would then stay consistent through at least 2-3 quarters.
Even waiting one week is usually enough to knock off £10 for me. Just one week.
Which is to say nothing of how I abuse Steam sales to save ludicrous amounts of money. Each game I want to play I put on a list, a text document on my PC, and then I only buy it if it is less than £20 on Steam. Sometimes I've waited six months. I don't need to get any at launch because I already have my perfect multiplayer game for socialising and that is CSGO.
I've probably saved thousands of pounds by adhering to this policy. Never buy something you don't already want. Never pay full price. And with upwards of a few weeks cooling off on hype, I've never been burned on buyer's remorse, and sometimes decided against buying games that weren't 'essential' because pre-release marketing has worn off. I might have bought Sim City in another universe had I not got this system in place. Dodged a bullet there.
I am everything publishers hate, and one of the reasons they're all going under. But really? Fuck them for charging me Old World prices when America gets games for nearly half what I'm expected to pay. Fuckers.
Back when NPD was better about publishing numbers, wasn't the conventional wisdom that a typical game (not including long-tail games like Call of Duty or Mario Kart) made half of its total sales in the first week or two?
When I was at GameStop, what we were told was (IIRC) something like 40-50% of sales in the first 48 hours, 90% in the first week. Could be different now, since it's been six years since I worked there, but that was the case for the twelve years I was there.
Of course that's for core games with some hype. Casual games, games that are more of a surprise and some of those Nintendo evergreen titles can have long legs.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Is that even if their games are published and released they continue to advertise them.
And I'm not even talking about big TV spots and the like, sometimes reminding people that your game still exists is enough. Especially with how quickly titles come and go for gamers.
With movies in the cinema has the multiplex's and screens for the films showing reduce depending on the releases at the time. A blockbuster film may have 8-10 screens on opening weekend but that can half within a few days as cinemas adjust to audiences tastes during the calendar (I know my local cinema chain has more screenings for horror movies on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for example).
Videogames generally retain the same retail space for at least 7 days before the next release as stores don't have to adjust retail space in the same way.
However the front loading does come in videogames when you look at releases. Say a customer likes the look of a title just released but doesn't purchase it on the opening few days, retailers and other media outlets are pushing the next week/months releases so aggressively in the same time period a customer would rather not bother and wait for the next release. This system is creating an artificial front loading for retailers to keep this idea that customers have to purchase a game in such a short space of time. you could even say cinema prices for movies won't change for the duration of the films release (upto 9 weeks) where as games will drop price as early as a week into release to match demand/push units.
Frankly, they're right. People have been creaming themselves over the PS4's specs, but I just look at them and think I have roughly equivalent hardware in the Steambox hooked to my TV right now. And my Steambox was pretty cheap.
Ah well, at least PS4 and the next Xbox will push the lowest-common denominator forward a little, so maybe I'll get some games that will tax my gear.
Well, also tax return.
Yeah, but total sales in November and December dwarf those in late winter/spring.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
But we're at a point in time where games are being released for both consoles and PC's. Often simultaneously.
And in many cases look and run better on even a mid-range PC.
Also, I'm not talking about some high-end $2000 monster. I'm talking about something that cost me, all told, $500 tops.