Well Fifa/Madden is a game they make every 3 or so years but release a new one every year because of popularity and profit margins.
Don't do this. Every year the teams change, and people expect an update. The football/american football leagues run on a yearly cycle, the people buying the games expect them to follow suit. They do. Sure it's great for EA to have an annual franchise they can cash in on, but don't think it's a one-sided affair.
Well ideally in this day and age they could release a simple Fifa/Madden tied to some orbital space server run by monkeys updating player stats. No one does because it's not profitable (and I don't really blame them).
Where are people getting the idea that Dead Space sold a million copies? The only source I've seen for sales have been the NPD numbers which are USA only, of course, but across 3 platforms the thing only pulled ~400k. Are there sales numbers from the other regions or something? Did EA post them?
The issue is more complex than quality. Look at Dead Space. It's a great game, very high quality, sold like shit. Maybe if they'd called it Gears of Dead Space or Call of Dead Space it might have done well, but it didn't. Consumers are only buying "guaranteed" hits, and that's a direct result of the soft economy.
The next few years are going to see a lot fewer risky games, which is bad for consumers. I guarantee you if Dude Huge was pitching Gears of War in this economic climate, it wouldn't get greenlit.
The current 2.5-console model is sustainable, in the age of convergence (your 360 plays Netflix, your PS3 plays Blu-ray discs). The problem is the lack of consumer spending, that's all.
Since when is selling over 1 million copies considered "selling like shit" (especially considering the game was banned in one of the largest gaming markets)?
Or perhaps that's the real problem with the industry. Not every game can sell like Halo or GTA. Perhaps sales expectations are just way too high?
Yeah.. all the reliable sources I can find show Dead Space selling pretty poorly given its high budget and marketing...
Sources like NPD and ChartTrack. Rather than, you know, people making stuff up. Unless they're talking about something I haven't seen yet, which is not impossible.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited December 2008
If there's one area I think game companies need to rethink, it's marketing. In multi-million-selling cases like Gears of War 2 or Halo 3, the marketing is both good and still profitable. Personally, I cannot remember a game in the last several years where a commercial made me want to get a particular game.
Especially in the case of bombs or poor games, marketing is used to simply gloss over problems. For example, Fable II claimed to have a coop mode, but skipped over the part where it was a broken, horrible mess. Mirror's Edge is shown as running across these breathtaking cityscapes, but you spend half the game indoors getting shot at.
Games are an interactive experience and virtually all forms of marketing are inherently insufficient in actually getting across how the game plays. If game companies would stop dropping cash on useless marketing, their profits likely wouldn't get hit so hard. Another big help would be putting out quality games. Mirror's Edge and Burnout Paradise both had major flaws, but were still pushed out the door and hyped like everything else. Both games could have been true hits but instead were marred by terrible design choices.
Game devs need to make their games solid before they start hitting the final phases of development. Having endless stacks of concept art is pointless if the game doesn't play right. Too many developers are thinking too corporately in terms of marketing versus product quality and that won't float in the game market. Surprisingly, people might actually care if the item they're about to drop sixty bucks on might actually be worth it.
If there's one area I think game companies need to rethink, it's marketing. In multi-million-selling cases like Gears of War 2 or Halo 3, the marketing is both good and still profitable. Personally, I cannot remember a game in the last several years where a commercial made me want to get a particular game.
Especially in the case of bombs or poor games, marketing is used to simply gloss over problems. For example, Fable II claimed to have a coop mode, but skipped over the part where it was a broken, horrible mess. Mirror's Edge is shown as running across these breathtaking cityscapes, but you spend half the game indoors getting shot at.
Games are an interactive experience and virtually all forms of marketing are inherently insufficient in actually getting across how the game plays. If game companies would stop dropping cash on useless marketing, their profits likely wouldn't get hit so hard. Another big help would be putting out quality games. Mirror's Edge and Burnout Paradise both had major flaws, but were still pushed out the door and hyped like everything else. Both games could have been true hits but instead were marred by terrible design choices.
Game devs need to make their games solid before they start hitting the final phases of development. Having endless stacks of concept art is pointless if the game doesn't play right. Too many developers are thinking too corporately in terms of marketing versus product quality and that won't float in the game market. Surprisingly, people might actually care if the item they're about to drop sixty bucks on might actually be worth it.
Yea. But I reckon it's simply easier and cheaper to hype games up and push money into marketing than it is to well, make the game truly solid. Hyped and super-marketed games get enough exposure to simply drown out other games. Like other entertainment venues, good marketing gets you more than a good product.
edit: That would only change (and be a viable strategy) if people at large were smart/conscious enough to not just buy flashy whatevers.
edit2: The prevalence of preorders doesn't help with quality either. When you can preorder a game a year or more in advance, there's somewhat of an expectation that it will come out by then. Preordering is some respects another form of marketing. So you have that big boom of everybody buying it, then Word-of-Mouth killing off how long it sells afterwards.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I'm not putting any stock in that as it's only analyzing NPD sales. And it is just that, analysis. I'll take the word of Jeff Green and the fact that the game is getting a sequel.
How they see Left 4 Dead as EA's "one bright spot" is baffling to me considering that EA is probably not getting shit off the sales over Steam and get a different cut of the retail than they would with their internally developed products. But who knows how EA and Valve work together. My guess is that Valve completely funds their own development but hasn't payed for the advertising.
I'm not putting any stock in that as it's only analyzing NPD sales. And it is just that, analysis. I'll take the word of Jeff Green and the fact that the game is getting a sequel.
I don't mean to butt in, but NPD is the most reliable source for sales there is for the USA. Stating NPD facts is not analysis, it's just facts. The other stuff take it or leave it. NPD is putting Dead Space at about ~400K sales across 3 platforms in the USA. Also, the game dropped quickly off the charts in the UK. I'm just curious as to where the "million sales" thing came from for this game? ** edit: the million sales thing was someone else, sorry. But I'm curious as to where people are getting the idea that it sold well.
Also, what is the date (or which episode number ) on the podcast with Jeff Green, I'm curious as I want to listen to it.
I want Dead Space to do well, but the only actual factual data out there suggests that it is not/has not done well as of yet.
Yea. But I reckon it's simply easier and cheaper to hype games up and push money into marketing than it is to well, make the game truly solid. Hyped and super-marketed games get enough exposure to simply drown out other games. Like other entertainment venues, good marketing gets you more than a good product.
But that's the problem game companies are encountering. They're dumping money on marketing for bad games that end up selling badly because they're bad. So they end up with big-budget games that they managed to make suck and then give them big-budget marketing and then lose money when it doesn't sell.
Selling games isn't like getting people to go to the movies. People who buy games already have had to make a choice and an investment by buying a system. They're already more heavily invested than if they went to a dozen movies. Unless somebody has wads of cash and free time, they generally aren't going to buy a score of games based purely on marketing. I can't even think of anybody I know who bought a game because they saw a commercial or ad for. Virtually everybody I know purchases games based on what they've heard from other people about it or seen actual somebody playing or some other sort of research. At least as far as "HD" games go, the old marketing bait-and-switch doesn't work that well.
Despite the fact that gaming has been around a while, real big-budget gaming is fairly new. As long as game companies treat it like selling more Pepsi or fast food, the industry will suffer.
I mean, as in USA only. Also, NPD doesn't list units sold on games listed above 10th place, but during the holiday season it wouldn't be unusual for the titles in 11-20 to hit above 100k in sales. And the latest Gamers with Jobs podcast has Jeff Green mentioning that Mirror's Edge was a "disaster", and I'm not sure about the adjective used for Dead Space, but I think it was "strong".
I mean, as in USA only. Also, NPD doesn't list units sold on games listed above 10th place, but during the holiday season it wouldn't be unusual for the titles in 11-20 to hit above 100k in sales. And the latest Gamers with Jobs podcast has Jeff Green mentioning that Mirror's Edge was a "disaster", and I'm not sure about the adjective used for Dead Space, but I think it was "strong".
Gamasutra's info is directly from NPD and isn't compiled from the top ten list given.
In the UK, Dead Space entered at number six in the all formats chart but quickly fell off the chart in early November.
I mean, as in USA only. Also, NPD doesn't list units sold on games listed above 10th place, but during the holiday season it wouldn't be unusual for the titles in 11-20 to hit above 100k in sales. And the latest Gamers with Jobs podcast has Jeff Green mentioning that Mirror's Edge was a "disaster", and I'm not sure about the adjective used for Dead Space, but I think it was "strong".
Sometimes we get NPD data leaked from research firms or press releases and other sources for data outside the top 10 or top 20. For example we got leaked info that Valkyria Chronicles sold 33k.
We usually get the list for top 20, but only numbers for top 10. But Dead Space wasn't in the top 20 for November 2008 though.
Anyway, I'll check out the GWJ podcast, thanks for the info :^:
But that's the problem game companies are encountering. They're dumping money on marketing for bad games that end up selling badly because they're bad. So they end up with big-budget games that they managed to make suck and then give them big-budget marketing and then lose money when it doesn't sell.
Selling games isn't like getting people to go to the movies. People who buy games already have had to make a choice and an investment by buying a system. They're already more heavily invested than if they went to a dozen movies. Unless somebody has wads of cash and free time, they generally aren't going to buy a score of games based purely on marketing. I can't even think of anybody I know who bought a game because they saw a commercial or ad for. Virtually everybody I know purchases games based on what they've heard from other people about it or seen actual somebody playing or some other sort of research. At least as far as "HD" games go, the old marketing bait-and-switch doesn't work that well.
Despite the fact that gaming has been around a while, real big-budget gaming is fairly new. As long as game companies treat it like selling more Pepsi or fast food, the industry will suffer.
It's probably the people with wads of cash, or individuals with large amounts of disposable income that they're trying to shoot for with this strategy. I don't personally know of anybody who buys based off marketing either. But many times I've been in a store buying or hunting for a title and I overhear someone asking about a game using features from a commercial or something. Most games aren't really for "gamers" so much as they are for general consumers.
There are (or were with the economy as it is these days) many people who had purchasing patterns like this. I look at the stack of games in my own room that I have. But then again, I mass purchase games because well, I'm a gamer... my 360 RROD'd and I went out and replaced it the same day, within hours ffs.
But that's where the other guys out there who have/had that disposable income, and the problem, comes in. If anything at this point in time we'll probably see more of a focus in marketing vs. quality. To grab more preorders and impulse buyers.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I mean, as in USA only. Also, NPD doesn't list units sold on games listed above 10th place, but during the holiday season it wouldn't be unusual for the titles in 11-20 to hit above 100k in sales. And the latest Gamers with Jobs podcast has Jeff Green mentioning that Mirror's Edge was a "disaster", and I'm not sure about the adjective used for Dead Space, but I think it was "strong".
Gamasutra's info is directly from NPD and isn't compiled from the top ten list given.
In the UK, Dead Space entered at number six in the all formats chart but quickly fell off the chart in early November.
Yes, but it falling off doesn't necessarily mean a sales decline that's higher than usual, because it coincides with the holiday season. It probably means that it is experiencing a normal decline (possibly even a smaller than usual), but there are so many new releases and so many games are being bought that in comparison it is not doing so well in the charts.
I tell you that the internal term for how Mirror's Edge did was "disaster."... I heard that batted around at EA. ...In terms of sales it did terribly....
Dead Space did much better than Mirror's Edge. ...
...But unfortunatley, the early rumblings was, "Well so much for that franchise" about Mirror's edge... oh God, don't let that be the take-away lesson here. EA needs more original IPs that are good. What I took away was.. don't release in frickin' November with everythign else. This is me speculating, without having any insider knowledge, but that they will re-release it or have some kind of new launch or marketing for it in (at some time).
He didn't say it was a success... just that it did much better than Mirror's Edge. Doing much better than a "disaster" that in terms of sales "did terribly," that's hardly reassuring...
Anyway, I bet after world sales are done, Dead Space ends up doing okay. But not great. Probably not quite good enough. But I wouldn't be surprised if EA at least broke even on it after everything is said and done.
Mirror's Edge doesn't seem to be pulling its weight so far though.
CarbonFireSee youin the countryRegistered Userregular
edited December 2008
I got that "1 million sold" figure from VGChartz. But is of course very possible this number is suspect, given the multitude of other sources pointing to much lower sales figures. If these lower values are indeed true, this would indeed be very sad for both Dead Space and the industry in general. But we are straying far off topic.
The industry isn't going to survive if we keep having seasons like Christmas 08....not every game can sell millions of copies, and with so many games vying for our attention, far too many good titles will get needlessly overlooked. Not saying this was Free Radical's problem, but this could certainly lead to more studios going under / having problems.
EEDAR spokesperson confirms to Edge that the "4% of all games make a profit" claim is a mis-quote. Figure is actually 20%.
Following Edge's previous story on Geoffrey Zatkin's reported claims that only 4% of videogames make a profit, Edge had contacted analyst group Electronic Entertainment Design and Research for more information on the claims. It has now emerged that Forbes' report on the figure is, in fact, not true at all.
"This was just a big mistake," says a company spokesperson at EEDAR. "What Geoffrey said was that only 20% of games that start production will end up with a finished product. And of that percentage of finished games, 20% will make a profit."
This means that 4% of all games which start production will eventually make a profit, but a far-more-likely 20% of finished products will see profitable returns.
I'm not putting any stock in that as it's only analyzing NPD sales. And it is just that, analysis. I'll take the word of Jeff Green and the fact that the game is getting a sequel.
How they see Left 4 Dead as EA's "one bright spot" is baffling to me considering that EA is probably not getting shit off the sales over Steam and get a different cut of the retail than they would with their internally developed products. But who knows how EA and Valve work together. My guess is that Valve completely funds their own development but hasn't payed for the advertising.
Are you kidding me? We had Lorne Lanning (Creator of the oddworld series) give a talk to eight of us in the room at UCONN and he was talking about steam like it was the second coming for gaming. He said the cost of games, in order to make and distribute them, was absolutely ridiculous and that steam allows for a company to go 70/30 instead of 5/rest to bullshit.
Steam reduces costs - there's a reason why even third parties go to steam to distribute their games - they make an astronomically larger profit margin on their games.
Making games is fucking expensive. Hell, just to be allowed to release something on the x360 involves a 6$ licensing fee, so after marketing, production, making the goddamn cds and cases, shipping them, good luck on the $2-$5 bucks profit you make. The sad part is that I'm probably overestimating that amount.
How they see Left 4 Dead as EA's "one bright spot" is baffling to me considering that EA is probably not getting shit off the sales over Steam and get a different cut of the retail than they would with their internally developed products.
Are you kidding me?
Why would Valve cut EA in on what they sell over steam?
for all the hyperbole and snickering about how bad haze's writing was, it was far from terrible. the satirical 'dumb space marines' section was brief, and while it wasn't done subtly enough to be clever, it always had its tongue in its cheek. when you flip sides - lose the nectar, and see the marines for what they actually are - there are a few smartly executed moments (honestly as much to do with the art design than anything) that actually gives the scenario some modicum of meaning. that's more than you can say for the average fps
where the game failed was its lacklustre combat and inane missions. it got boring, and i personally never had the desire to finish it.
How they see Left 4 Dead as EA's "one bright spot" is baffling to me considering that EA is probably not getting shit off the sales over Steam and get a different cut of the retail than they would with their internally developed products.
Are you kidding me?
Why would Valve cut EA in on what they sell over steam?
for all the hyperbole and snickering about how bad haze's writing was, it was far from terrible. the satirical 'dumb space marines' section was brief, and while it wasn't done subtly enough to be clever, it always had its tongue in its cheek. when you flip sides - lose the nectar, and see the marines for what they actually are - there are a few smartly executed moments (honestly as much to do with the art design than anything) that actually gives the scenario some modicum of meaning. that's more than you can say for the average fps
where the game failed was its lacklustre combat and inane missions. it got boring, and i personally never had the desire to finish it.
I guess you're unaware, but VGChartz has a very pervasive and well-known reputation for making up numbers.
They guesstimate and extrapolate and interpolate data. They do not have a factual basis for any numbers that are not given out publicly by NPD - in which case, we can cite NPD instead of VGChartz.
They are notoriously bad for miscalculating European numbers. The reason is because there are rarely good EU numbers to go by. So how do they have such a bad reputation in this regard? Because sometimes sales numbers are released in financial reports, and so after those come out you can compare them to the number given by VGChartz; in which case, VGChartz is almost always way, way off the mark.
But is of course very possible this number is suspect, given the multitude of other sources pointing to much lower sales figures.
That's because NPD doesn't make things up; and most sources that know know what they're doing cite NPD and not VGChartz :P. VGChartz makes things up.
If these lower values are indeed true, this would indeed be very sad for both Dead Space and the industry in general. But we are straying far off topic.
Agreed.
The industry isn't going to survive if we keep having seasons like Christmas 08....not every game can sell millions of copies, and with so many games vying for our attention, far too many good titles will get needlessly overlooked. Not saying this was Free Radical's problem, but this could certainly lead to more studios going under / having problems.
Yeah, lots of great titles are overlooked every year. "Sent to die" amongst the huge titles of the season, so to speak. Happens every year. It definitely sucks for the good titles and developers that are hurt by it.
Just two days ago, they revamped their site for christmas.
I don't think losing one of 3 contracts would put you under. When I see FR's website say "oops, we've shut down, kthnxbye', I'll believe this. Kotaku also posted the Factor 5 closing rumor and nothing has come of it. They also have a project with Ubisoft, which could keep them afloat on that alone, and a publisher would pick up Timesplitters since it's a proven franchise.
I'm pretty sure this isn't the end of Time Splitters.
They could always sell off the IP.
The thing about that though is that much of what made TimeSplitters great was that it was made by Free Radical (many of the same people who worked on the Perfect Dark/Goldeneye team at Rare). These guys made some of the best console FPS games out there. Sure, another developer could pick it up, but god knows how it'd turn out.
Perfect Dark Zero is a great (terrible) example of what it might end up like. :x
Indeed And to be fair, I enjoyed PD Zero to an extent, but it was a faint shadow of what the original game was and didn't have nearly the level of quality that it might have had if the guys from Free Radical had stayed with Rare to work on it.
The FR guys were gone by the the time og Perfect Dark came out.
What happened to PDZero was that a) it was rushed for launch, the only 360 game to never go through cert.
b) it was rushed
c) it had no relation to what they had done so far on the GCN
d) it was rushed
e) it was rushed
What is Rare doing anyway? Perfect Dark was a nonstarter (although at the time it was a neat little game with a retarded story)
That particular team has been working on the next entry in said franchise, leaked accidentally by the writer of the second Perfect Dark novel who talked about how the novels lead into the 'new one' that's being made and how he's been privvy to design docs and stuff.
Kirkhope said in a recent email that nobody was working on any sort of Perfect Dark when he left in late summer.
What is Rare doing anyway? Perfect Dark was a nonstarter (although at the time it was a neat little game with a retarded story)
That particular team has been working on the next entry in said franchise, leaked accidentally by the writer of the second Perfect Dark novel who talked about how the novels lead into the 'new one' that's being made and how he's been privvy to design docs and stuff.
Kirkhope said in a recent email that nobody was working on any sort of Perfect Dark when he left in late summer.
Willing to stake cock eating bets that he's just being nice and denying rather than saying no comment and that team has been working on a new Perfect Dark for the last 3 years. When the second book was announced there was a press release and a Q&A session with the author, and both mentioned a new, upcoming Perfect Dark game that the events in this book would be relevant to. The PR and the Q&A were issued by the book publisher and not Microsoft, and when MS found out the PR and all the interviews got pulled. Wayy too suspicious to write off. If nothing shows up about the game in 2009 then yeah, I guess it's been cancelled, but it's too soon to say right now.
The PR wasn't talking about Zero or the original, either, as it was saying stuff like "Currently in development", "True Sequel" etc etc. I can probably dig out the PR from somewhere. Around six months after Zero was released, Rare released the last of the DLC and cancelled the Counter Operative mode and 50-player multiplayer patch. I'd say it's fair to assume they cancelled these because the game never really took off online and probably rolled this stuff into the next game. Besides, Rare are so fucking secretive it's insane, Grant isn't going to say things one way or the other anyway, it's pretty standard Rare fare to deny things exist at all.
They still say Sabrewulf on the 360 never existed, and yet videos of it in action have leaked and surfaced - most of the concepts went into Banjo, it seems. It's Rare. I fully expect the Rare motherload at E3 2009/X09/GDC/TGS next year, as right now we don't have any official word on what any of their six teams are doing. I'm really, really betting one is Perfect Dark, though. One is probably another Banjo that we won't see 'til 2010, too. Other than that is fair game, though. KI3? Another DS game? Kameo? Blast Corps?
What is Rare doing anyway? Perfect Dark was a nonstarter (although at the time it was a neat little game with a retarded story)
That particular team has been working on the next entry in said franchise, leaked accidentally by the writer of the second Perfect Dark novel who talked about how the novels lead into the 'new one' that's being made and how he's been privvy to design docs and stuff.
Kirkhope said in a recent email that nobody was working on any sort of Perfect Dark when he left in late summer.
Willing to stake cock eating bets that he's just being nice and denying rather than saying no comment and that team has been working on a new Perfect Dark for the last 3 years. When the second book was announced there was a press release and a Q&A session with the author, and both mentioned a new, upcoming Perfect Dark game that the events in this book would be relevant to. The PR and the Q&A were issued by the book publisher and not Microsoft, and when MS found out the PR and all the interviews got pulled. Wayy too suspicious to write off. If nothing shows up about the game in 2009 then yeah, I guess it's been cancelled, but it's too soon to say right now.
The PR wasn't talking about Zero or the original, either, as it was saying stuff like "Currently in development", "True Sequel" etc etc. I can probably dig out the PR from somewhere. Around six months after Zero was released, Rare released the last of the DLC and cancelled the Counter Operative mode and 50-player multiplayer patch. I'd say it's fair to assume they cancelled these because the game never really took off online and probably rolled this stuff into the next game. Besides, Rare are so fucking secretive it's insane, Grant isn't going to say things one way or the other anyway, it's pretty standard Rare fare to deny things exist at all.
They still say Sabrewulf on the 360 never existed, and yet videos of it in action have leaked and surfaced - most of the concepts went into Banjo, it seems. It's Rare. I fully expect the Rare motherload at E3 2009/X09/GDC/TGS next year, as right now we don't have any official word on what any of their six teams are doing. I'm really, really betting one is Perfect Dark, though. One is probably another Banjo that we won't see 'til 2010, too. Other than that is fair game, though. KI3? Another DS game? Kameo? Blast Corps?
The actual quote is
"There is going to be no more Perfect Dark either..... or at least there's nothing going on here to do with it at the moment."
That sounds a lot like "Rare isn't working on a PD at all."
Posts
Well ideally in this day and age they could release a simple Fifa/Madden tied to some orbital space server run by monkeys updating player stats. No one does because it's not profitable (and I don't really blame them).
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/12/17/ea-dead-space-wasn039t-banned-germany-after-all
Sources like NPD and ChartTrack. Rather than, you know, people making stuff up. Unless they're talking about something I haven't seen yet, which is not impossible.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Especially in the case of bombs or poor games, marketing is used to simply gloss over problems. For example, Fable II claimed to have a coop mode, but skipped over the part where it was a broken, horrible mess. Mirror's Edge is shown as running across these breathtaking cityscapes, but you spend half the game indoors getting shot at.
Games are an interactive experience and virtually all forms of marketing are inherently insufficient in actually getting across how the game plays. If game companies would stop dropping cash on useless marketing, their profits likely wouldn't get hit so hard. Another big help would be putting out quality games. Mirror's Edge and Burnout Paradise both had major flaws, but were still pushed out the door and hyped like everything else. Both games could have been true hits but instead were marred by terrible design choices.
Game devs need to make their games solid before they start hitting the final phases of development. Having endless stacks of concept art is pointless if the game doesn't play right. Too many developers are thinking too corporately in terms of marketing versus product quality and that won't float in the game market. Surprisingly, people might actually care if the item they're about to drop sixty bucks on might actually be worth it.
Yea. But I reckon it's simply easier and cheaper to hype games up and push money into marketing than it is to well, make the game truly solid. Hyped and super-marketed games get enough exposure to simply drown out other games. Like other entertainment venues, good marketing gets you more than a good product.
edit: That would only change (and be a viable strategy) if people at large were smart/conscious enough to not just buy flashy whatevers.
edit2: The prevalence of preorders doesn't help with quality either. When you can preorder a game a year or more in advance, there's somewhat of an expectation that it will come out by then. Preordering is some respects another form of marketing. So you have that big boom of everybody buying it, then Word-of-Mouth killing off how long it sells afterwards.
How they see Left 4 Dead as EA's "one bright spot" is baffling to me considering that EA is probably not getting shit off the sales over Steam and get a different cut of the retail than they would with their internally developed products. But who knows how EA and Valve work together. My guess is that Valve completely funds their own development but hasn't payed for the advertising.
I don't mean to butt in, but NPD is the most reliable source for sales there is for the USA. Stating NPD facts is not analysis, it's just facts. The other stuff take it or leave it. NPD is putting Dead Space at about ~400K sales across 3 platforms in the USA. Also, the game dropped quickly off the charts in the UK. I'm just curious as to where the "million sales" thing came from for this game? ** edit: the million sales thing was someone else, sorry. But I'm curious as to where people are getting the idea that it sold well.
Also, what is the date (or which episode number ) on the podcast with Jeff Green, I'm curious as I want to listen to it.
I want Dead Space to do well, but the only actual factual data out there suggests that it is not/has not done well as of yet.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
But that's the problem game companies are encountering. They're dumping money on marketing for bad games that end up selling badly because they're bad. So they end up with big-budget games that they managed to make suck and then give them big-budget marketing and then lose money when it doesn't sell.
Selling games isn't like getting people to go to the movies. People who buy games already have had to make a choice and an investment by buying a system. They're already more heavily invested than if they went to a dozen movies. Unless somebody has wads of cash and free time, they generally aren't going to buy a score of games based purely on marketing. I can't even think of anybody I know who bought a game because they saw a commercial or ad for. Virtually everybody I know purchases games based on what they've heard from other people about it or seen actual somebody playing or some other sort of research. At least as far as "HD" games go, the old marketing bait-and-switch doesn't work that well.
Despite the fact that gaming has been around a while, real big-budget gaming is fairly new. As long as game companies treat it like selling more Pepsi or fast food, the industry will suffer.
Gamasutra's info is directly from NPD and isn't compiled from the top ten list given.
In the UK, Dead Space entered at number six in the all formats chart but quickly fell off the chart in early November.
Sometimes we get NPD data leaked from research firms or press releases and other sources for data outside the top 10 or top 20. For example we got leaked info that Valkyria Chronicles sold 33k.
We usually get the list for top 20, but only numbers for top 10. But Dead Space wasn't in the top 20 for November 2008 though.
Anyway, I'll check out the GWJ podcast, thanks for the info :^:
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
It's probably the people with wads of cash, or individuals with large amounts of disposable income that they're trying to shoot for with this strategy. I don't personally know of anybody who buys based off marketing either. But many times I've been in a store buying or hunting for a title and I overhear someone asking about a game using features from a commercial or something. Most games aren't really for "gamers" so much as they are for general consumers.
There are (or were with the economy as it is these days) many people who had purchasing patterns like this. I look at the stack of games in my own room that I have. But then again, I mass purchase games because well, I'm a gamer... my 360 RROD'd and I went out and replaced it the same day, within hours ffs.
But that's where the other guys out there who have/had that disposable income, and the problem, comes in. If anything at this point in time we'll probably see more of a focus in marketing vs. quality. To grab more preorders and impulse buyers.
He didn't say it was a success... just that it did much better than Mirror's Edge. Doing much better than a "disaster" that in terms of sales "did terribly," that's hardly reassuring...
Anyway, I bet after world sales are done, Dead Space ends up doing okay. But not great. Probably not quite good enough. But I wouldn't be surprised if EA at least broke even on it after everything is said and done.
Mirror's Edge doesn't seem to be pulling its weight so far though.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
The industry isn't going to survive if we keep having seasons like Christmas 08....not every game can sell millions of copies, and with so many games vying for our attention, far too many good titles will get needlessly overlooked. Not saying this was Free Radical's problem, but this could certainly lead to more studios going under / having problems.
Got a link to that?
I don't doubt it, but it would be interesting to read.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=202401
Are you kidding me? We had Lorne Lanning (Creator of the oddworld series) give a talk to eight of us in the room at UCONN and he was talking about steam like it was the second coming for gaming. He said the cost of games, in order to make and distribute them, was absolutely ridiculous and that steam allows for a company to go 70/30 instead of 5/rest to bullshit.
Steam reduces costs - there's a reason why even third parties go to steam to distribute their games - they make an astronomically larger profit margin on their games.
Making games is fucking expensive. Hell, just to be allowed to release something on the x360 involves a 6$ licensing fee, so after marketing, production, making the goddamn cds and cases, shipping them, good luck on the $2-$5 bucks profit you make. The sad part is that I'm probably overestimating that amount.
Anyway, I searched stuff about sales and found the expectations were pretty high for Mirror's Edge - http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/24/mirrors-edge-dev-projects-3m-units-sold-worldwide/
That might be misleading, though. You know, he's just a "marketing cat."
where the game failed was its lacklustre combat and inane missions. it got boring, and i personally never had the desire to finish it.
Woops - that's right. Publisher.
Yeah, I feel the exact same way.
I guess you're unaware, but VGChartz has a very pervasive and well-known reputation for making up numbers.
They guesstimate and extrapolate and interpolate data. They do not have a factual basis for any numbers that are not given out publicly by NPD - in which case, we can cite NPD instead of VGChartz.
They are notoriously bad for miscalculating European numbers. The reason is because there are rarely good EU numbers to go by. So how do they have such a bad reputation in this regard? Because sometimes sales numbers are released in financial reports, and so after those come out you can compare them to the number given by VGChartz; in which case, VGChartz is almost always way, way off the mark.
That's because NPD doesn't make things up; and most sources that know know what they're doing cite NPD and not VGChartz :P. VGChartz makes things up.
Agreed.
Yeah, lots of great titles are overlooked every year. "Sent to die" amongst the huge titles of the season, so to speak. Happens every year. It definitely sucks for the good titles and developers that are hurt by it.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I don't think losing one of 3 contracts would put you under. When I see FR's website say "oops, we've shut down, kthnxbye', I'll believe this. Kotaku also posted the Factor 5 closing rumor and nothing has come of it. They also have a project with Ubisoft, which could keep them afloat on that alone, and a publisher would pick up Timesplitters since it's a proven franchise.
The FR guys were gone by the the time og Perfect Dark came out.
What happened to PDZero was that a) it was rushed for launch, the only 360 game to never go through cert.
b) it was rushed
c) it had no relation to what they had done so far on the GCN
d) it was rushed
e) it was rushed
Kirkhope said in a recent email that nobody was working on any sort of Perfect Dark when he left in late summer.
Willing to stake cock eating bets that he's just being nice and denying rather than saying no comment and that team has been working on a new Perfect Dark for the last 3 years. When the second book was announced there was a press release and a Q&A session with the author, and both mentioned a new, upcoming Perfect Dark game that the events in this book would be relevant to. The PR and the Q&A were issued by the book publisher and not Microsoft, and when MS found out the PR and all the interviews got pulled. Wayy too suspicious to write off. If nothing shows up about the game in 2009 then yeah, I guess it's been cancelled, but it's too soon to say right now.
The PR wasn't talking about Zero or the original, either, as it was saying stuff like "Currently in development", "True Sequel" etc etc. I can probably dig out the PR from somewhere. Around six months after Zero was released, Rare released the last of the DLC and cancelled the Counter Operative mode and 50-player multiplayer patch. I'd say it's fair to assume they cancelled these because the game never really took off online and probably rolled this stuff into the next game. Besides, Rare are so fucking secretive it's insane, Grant isn't going to say things one way or the other anyway, it's pretty standard Rare fare to deny things exist at all.
They still say Sabrewulf on the 360 never existed, and yet videos of it in action have leaked and surfaced - most of the concepts went into Banjo, it seems. It's Rare. I fully expect the Rare motherload at E3 2009/X09/GDC/TGS next year, as right now we don't have any official word on what any of their six teams are doing. I'm really, really betting one is Perfect Dark, though. One is probably another Banjo that we won't see 'til 2010, too. Other than that is fair game, though. KI3? Another DS game? Kameo? Blast Corps?
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This can't be.
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The actual quote is
"There is going to be no more Perfect Dark either..... or at least there's nothing going on here to do with it at the moment."
That sounds a lot like "Rare isn't working on a PD at all."
I mean I heard Haze was bad but
Mother fuck
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
You just got "BOOSHED"
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For a minute, I thought you meant Level 5. You scared the shit out of me there.
Sad to hear about Free Radical. Not a huge FPS fan, but...well, I enjoyed the hell out of the demo of TimeSplitters 2.
At least it sounds like Pumpkin Beach may take on some of the employees...
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