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[Industry Thread] Oh, we're doomed. Every year we're doomed.
Sterica
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
Welcome to the Video Game Industry Thread! Where we discuss the business-side of video games and NOTHING ELSE.
THE RULES
With that said, let's meet the players:
Founded in 1946, Sony entered the gaming business through a bit of corporate revenge involving Nintendo and a botched CD peripheral. Prior to that, Sony was dabbling in just about every other type of electronic entertainment doodad: TVs, radios, sound systems, and so forth. It was probably inevitable that Sony would dip their toes in the games business, but Nintendo ushered that along by snubbing Sony in the mid-90s when the two had a deal making a CD attachment for the SNES. Feeling bitter about the ordeal, Sony went on to make the Sony Playstation, changing the market forever. The success of the first Playstation was in part due to Nintendo's own stubborn attitudes, but there's no denying that Sony's first console offered quite a bit, and its successor (the Playstation 2) officiated Sony's spot as the new ruler of the market. Sony, however, would eventually fall prey to their own hubris. The Playstation 3 was something of a misstep, being overpriced and plagued with issues here and there. A catastrophic hacking issue didn't help matters. While down, Sony isn't out of the game by any stretch of the imagination, and did manage to recover a bit of lost ground towards the end of the last generation. Well, for their consoles. The PSP and Vita are shaping to the latest trophies adorning Nintendo's skull throne.
Not just the only western company here, Microsoft is the only console provider that isn't Japanese. Founded in 1975, everyone knows about Bill Gates and his magic Window devices. Towards the turn of the millennium, the company decided to try its hand at the video game business. Coming after the quick fall of Sega, there were many skeptical of the market's ability to support three competitors, but Microsoft hulked out and brute-forced its way onto the scene with deep company pockets and very high-end tech for its Xbox machine. Oh, and this little exclusive title called "Halo" didn't hurt none, I'm sure. By embracing a hobbyist demographic with smooth online capabilities and the latest shooty gun titles, Microsoft not only found its way onto the market, but even narrowly beat Nintendo. Although all is not rosy, as the company has had...difficulties finding a warm reception in the East (we're talking old-school Game Boys outselling the Xbox back in the old days). The follow-up act, the Xbox 360, entrenched itself as a solid competitor in the last generation, and Microsoft is looking poised to have its turn at top of the heap if Sony and Nintendo don't step up their game.
There are three things to know about Nintendo: they are the oldest company here, the longest company in the business here, and are the crazed artiste of the group. Founded in 1889 as a maker of playing cards, towards the mid and late 1900s they shifted to toys and, eventually, video games. Their home console, the NES, took the world by storm, in part thanks to the video game crash of 1983 wiping out all the competition. I mean like, ALL of it. We're taking a 90+% market share here. Nintendo ruled most of the 90s with an iron fist, which bred bitterness among the third party companies that had to play ball with Nintendo. This allowed rivals such as Sega to become a much more appealing alternative to control freak Nintendo, ultimately culminating with Sony hosing Nintendo in the fifth and sixth generations. In the seventh gen, however, Nintendo embraced the casual crowd with the reveal of the Wii. Utilizing simple motion controls and a horde of mostly shit mini-game compilations, Nintendo's plan to convert non-gamers into flailing nerds was a resounding success. Kinda. While initial sales were immense, and definitely enough to make Nintendo Giant of All, it's looking like retaining this casual demographic is going to be a sticking point if the Wii U's flaccid sales are any indication.
Founded in 1996, Valve is a private company and owner of the largest digital distribution/poverty creation device, Steam. They're up here because they're perhaps the one thing besides World of Warcraft that's been proving doomsayers about the PC market wrong for a good decade now. Numbers on Steam's control of the market are harder to suss out because of their private nature, but it's estimated that Valve has at least HALF of it. Valve is also looking to potentially become the fourth player in the console market with their proposed Steambox. Right now it's hard to say if this is really meant to compete on the same level as the big three, or just a cheap way to play most of your Steam library, but those of us who have dumped whole paychecks into a summer sale know better than to underestimate Valve. steam steam lol indeed.
PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Andrew House: Newest CEO of Sony's video game division (Sony Computer Entertainment). Notable for being significantly more British than most Sony CEOs.
Jack Tretton: President of SCE's American arm. Known for making juvenile comments about competitors, which would be more fitting if his company was responsible for Xbox Live.
Kazuo Hirai: CEO of Sony...like...the whole thing. Former President of SCE.
Ken Kutaragi: Former CEO of SCE and the Playstation's papa. Is the man who really got Sony in on the whole video games rackets. One could argue that the PS3's rough start is why he was encouraged to retire.
Don Mattrick: President of Microsoft's video game arm. Questionable taste in haircuts.
Satoru Iwata: President and CEO of Nintendo, the second the company has ever had since the transition to video game production. Noteworthy for being the only person here to appear have a soul. Friendly, but his tenure has been judged as a mixed bag. The Wii's success may end up as a fluke depending on the Wii U's performance.
Reggie Fils-Aime: President of Nintendo of America. Body is in a perpetual state of readiness. Do not fuck with Reggie.
Hiroshi Yamauchi: Demon Lord and former President of Nintendo. Shaped Nintendo into what it was with a brutal rule of over a half-century and the dude was a businessman through and through. A deathly fear of piracy and need to control everything is what likely led to Nintendo's downfall in the late 90s. Owns the Seattle Mariners, whom he will harvest for flesh when the time of his Dark Ascension approaches.
Gabe Newell: Top man at Valve Corporations. Loves Krispy Kreme donuts. Served by many sweaty nerds. With the growth of his beard, has effectively made Santa Claus a living entity.
Michael Pachter: Business analyst. However, he is more accurately described as a reverse Cassandra in that he is cursed to be completely unable to predict the future, but everyone in charge will act as if everything goddamn thing he says is true.
The Hardware
With the release of the Wii U, we are now entering the eighth generation of consoles. Yes, the Wii U is "next-gen." Do not argue the point, you fucking goobers.
This is Nintendo's sixth home console, and the first to offer HIGH RESOLUTION GRAPHICS. The big selling point is the gamepad, which is basically a mini-tablet with controller bits on the side. It allows for off-TV play for many games, which is something of a relief for gamers with families competing for TV usage. The gamepad can also be used for various in-game functions, such a inventory screens, status HUDs, maps, and other gimmicky shit. Started strong during the holidays, has tapered off into troubled numbers, sales wise. Many blame the fact that it's arguably on-par with the previous generation of HD consoles, which puts it back in the same troubled spot Nintendo had with the Wii. Casual players have been confused by the branding, thinking it a simply accessory or peripheral to the original Wii. It's a mess, and it'll be interesting to see how/if Nintendo climbs out of it. With a price tag of $300-$350, it'll probably be the cheaper option for consumers, but it's not as cheap as the Wii and Nintendo is selling at a loss.
The Playstation 4 was announced in February 2013, and there's not much known about it except it's basically more of the same. MORE GRAPHICS. MORE PROCESSING. MORE FORCED MOVE IMPLEMENTATION. There's a lot of emphasis on social bullshit this time around, with streaming and other bells and whistles being offered. Have your friends watch you play and bark obnoxious commands at you! It does look like Sony is trying to get a more robust online experience to compete with Live, and the fact that you don't have to shell out cash every year for the pleasure of being able to use it won't hurt. Trying to answer the Wii U with it's own off-TV play by having the PS4 stream gameplay to your Vita. However, this has a couple drawbacks, the biggest being that it requires you to own a Vita.
Microsoft has yet to play its hand in regards to the heir of the Xbox brand, but a overly loud twitter and notably former employee heavily hinted at attempts to clamp down on the used market. And we're still not discussing the Always On thing. Besides that, just copy and paste the first half of what I said about the PS4, only replace "move" with "kinect."
Seventh Gen
The current generation is still going on, and it's been a bit longer than what we're used to. So let's say our last goodbye to these bad boys.
The winner of this generation, the Wii has essentially been abandoned at this point for Wii U development. Although, considering the games we got for it at the end of its life, you might say it was abandoned a lot earlier than that. The last big gasp for the system were RPGs like Xenoblade that fans drove huge twitter campaigns for. While it won by a fair margins, about half-way or so through its lifespan the motion control fever wore off and the bad boys of HD began to creep up on it. Wii puns still plague us to this day.
The 360 was originally gunning for a solid 2nd, but its competitor caught up with it, meaning that the Xbox goes through another generation with a photo-finish for 2nd place. The Xbox does seem more comfortable than the Playstation, and could be argued as the more stable piece of hardware. It didn't have the Wii's boom and bust, but it also didn't have the PS3's slow start. It had a lot of screaming manchildren on Live though. It's number one on that by a fucking mile. And lots of super men shooting dudes.
The PS3 had a fucking hellish start, with an E3 presentation that still gets mocked to this day, a high as hell price tag, and the lack of exclusives that gave it the edge over its competitor with the PS2. There was also assorted fuckery with the backwards compatibility, gutting it with each new iteration of the machine. Perhaps the biggest media circus was when Sony got shit hacked in a terrible reveal of how shitty account security can truly be. Online services were out for weeks, credit card information got leaked, and it seemed like we learned worse and worse shit about the debacle as time went on. The PS3 proved resilient, however, and didn't just eat dust in third like many of us expected when that $599 price tag got announced.
THE RULES
- This thread is about the industry. Business. It is not for you to get into a long debate about how the controls in Kid Icarus were so terrible. You CAN touch on broad reasons why a game failed to sell (crowded for that genre, it flat-out sucked, etc), but getting into minutia over games is a no-go. Video game announcements are also off-limits unless there's something notable (struggling company spend a ton on it as a hail mary pass).
- Do not fanboy over a console/developer/etc. You are free to criticize a console or company, but getting irrationally defensive over your pet piece of hardware will be punished.
- Stay the fuck on topic. This will be dealt with more harshly in here than in other threads because it tends to get out of control more often.
- This is not a thread for every scrap of industry news. Sexism in the industry? Social issue: give it another thread. Gaming journalism sucks? Journalism is not the industry: discuss it elsewhere. This thread has a bad habit of being a black hole that sucks would-be threads into its event horizon. We need to focus here and let other news topic get their own threads.
- VGChartz makes up shit. Do not post VGChartz.
- Top Ten lists are link-baiting crap and should not be posted with the exception of sales figures.
- Take care when linking anything with stats and information. Try to make sure the article properly cites figures.
- Do not get into pedantic arguments. An old favorite is whether or not casual games should be covered here (spoiler: yes). A more recent one is what is meant by AAA (short answer: no one cares). This shit derails the thread and we don't need a page of discussion on what "free-to-play" really means. Get embroiled in this shit at your own risk.
- Report people you think are violating rules. Calling them out just derails the thread and it might get you in trouble for stirring shit up.
- This thread is still for fun! Enjoy yourself.
With that said, let's meet the players:
Founded in 1946, Sony entered the gaming business through a bit of corporate revenge involving Nintendo and a botched CD peripheral. Prior to that, Sony was dabbling in just about every other type of electronic entertainment doodad: TVs, radios, sound systems, and so forth. It was probably inevitable that Sony would dip their toes in the games business, but Nintendo ushered that along by snubbing Sony in the mid-90s when the two had a deal making a CD attachment for the SNES. Feeling bitter about the ordeal, Sony went on to make the Sony Playstation, changing the market forever. The success of the first Playstation was in part due to Nintendo's own stubborn attitudes, but there's no denying that Sony's first console offered quite a bit, and its successor (the Playstation 2) officiated Sony's spot as the new ruler of the market. Sony, however, would eventually fall prey to their own hubris. The Playstation 3 was something of a misstep, being overpriced and plagued with issues here and there. A catastrophic hacking issue didn't help matters. While down, Sony isn't out of the game by any stretch of the imagination, and did manage to recover a bit of lost ground towards the end of the last generation. Well, for their consoles. The PSP and Vita are shaping to the latest trophies adorning Nintendo's skull throne.
Not just the only western company here, Microsoft is the only console provider that isn't Japanese. Founded in 1975, everyone knows about Bill Gates and his magic Window devices. Towards the turn of the millennium, the company decided to try its hand at the video game business. Coming after the quick fall of Sega, there were many skeptical of the market's ability to support three competitors, but Microsoft hulked out and brute-forced its way onto the scene with deep company pockets and very high-end tech for its Xbox machine. Oh, and this little exclusive title called "Halo" didn't hurt none, I'm sure. By embracing a hobbyist demographic with smooth online capabilities and the latest shooty gun titles, Microsoft not only found its way onto the market, but even narrowly beat Nintendo. Although all is not rosy, as the company has had...difficulties finding a warm reception in the East (we're talking old-school Game Boys outselling the Xbox back in the old days). The follow-up act, the Xbox 360, entrenched itself as a solid competitor in the last generation, and Microsoft is looking poised to have its turn at top of the heap if Sony and Nintendo don't step up their game.
There are three things to know about Nintendo: they are the oldest company here, the longest company in the business here, and are the crazed artiste of the group. Founded in 1889 as a maker of playing cards, towards the mid and late 1900s they shifted to toys and, eventually, video games. Their home console, the NES, took the world by storm, in part thanks to the video game crash of 1983 wiping out all the competition. I mean like, ALL of it. We're taking a 90+% market share here. Nintendo ruled most of the 90s with an iron fist, which bred bitterness among the third party companies that had to play ball with Nintendo. This allowed rivals such as Sega to become a much more appealing alternative to control freak Nintendo, ultimately culminating with Sony hosing Nintendo in the fifth and sixth generations. In the seventh gen, however, Nintendo embraced the casual crowd with the reveal of the Wii. Utilizing simple motion controls and a horde of mostly shit mini-game compilations, Nintendo's plan to convert non-gamers into flailing nerds was a resounding success. Kinda. While initial sales were immense, and definitely enough to make Nintendo Giant of All, it's looking like retaining this casual demographic is going to be a sticking point if the Wii U's flaccid sales are any indication.
Founded in 1996, Valve is a private company and owner of the largest digital distribution/poverty creation device, Steam. They're up here because they're perhaps the one thing besides World of Warcraft that's been proving doomsayers about the PC market wrong for a good decade now. Numbers on Steam's control of the market are harder to suss out because of their private nature, but it's estimated that Valve has at least HALF of it. Valve is also looking to potentially become the fourth player in the console market with their proposed Steambox. Right now it's hard to say if this is really meant to compete on the same level as the big three, or just a cheap way to play most of your Steam library, but those of us who have dumped whole paychecks into a summer sale know better than to underestimate Valve. steam steam lol indeed.
PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Andrew House: Newest CEO of Sony's video game division (Sony Computer Entertainment). Notable for being significantly more British than most Sony CEOs.
Jack Tretton: President of SCE's American arm. Known for making juvenile comments about competitors, which would be more fitting if his company was responsible for Xbox Live.
Kazuo Hirai: CEO of Sony...like...the whole thing. Former President of SCE.
Ken Kutaragi: Former CEO of SCE and the Playstation's papa. Is the man who really got Sony in on the whole video games rackets. One could argue that the PS3's rough start is why he was encouraged to retire.
Don Mattrick: President of Microsoft's video game arm. Questionable taste in haircuts.
Satoru Iwata: President and CEO of Nintendo, the second the company has ever had since the transition to video game production. Noteworthy for being the only person here to appear have a soul. Friendly, but his tenure has been judged as a mixed bag. The Wii's success may end up as a fluke depending on the Wii U's performance.
Reggie Fils-Aime: President of Nintendo of America. Body is in a perpetual state of readiness. Do not fuck with Reggie.
Hiroshi Yamauchi: Demon Lord and former President of Nintendo. Shaped Nintendo into what it was with a brutal rule of over a half-century and the dude was a businessman through and through. A deathly fear of piracy and need to control everything is what likely led to Nintendo's downfall in the late 90s. Owns the Seattle Mariners, whom he will harvest for flesh when the time of his Dark Ascension approaches.
Gabe Newell: Top man at Valve Corporations. Loves Krispy Kreme donuts. Served by many sweaty nerds. With the growth of his beard, has effectively made Santa Claus a living entity.
Michael Pachter: Business analyst. However, he is more accurately described as a reverse Cassandra in that he is cursed to be completely unable to predict the future, but everyone in charge will act as if everything goddamn thing he says is true.
The Hardware
With the release of the Wii U, we are now entering the eighth generation of consoles. Yes, the Wii U is "next-gen." Do not argue the point, you fucking goobers.
This is Nintendo's sixth home console, and the first to offer HIGH RESOLUTION GRAPHICS. The big selling point is the gamepad, which is basically a mini-tablet with controller bits on the side. It allows for off-TV play for many games, which is something of a relief for gamers with families competing for TV usage. The gamepad can also be used for various in-game functions, such a inventory screens, status HUDs, maps, and other gimmicky shit. Started strong during the holidays, has tapered off into troubled numbers, sales wise. Many blame the fact that it's arguably on-par with the previous generation of HD consoles, which puts it back in the same troubled spot Nintendo had with the Wii. Casual players have been confused by the branding, thinking it a simply accessory or peripheral to the original Wii. It's a mess, and it'll be interesting to see how/if Nintendo climbs out of it. With a price tag of $300-$350, it'll probably be the cheaper option for consumers, but it's not as cheap as the Wii and Nintendo is selling at a loss.
The Playstation 4 was announced in February 2013, and there's not much known about it except it's basically more of the same. MORE GRAPHICS. MORE PROCESSING. MORE FORCED MOVE IMPLEMENTATION. There's a lot of emphasis on social bullshit this time around, with streaming and other bells and whistles being offered. Have your friends watch you play and bark obnoxious commands at you! It does look like Sony is trying to get a more robust online experience to compete with Live, and the fact that you don't have to shell out cash every year for the pleasure of being able to use it won't hurt. Trying to answer the Wii U with it's own off-TV play by having the PS4 stream gameplay to your Vita. However, this has a couple drawbacks, the biggest being that it requires you to own a Vita.
Microsoft has yet to play its hand in regards to the heir of the Xbox brand, but a overly loud twitter and notably former employee heavily hinted at attempts to clamp down on the used market. And we're still not discussing the Always On thing. Besides that, just copy and paste the first half of what I said about the PS4, only replace "move" with "kinect."
Seventh Gen
The current generation is still going on, and it's been a bit longer than what we're used to. So let's say our last goodbye to these bad boys.
The winner of this generation, the Wii has essentially been abandoned at this point for Wii U development. Although, considering the games we got for it at the end of its life, you might say it was abandoned a lot earlier than that. The last big gasp for the system were RPGs like Xenoblade that fans drove huge twitter campaigns for. While it won by a fair margins, about half-way or so through its lifespan the motion control fever wore off and the bad boys of HD began to creep up on it. Wii puns still plague us to this day.
The 360 was originally gunning for a solid 2nd, but its competitor caught up with it, meaning that the Xbox goes through another generation with a photo-finish for 2nd place. The Xbox does seem more comfortable than the Playstation, and could be argued as the more stable piece of hardware. It didn't have the Wii's boom and bust, but it also didn't have the PS3's slow start. It had a lot of screaming manchildren on Live though. It's number one on that by a fucking mile. And lots of super men shooting dudes.
The PS3 had a fucking hellish start, with an E3 presentation that still gets mocked to this day, a high as hell price tag, and the lack of exclusives that gave it the edge over its competitor with the PS2. There was also assorted fuckery with the backwards compatibility, gutting it with each new iteration of the machine. Perhaps the biggest media circus was when Sony got shit hacked in a terrible reveal of how shitty account security can truly be. Online services were out for weeks, credit card information got leaked, and it seemed like we learned worse and worse shit about the debacle as time went on. The PS3 proved resilient, however, and didn't just eat dust in third like many of us expected when that $599 price tag got announced.
Sterica on
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This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Admit it; you killed the other thread early just because you wanted to get this one up as soon as possible.
I just noticed the Gamasutra article about Peter Molyneux's cube-chipping games getting micro-transactions is titled:
Peter Molyneux may have just monetized trolling
We should wait for the Steambox to be a physical thing first. There's plenty of room for Valve to cancel this whole idea.
Silly fragmenting industry.
Is it due to not having an enough chunk of the business? Does anyone have any numbers on that?
Then they tried to sue the actor when he was playing a Wii in a Firestone commerical (yes, the tire company).
Then they tried Marcus... and then they dropped the ad agency when that failed. I don't know if that was the same ad agency that did the "Michael" ad or not.
Now I'm worried that they'll have learned nothing from that, and triple down on the stupid. Though I don't know how you can possibly get any worse than the baby. Or that god awful "All I want for Christmas is a PSP" shit.
I know somebody who decided to go full homebrew with all the unfortunate trimmings after seeing that ad campaign.
When will we see PS4 ads? Sounds like next XBOX reveal will be in May, so is it going to be 7 months of ads, or will they wait until Thanksgiving to start the blitz?
In euroland, Sony have heavily hinted that the first PS4 advert will air during the Champions League final next month.
Sheesh, we're doing teasers for commercials now?
More like Rorus Kaz. Hirai.
No, some advertising industry site reported it. No idea if it entails a TV spot or just general on-field advertising like on the stadium barriers, etc.
Basically Sony has paid a lot of money for a TV spot during the final, which doesn't sound strange until you realise that Sony are one of the main sponsors of the Champions League and will already be plastering the stadium with advertising for free.
So that's like the Super Bowl, but not important? ;-)
Maybe it's just me, but looking forward to how they market the things. Will it be focused on the tech, or the social features? And how they position the presumed (but unconfirmed) Always-On.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!
Apparently some vidbois are threatening to do chargebacks because the characters they wanted to make it through the character voting poll got knocked out.
Paypal is using this to be a douchenozzle (like they always do) and froze something like 35k from the drive.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
But... but... but they did "over-inflated budget for mid-range game which makes it a collossal failure despite selling a respectable amount" COMPLETELY WRONG!
You can't consider it a profit if your game only makes a bit more than double what it costs; that would be like running a fucking business instead of expecting money to pour out of people's orifices like some horrible blood disease because you spent ultra-millions on the game despite having no proof of success yet.
They made a profit off a reasonably-budgeted game and are happy about it? What total assholes! TOTAL DOOM.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.