Game Development to Get More Expensive

[HaemishM]

Jub jub, bitches.

[Sairon]

Screen Digest estimates that the number of profitable titles per year could fall as low as 80 as developers and publishers are forced to focus on fewer and higher quality titles.

Oh noes, how horrible, fewer and higher quality titles.

Hopefuly flooding the market with crap won't be as viable.

[Sky]

[Evangolis]

Screen Digest estimates that the number of profitable titles per year could fall as low as 80 as developers and publishers are forced to focus on fewer and higher quality titles.

Oh noes, how horrible, fewer and higher quality titles.

Hopefuly flooding the market with crap won't be as viable.

Well, it won't be as viable at the current price point for mainstream titles, but since they've made the crap already, and need to do something with it, they'll print copies and try to reclaim costs by moving the titles that will sell up to a slightly higher price point.

Or do you think EA will just eat the losses?

[Nija]

Fewer titles, although supposedly they are going to be high quality.

Even less risks taken. No more Katamari. (well, the main designer guy I heard quit already, and is designing playgrounds for a living or something)

Hell, EA killed MUTANT LEAGUE when NHL (year) and Madden (year) got popular. Normal progress.

Wake me up when it's over. Back to my 5+ year old PC games and Genesis/SNES emulation.

[Sairon]

I think inovation will always be there no matter the budgets, there's a demand for inovation. There's trucklods of success stories about inovative titles. Also, some of the best inovative titles seems fairly cheap producing, you don't have to compete with HL2, FIFA or whatever.

[Rodent]

I thought Nintendo had said they wanted to lower production costs for the Revolution?

Also, much as I hate steam it seems to be the way of the future for smaller dev houses/self-published games, last I heard Introversion signed on to publish Darwinia and upcomming titles on it.

[Soln]

Ok, console pain aside -- and anything next-Gen I imagine is $ punitive -- here are the costs for a PC gaming company I can think of:

cost drivers (should make in order):
1. network (not just access, but reliable pipe)
2. hardware
3. customer service (huge $ pain)
4. asset management (content)
5. marketing & advertising
6. salaries
7. acquisition costs (incl. promotions in #5)

What are we thinking of?  $3M to cover all of that to start year0 and complete dev with some left over?  And with no sales in year0 to complete dev, another $3M+ for year1 to have sales?  When is break-even (BE) presuming it happens?  Is it something like the following? 

Year   Revenue   Cost   Investment   Delta
0         $0        $1M        $3M        neg. $4M
1        $1M        $1M        $0        neg. $3M
2        $1M        $1M        $0        neg. $2M
3        $1M        $1M        $0        neg. $1M
4        $1M        $1M        $0        BE

Point is, how much starting capital does one need realistically I wonder?  Surely, less than $10M today is still enough for a single PC title?

[Stephen Zepp]

Ok, console pain aside -- and anything next-Gen I imagine is $ punitive -- here are the costs for a PC gaming company I can think of:

cost drivers (should make in order):
1. network (not just access, but reliable pipe)
2. hardware
3. customer service (huge $ pain)
4. asset management (content)
5. marketing & advertising
6. salaries
7. acquisition costs (incl. promotions in #5)

What are we thinking of?  $3M to cover all of that to start year0 and complete dev with some left over?  And with no sales in year0 to complete dev, another $3M+ for year1 to have sales?  When is break-even (BE) presuming it happens?  Is it something like the following? 

Year   Revenue   Cost   Investment   Delta
0         $0        $1M        $3M        neg. $4M
1        $1M        $1M        $0        neg. $3M
2        $1M        $1M        $0        neg. $2M
3        $1M        $1M        $0        neg. $1M
4        $1M        $1M        $0        BE

Point is, how much starting capital does one need realistically I wonder?  Surely, less than $10M today is still enough for a single PC title?

With (semi-sarcastic comment here since obviously it's not the only engine) Unreal licenses at $750k per developer per title?

[sinij]

Where would you go? They would just rise price for all titles and deliver the same crap they usually do. Maybe we will see few more PC titles out of this that are not console  ports.

[Lt.Dan]

I'd try cutting out the publisher - they soak up what half the box price.  Hello Steam, fileplanet, Ebay, Amazon.

[Sairon]

If just the consumers were more internet aware boxes on the shelf wouldn't mean so much. Will probably take quite some time before we can rule the publishers out for AAA titles.

[Samwise]

Also, as we all know, Steam was written by Hitler, and Valve is run by robots.

[Jain Zar]

I thought Valve was run by ignorant DRM loving shitheads myself.