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Namco Bandai: “We Have the Best Portfolio of RPG Titles”
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14-04-2012 11:32am#1
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ShadowHearth wrote: »Witcher series... Ups... Sorry namco, I did not wanted to put you down so fast
I'm confused! Last time I looked Namco Bandai was on the front of my Witcher 2 box.0 -
I'm confused! Last time I looked Namco Bandai was on the front of my Witcher 2 box.
first one, but didnt witcher 2 was published by other company?
edit: lol, never mind me! i ****ed up badly
. i admit it, namco bandai did published witcher 2, i just forgot, but didnt namco bandai got very pissed off, when CD project RED droped all DRM of witcher 2? 0 -
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$10m... That's cute Overheal.Amusing at first but when you think about Hedge Funds and Stock Traders that discuss their portfolios, it's a Business Distinction. EA as a Publisher for instance is well diversified among many different genres. And thats all publishers do, it's the same damn thing except that they have the majority share; they say "Ok, here's $10 million. Go develop that game for us." They publish it, and profit grotesquely off it.
Was it the part where an absolutely massive percentage of games* released only break even or loose money?When I realized how the Gaming Industry really worked I was pretty much too sicked to keep bothering with the degree program.
I don't see why it would have sickened you more than any other industry though. Publishers invest a lot of money in a product and/or studio for the sole purpose of seeing a return on said investment. This investment leads to the creation a large number of jobs and a product which is enjoyed by potentially millions of people. The games industry is certainly not unique in this respect.
*The last publicly released figure for this was 80% as part of a survey by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) in 2008.0 -
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Are you implying that, at similar levels within their respective organizations, executives in the publishing, TV or film industries care more about creativity than those in the games industry?Probably because unlike the publishing, TV or film industries, most large games publishers seem to entirely missed the idea that you can make money off artistic merit. In that regard the games industry is "special [and] unique": there is almost no pretence at creativity at the higher levels
I don't quite follow the logic. I'd consider the likes of The Avengers to be on a similar level to the likes of Call Of Duty games in your example. The only difference being when it comes to the review scores but that is because they're two different mediums being judged in, obviously, two different ways. By that I mean that a video game doesn't need to be an "exceptional artistic endeavor" in order to be great. As a medium, video games have a far wider scope in which to be considered fantastic. Journey, for instance, was at triumph in terms of both art style and the emotions it was able to convey. Gameplay wise, however, it was quite simplistic. Batman: Arkham Asylum was a triumph in terms of raw gameplay and atmosphere. Portal 2 was considered fantastic due to its excellent design and sense of humor. When it comes to awards, one could argue that games, in this respect, are far less likely to suffer from critical genre bias than movies.Cinema, the medium that games are perhaps most often compared to, is, despite the efforts of one Michael Bay, still infinitely better off in this regard. The expectation is that a great film will be exceptional artistic endeavour. That is how they are judged and it's why blockbusters rarely pick up more than three stars. The new Avengers film may clean up in the theatres, and will probably be a pretty good film in its own right, but is unlikely to win any Oscars; ticket sales do not automatically translate into a good film
In contrast most AAA games are dispiritedly formulaic. I'm just going to hold up Call of Duty as an example. Hell, I'll hold up the [ur;=http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2012/jan/11/best-selling-games-of-2011]top selling games of 2011[/url], in all its shabby glory.
I generally don't play sports games so can't really comment personally but I'd imagine their goal was to create an excellent football game which would sell. Whether this meant tweaking a previous years formula or rewriting their entire engine from scratch is completely irrelevant. On release the game sold millions of copies and was extremely well received by both critics and fans of the series. Isn't that all that matters for a game such as this?Does anyone think that the team behind, say, FIFA 12 set out to do anything save tweak the previous year's formula?
Because people keep buying them. As I pointed out in a previous thread, there are more people (approximately 1.5m) paying a yearly subscription for Call of Duty: Elite than purchased what many would regard as the more innovative titles over the last few years. I'm certainly not, generally speaking at least, the biggest fan of publisher practices but it's hard to criticise them when faced with those figures.The irony is that we're probably living in one of the most creative periods in gaming since the 1990s. Lot's of really interesting games are being made, and sold, by indie developers or niche publishers. Yet the big boys soldier on and chun out one 'event game' after another
With regard to the creative period we live in, I completely agree though. Thankfully the same industry is accommodating it with excellent resources. We have fully fledged engines such as Unity, UDK and Torque. Free IDEs such as Visual Studio Express. Many open source middleware products. Distribution services such as Steam. We even have competitions and conventions specifically geared towards these markets such as the IGF and IndieCity. To top all of that off, we also have crowdfunding projects such as Kickstarter, IndieFund and indiegogo to allow the smaller and medium sized projects to get off the ground.
All it really needs to be become more successful is the level of support that gamers have generally shown the "bit boys" that they also consistently show such derision towards. 0 -
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Alfred is Batman's father.
So there.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/97413-Study-Claims-Average-Game-Budget-Is-23-Million$10m... That's cute Overheal.A single platform game is reported to cost an average of $10 million, according to the same study.0 -
****ing spoilers. :pac:Alfred is Batman's father.
So there.
Please don't claim you were referring to the budgets of single platform games when you made the $10m guess.
The vast majority of AAA games released these days are multi-platform titles. Therefore the $10m average budget for a single platform game is irrelevant. As the article says, you're talking about twice that in terms of investment for a title of any reasonable profile.
As it happens though, Demon's Souls is reported to have had a budget of about that size. That being said, they got a hell of a lot of help from Sony in terms of the engine and development resources so it's perhaps not the best example to use in this scenario.0 -
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I can't help but disagree. If we were to examine cinema in a similar manner to which you've done so with games, by looking at the top grossing movies of 2011, then i think we'd see a similar absence of "artistic endeavors". In fact I'd wager that you'd see more genuinely fantastic games in a list of the top sales of 2011 list than you would fantastic movies in a similar list.Yes, I think that's exactly what I've said. This is because within these industries, unlike gaming, people realise that artistic merit sells. Now this attitude is certainly not universal - and there is always an X Factor or Transformers to prove the rule - but by and large the way to attract ratings or cinema-goers or readers or whatever is to produce good art. At the very least, there is no contradiction here between artistic endeavour and hard-headed commercialism
While the gaming press may be guilty of many things, I don't think I've ever seen them rate a game highly simply due to the number of copies sold?Well yes, that's my point: games and other media are judged in different ways. What sets gaming apart is this almost masochistic elevation of commercial performance over artistic merit. If you bring an empty/vapid blockbuster to the cinema then you get hammered in the press; do the same with games and you'll have reviewers licking your shoes in admiration. This attitude - this excuse that a game is good simply because it sold millions of units and that should therefore be the sole objective of publishers - permeates the entire industry
For publishers making money is the most important criteria. This is true simply on the basis that many of them are public companies and as such, their first responsibility is to their shareholders, not to certain demographics of gamers.Not from a commercial standpoint, no. Which is not surprising: these models (and the specific games that they're associated with) have been refined and pushed for a decade now. They're pretty good at making money (even if away from the flagship series the picture is not so rosy). But then why insist that making money is the most important criteria? Or that subscription figures are at all important when gauging the success of a game? See above
From my perspective as a gamer however, I can only bemoan the above statistics and how they affect the games I care about. Where my opinion seems to differ from others however, is that while many will place the blame for this large increase in "safe" titles at the expensive of more innovative ones at the feet of publishers, I believe equal blame should be placed on those who don't buy these games in the first place, those who buy them secondhand to save a couple of quid and those who wait six months to pick them up in the bargain bins. For instance, I could only watch in amazement as people I know criticized SEGA for their recent restructuring of releases, which hinted at no follow ups to Vanquish or Bayonetta, despite these very people only picking these games up recently for a couple of quid. Or those who criticise EA for "ruining the industry" by releasing only yearly rehashes of titles, yet they either don't own or picked up for extremely cheap months after release the likes of Mirrors Edge, Shadows Of The Damned and Bulletstorm. I simply cannot understand the mindset of people who want these kinds of titles to be released yet won't go out and show their support for them by buying them on release.
While I would never trade the fond memories of my SNES years for anything, I'm finding it hard to see why you regard the 90s as such a golden age for innovation? Sure we saw some fantastic releases as strategy and RPG titles made their way from the table-top to our screens, how the point and click adventures from LucasArts made us actually laugh out loud and, most importantly, how games made the shift into the 3rd dimension, but I don't see how you can see this as some specific initiative to be more creative and not just a natural evolution of the titles being released due to technology evolving.If gaming is to return to a genuine period of innovation (and in that regard the 1990s will be hard to beat) then there has to be a mental, and material, shift away from publishers and sales figures. They're not unimportant, remember what I said about a marriage between art and industry, but we have to stop pretending that a game's merit can be judged solely through sales. Then, and only then, can the current developments at indie level state to filter upwards into AAA titles
On top of this, for all of those excellent titles released in the 90s, we've had some phenomenal titles released since 2000 too. We've had continued excellence from the likes of Nintendo and Sony but we've also seen Relic release a selection of amazing strategy games, Epic with their Unreal engines, Valve continue to impress and innovate in the FPS space, Bioware, Bethesda and CD Projekt in the RPG realm, Ion Storm release the immense Deus Ex, Capcom give us some of the most complex and satisfying brawlers both on the 3D and 2D planes. Not to mention more recent titles such as Ōkami, Limbo and Journey which have featured artistic styles on a completely different level to those from the 90s. The list goes on...
As for moving away from publishers, well if you can find a way to pay for the development of AAA titles without the need for their investment then I and indeed most studios on the planet would love to hear it. 0 -
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In fairness, this is a thread which revolves around the industry. There are individual threads for the titles Namco Bandai are referring to elsewhere on the forum.johnny_ultimate wrote: »I remember the days (three months ago or so) when every thread didnt descend into industry 'debates'. We talked about games in those days. Good times they were. 0 -
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In fairness, this is a thread which revolves around the industry. There are individual threads for the titles Namco Bandai are referring to elsewhere on the forum.
Like the Dark Souls one?
:pac:
Just seems a shame to me so much potentially rewarding discussions is being somewhat drowned out by the same old arguments
Oh, and yes: Atlus win 0 -
I understand your point about publishers not being able to exist without developers but I as I've said a few times, developers cannot, in their current condition, survive without publishers. That was why I pointed out the problem with your analogy, you were completely downplaying the importance of the publisher in the equation by comparing it to Alfred simply washing Batman's clothes.
On the subject of the original post, I also pointed out how it was amusing how gamers are more than happy to hurl abuse at publishers when they do something wrong but when they actually do something right, as Namco Bandai have done by funding some pretty fantastic albeit lower profile titles, people treat them with sarcasm and disdain when they mention it.
I don't know if it just seemed like I'm completely dismissing publishers, but I'm not. Production companies take care of pretty much everything other than development. Just like Alfred, they make sure the studio has what it needs to develop, market, etc the final product.
They're integral to the overall process, but they're not the ones fighting crime every night. They're right to say they have the best portfolio (hell, I'd agree with them on that. Atlus sucks! :P ), but they've a portfolio of games other people created. As I said before, no one's ever said "Hey, Namco Bandai are publishing a game. I better keep an eye on it." To gamers, it shouldn't mean anything. To investors, it should mean everything. We're gamers, not investors.
Stick around and we might be able to explain it to you.hooradiation wrote: »Gamers in "having no idea how the industry works" shocker.
More at 11.
johnny_ultimate wrote:I remember the days (three months ago or so) when every thread didnt descend into industry 'debates'. We talked about games in those days. Good times they were.
I'm with Gizmo on this. Isn't this a thread about a publishers claim? Away to your individual game threads with you! We'll have no fun here!:P0 -
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Aye, that's just what it seemed like.I don't know if it just seemed like I'm completely dismissing publishers, but I'm not. Production companies take care of pretty much everything other than development. Just like Alfred, they make sure the studio has what it needs to develop, market, etc the final product.
All true but it's not really what I was getting at with regard to gamers reactions to publishers. In itself, which publisher publishes a game really doesn't mean anything to a gamer but the simple fact that they're doing it means we, as gamers, will get to play them when we otherwise may have not. When a publisher does this with a smaller profile or niche title then I think it should be acknowledged, that's all really.They're integral to the overall process, but they're not the ones fighting crime every night. They're right to say they have the best portfolio (hell, I'd agree with them on that. Atlus sucks! :P ), but they've a portfolio of games other people created. As I said before, no one's ever said "Hey, Namco Bandai are publishing a game. I better keep an eye on it." To gamers, it shouldn't mean anything. To investors, it should mean everything. We're gamers, not investors. 0
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