BioWare forms handheld division, first game for DS

[Trippy]

BioWare Forms New Handheld Game Group

Leading Game Developer Now Recruiting For New Nintendo DS™ Project

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (September 19, 2006) - BioWare, a leading video game developer, has announced the formation of a new handheld game development group. Their first game will be produced for the Nintendo DS system and marks BioWare's debut in the handheld game space.

The group will be led by project director, Dan Tudge, former president and founder of independent video game developer, Exile Interactive, Inc. Dan has overseen development of AAA titles for such major publishers as Nintendo, Microsoft, THQ, and Sega Sports.

"We're thrilled to have Dan leading our new handheld group," said Ray Muzyka, CEO of BioWare. "Dan has an exceptional pedigree of game development, and we're excited to have him bring his proven track record of successful games to BioWare's new DS project!"

Listed among Canada's Top 100 Employers* three years in a row, BioWare has begun actively recruiting for its new handheld team.

"As always, we are committed to creating the best story-driven games in the world, and the Nintendo DS offers us an exciting new platform to engage," said Greg Zeschuk, president of BioWare. "The new project offers tremendous opportunities, and we're looking for talented and passionate developers to become part of that."

Details about available positions for BioWare's handheld group can be found at BioWare's job page.

[schild]

Yes, this will truly be a questionable affair.

[Yegolev]

"As always, we are comitted to making money, and the Nintendo DS offers us a prolific install base for shit-cheap games"....

[Sky]

Yes, Bioware is well-known for their shovelware!

[Yegolev]

I'd be less pessimistic if it was BioWare rather than BioWare Junior.

[HaemishM]

Consoles are more profitable than PC games, especially handhelds where the development costs are likely smaller than regular console games. It's probably just a bit more than mobile phone games. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

[Riggswolfe]

I just hope Bioware doesn't get distracted from their main focus.

[HaemishM]

You mean the main focus of making good games regardless of platform?

[Riggswolfe]

The main focus of making good, deep RPGs on PCs and now consoles. Now they're doing an MMO and handhelds. I just worry they're spreading out a bit much. (Yes I know the MMO team is secondary.)

[HaemishM]

Based on Jade Empire and the first KOTOR (both of which were console exclusives for a while before the PC releases), I wouldn't worry.

[schild]

Consoles are more profitable than PC games, especially handhelds where the development costs are likely smaller than regular console games. It's probably just a bit more than mobile phone games. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

That's sort of a load of hogwash. The vast majority of DS and PSP games, after marketing, are lucky to break even. The profitability on such a proprietary format is pretty much shit. BUT the chance to make a profit, even a small one, is very high. It's more of a safe investment than anything else. Per piece, cell phones are probably more profitable than any other form of gaming media.

[HaemishM]

Let's put it another way. It takes less investment to make a console game, even a handheld one, profitable than it does a PC game.

[schild]

Still questionable. PC Games can be made on the cheap and there's no money necessary for development software if you use all the free shit out there. You can't really compare an Unreal 3 engine game with a DS game. You have to compare Popcap, Wild Tangent and other shit like that with DS stuff. I'd wager the profit on the PC stuff is much higher per unit and the investment is MUCH MUCH LESS.

[HaemishM]

Until you factor in QA, patches, bandwidth for patches or online play, etc. Then the PC game looks like shit compared to the console game.

[StGabe]

Consoles also have much stricter QA requirements (if a PC game has a bug you patch it but if a console game has a bug, you're fucked).  And popcap-style games generally aren't going to have patches or online play (although they do have the cost of allowing players to download the game at ~10-20 MB per download with only 1-3% of downloads resulting in purchases).  Budgets on a popcap-style game are currently ranging (as far as I have read) from $0-500,000 with a lot in the $20,000-80,000 range.

Mobile games have huge QA/porting requirements.  To get your game on a major carrier you are looking at doing 20-70 ports of your game (which is very expensive) to phones with resolutions ranging from under 100x100 to 320x240 (thus requiring several sets of art and even rewrites of the game) and wildly different capabilities and limitations.  Then you have to do QA on each and every one of those ports.  Also, if you want to have a hit mobile game you better have licensed a brand from someone (or spent a lot developing your own brand) as most mobile game purchases are impulse buys, with almost no information given to the consumer, and so branding is crucial.  While there are cheaper indie ventures (which take a rather large investment of effort and probably don't net nearly as much), a budget for a high-end mobile game is almost certainly going to be more than $100,000.

I have absolutely no idea what it costs to make a handheld game but I'd guess at somewhere around $500,000-1,000,000.  Of course, handheld games have a less competitive market (there are hundreds of popcap-style and mobile games out there) and sell for more (versus mobile games at ~$4.99 and popcap-style games at ~$19.99).  But then, of course, they have a shorter window to sell in.

In other words, it's a lot more complicated than I think you guys are allowing.  There is money to be made in all of these markets but none of these markets are "easy money" (if they were, why would game companies not be flocking to them?).

Also, I always see this complaint that a company is diluting itself across too many products.  It may do so, but generally the company is hiring a new team for the new ventures and so it isn't really going to have a huge impact on their older, ongoing efforts.  If the new venture is profitable it will just give them more capital to invest not only in new ventures but on their older stuff.

[Margalis]

You have to distinguish between phones and the DS.

My friend worked making phone games for a while. They had 6 weeks and 2.5 people working on them. Total cost to produce game = $15k. As far as licensed IP goes, the way a lot of phone dev works is a company just farms out the game + IP to you. At my friend's place they were handed a license, some target phones and some money and just had to make it work from there. They didn't go searching for IP or pitch game ideas, it was more "ok...we need a mobile game based on NCAA football - and go!"

DS games are much more complicated to develop up front. Better graphics, much more power, etc. You aren't making a DS game in 6 weeks with 2.5 people very often.