Square enix says tombraider did not hit sales target

ScumLord

gizmo wrote: »

To date there hasn't been one AAA standard game released via Kickstarter. Yes, there have been some awesome indie games and lower tier games but nothing that would come close to the scale of the Tomb Raider project.

I remember seeing some big space game on it. There's also the oculus which is a pretty big project.

I still think that big projects like this may well be unnecessarily big, a bit like public sector bloat here, which is common enough in places like Japan. The car factories have lads sitting around playing cards all day because the machines are doing all the work and the people can't be fired.

Reekwind

hooradiation wrote: »

Your observation about switching engines being unheard of doesn't matter. It now takes more people, thus more man hours, thus higher costs to produce a game today then it did ten years ago.
Team sizes have gone from 16 to 160.
This is not something you can take issue with and have a point

Of course games need more people today, that's not in question. What is doubtful is whether this inflation in numbers is due to increased graphical demands. I assert that it's not (or at least it's not a recent innovation). That is, a AAA title does not look significantly better today than it would have 2-3 years back; a situation unthinkable a decade ago when the pace of technological change was much, much greater

Deny it all you like, but the pursuit of graphic fidelity is all at the behest of the market. People expect a level of shine and if titles don't have it, they'll do badly.

If graphics were being driven by the market (and therefore a prerequisite for success) then Notch would not be the rich man he is today

Let's be clear: only a handful of games in the past few years have really pushed the graphical edge. Tomb Raider is a pretty game but is nowhere near the most graphically demanding or advanced game of recent years. Historically we are probably in the period of slowest graphical acceleration in the industry's history... yet you paint a picture of rocketing costs being driven by graphics obsessed consumers? No

If the market actually was demanding ever increasing graphic levels then developers would actually be working to take advantage of the hardware, everyone would be playing on PCs, Crysis would regularly outsell CoD and Football Manager would sell ten copies a year

Exactly my point.
Escalating costs of development coupled with the idea that games ought to be even cheaper was the exact kind of bullshit equation i was talking about.

If you want to talk equations... the price that a consumer is willing to pay for a game is informed by the value to the customer and not the cost of production. It means absolutely nothing to me that it cost X million to develop game Y; I measure the worth of my money spent by the enjoyment that I derived from the product

Ten years ago you could probably argue that games were relatively under-valued: this was the day when you could get 50+ hours of playtime from £40. Now? €60 for eight hours or less? That's not cheap

gizmo wrote:

While the graphical arms race has most certainly been fairly stagnant this generation, at least on a technical level compared to the previous years, the current level has still resulted in a bar being set for asset creation which necessitates an extremely large investment on the content side of things

Compared to the days of hand-drawn and animated games? Really?

Regardless, that is the studios' choice of where to invest. If they want to put in an expensive lens flare or get artisan's to craft unique cobblestones then it's their money wasted. When you have a single guy on Kickstarter using procedural generation to create an entire beautiful looking galaxy then the sheer visual diarrhoea that AAA titles throw at you start to seem pretty superfluous

Since Garry's Mod is only sold on Steam, I'm extremely interested to know what happened to that half.

Worth noting that Garry's Mod is, as the name suggests, based on a Half Life mod. It's based entirely on Source technology and Valve would be getting a significant cut even if it hadn't been sold on Steam

NinjaK

You can download it for free on the net, no wonder sales are low.

ScumLord

gizmo wrote: »

I am, however, skeptical that we can see larger projects get funding through such means.

I agree it won't be common, but the thing is it's a kickstarter it's not intended to be the way companies do business. Something along the lines of a kickstarter grant the government used to give out. It's only supposed to get a company up and running after that they can start to take on larger projects off their own bat. It offers new types of lean businesses to get off the ground and compete with the bloated multinationals.

Often with start ups they do everything right or better but just don't have the financial clout and end up getting crushed by the big guys.

gizmo

Reekwind wrote: »

Compared to the days of hand-drawn and animated games? Really?

Most certainly, yes. It comes down to the number of people you need to create these assets, from the initial concept artists to modellers, texture artists and animators. That's the bare minimum you'd need on a modern 3D game. After that, you also have the separation between character and environment artists and technical artists to make sure your pipeline is in-place and efficent. Then there's VFX artists, Lighting artists, 2D/UI artists all of whom are pretty necessary at various points in your project too. I say various points because art is one of the areas that sees the largest number of churn in terms of contractors and outsourcing these days since not every discipline is needed for the full duration of development.

So yea, as I said, expensive.

Reekwind wrote: »

Worth noting that Garry's Mod is, as the name suggests, based on a Half Life mod. It's based entirely on Source technology and Valve would be getting a significant cut even if it hadn't been sold on Steam

I'd imagine that to be true, yes. It'd just be nice to see some figures, that's all. Hell I think it'd do the industry some good if Valve actually released some sales stats from their service.

ShooterSF

I can't see how Valve could be taking such a large percentage. Hell, Apple only take 30% on a closed system with very little other option other than jailbroken devices where as Steam is one of many DRM options on a very open market with a lot more options.

COYVB

ShooterSF wrote: »

I can't see how Valve could be taking such a large percentage. Hell, Apple only take 30% on a closed system with very little other option other than jailbroken devices where as Steam is one of many DRM options on a very open market with a lot more options.

Steam probably has a higher market share than all the other options combined though

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Since Garry's Mod is only sold on Steam, I'm extremely interested to know what happened to that half.

Link

Sales tax numbers, that'll be collected by Valve not the guys behind Garry's Mod. They also have to license the Source engine which no one knows the cost or scheme of due to NDAs. That's just off the top of my head tbh, there are probably other factors.

hooradiation

ScumLord wrote: »

Many established businesses think they can throw money at problems and they'll go away. It sounds like they're hiring 5 people to do the job of one.

And your basis for that insight is...what exactly? Remember when I said gamers don't know shit about how games are made?
This is what I meant.

nesf wrote: »

Says?

Me.

Reekwind wrote: »

Of course games need more people today, that's not in question. What is doubtful is whether this inflation in numbers is due to increased graphical demands.

It is.
Here is the transcribed credits for Call of Duty: Black Ops II
Number of Engineers credited - 56
Number of Artists credited - 113

Nearly double the amount of artists, and that's excluding stuff like Mo-cap.

Why are there so many people creating graphical assets if there is no demand for increased graphical fidelity?
Look even closer, there are simply "engineers" on the code side. Be it networking, rendering whatever. Conversely there are dedicated teams for things like vehicles, animations and lighting.

Do you honestly think this is not the result of a demand for a high standard of visual fidelity, then what in the name of all fuck are those 113 artists doing?

Reekwind wrote: »

I assert that it's not (or at least it's not a recent innovation).

Then you're wrong. Still.

Reekwind wrote: »

If graphics were being driven by the market (and therefore a prerequisite for success) then Notch would not be the rich man he is today

Facile argument, One anomaly does not disprove the trend of proper games being very expensive to develop. Due, mostly, to the number of people required to create the quality of assets that are demanded by gamers.

Reekwind wrote: »

Let's be clear: only a handful of games in the past few years have really pushed the graphical edge. Tomb Raider is a pretty game but is nowhere near the most graphically demanding or advanced game of recent years. Historically we are probably in the period of slowest graphical acceleration in the industry's history... yet you paint a picture of rocketing costs being driven by graphics obsessed consumers? No

Yes.
The graphical demands require more people than ever before.
These people must be paid.
If there was not such a high baseline demand for a level of graphical fidelity then there wouldn't be such a need for as many artists as there are.

Reekwind wrote: »

If the market actually was demanding ever increasing graphic levels then developers would actually be working to take advantage of the hardware, everyone would be playing on PCs, Crysis would regularly outsell CoD and Football Manager would sell ten copies a year

Again, missing the point. All those games (with the exception of football manager, but no more than minecraft, pointing out occasionally low graphics games do well does not negate the trend) require a baseline of graphical fidelity that necessitates large teams which in turn means high development costs.

Reekwind wrote: »

If you want to talk equations... the price that a consumer is willing to pay for a game is informed by the value to the customer and not the cost of production. It means absolutely nothing to me that it cost X million to develop game Y; I measure the worth of my money spent by the enjoyment that I derived from the product

Which has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but thank you for sharing.

Reekwind wrote: »

Ten years ago you could probably argue that games were relatively under-valued: this was the day when you could get 50+ hours of playtime from £40. Now? €60 for eight hours or less? That's not cheap

Which, of course, highlights the exact phenomenon you don't want to admit exists, for whatever reason.

nesf

hooradiation wrote: »

Me.

*slow clap*

Fizman

I wasn't even aware there was a new Tomb Raider out.

ShooterSF

COYVB wrote: »

Steam probably has a higher market share than all the other options combined though

Indeed. After gog and similar drm-free sellers Steam is my first choice to make a purchase. Maybe this is something AAA publishers can look at like EA did with Origin. It can hardly be too difficult to recreate steam's drm and set up your own online publishing system for your titles, cutting out Valve's seemingly significant cut. It doesn't have to compete as a 3rd party sales platform like steam, rather your own titles.

It's ridiculous for publishers to be complaining about low profits while handing over a large percentage of every digital sale when they don't need to.

GTR63

COYVB wrote: »

Steam probably has a higher market share than all the other options combined though

Is there ANY sales figures available for steam, not being smart arsed just wondering?

nesf

GTR63 wrote: »

Is there ANY sales figures available for steam, not being smart arsed just wondering?

Valve never release them. Journalists have tried to infer sales figures using various means, usually trying to work out Valve's market share but no official numbers exist to my knowledge. Valve seem to use NDAs with abandon from the looks of things.

ScumLord

hooradiation wrote: »

And your basis for that insight is...what exactly? Remember when I said gamers don't know shit about how games are made?
This is what I meant.

I'm not talking specifically about gaming but it was brought up in this thread that they were specialising their staff to the point one person worked on concrete textures. It's also common practice in my experience for large corporations to spend frivolously so the managing staff can maintain their sense of status.

You don't have to be a gamer to realise these things.

COYVB

ScumLord wrote: »

It's also common practice in my experience for large corporations to spend frivolously so the managing staff can maintain their sense of status.

That's not really the reason larger corporations burn through money though. It's not like they sit down and have as board meeting and someone says "hey guys, look we've got too much money here and middle management need to feel like they're important, let's hire loads more staff at a cost of millions so that we don't upset anyone"

magick

I didnt write this but someone posted this on gamesradar about how some of the newest releases didnt meet sales expectations.

CAUTION! NOW ENGAGING RANT MODE:

Christ developers are putting expectations WAY too high nowadays, specifically eastern based companies such as Square Enix and Capcom. Seems like nowadays if any game isn't selling Call of Duty numbers it's considered a sales failure.
I mean come on for Dragon's Dogma, Capcom put out sales expectations of 10 ****ING MILLION COPIES!!! I mean it's a great game and it still sold very well (well enough for an expansion), but expecting it to sell that much bloody lunacy by any games standards especially a new IP.
Moreover they considered Resident Evil 6, a game that has sold over 5 million copies to have sold under sales expectations, 5 million copies is considered below expectations nowadays, Christ they should be glad the game has sold as great as it did what with the horrible word of mouth surrounding the title post launch.

As for these 3 games, none of them are even close to be considered failures from a sales perspective (although maybe Sleeping Dogs might count due to development hell eating up massive ammounts of money but it still sold well).
Furthermore just counting the physical retail copies is not smart as Steam is an enormous contributor for the sales of each of these games (Tomb Raider was massively pre-ordered on Steam and is a top seller on the platform, while Sleeping Dogs has probably sold more than half of it's copies on Steam alone).

To put things simply, developers need to stop comparing the sales of their games to the latest rotation of Call of duty/Battlefield/Fifa games and start to view things from a wider perspective, be realistic with expectations, not every game you make is going to sell close to the gargantuan sales of Call of Duty but it doesn't have to and by no means should it be judged as a failure purely because of that criteria alone.

END RANT. ENGAGING VENTILATION MODE.

Azza

That article is terrible.

If you google Capcoms expected sales of Dragons Dogma you will they actually expected sales of only 1.5 million. The game was considered highly successful by Capcom and its sequel has already been confirmed. Where he got 10 million from I don't know.

Reisdent Evil 6 was expected to sell 7 million copies and it probably would of it was a better game. Selling 5 million copies for a game average in the mid 60's on metacritic is pretty good and shows the popularity of the brand. Those sale targets where realistic enough, they had the marketing and they had the right franchise to do it with but they needed to make a better game. It was Capcoms biggest ever development with some 600 people working on it for a year or two. So they bet heavily on it.

gizmo

Shams wrote: »

I didnt write this but someone posted this on gamesradar about how some of the newest releases didnt meet sales expectations.

Again they're completely missing the point. Development costs have increased by, on average, a factor of 10 since the late 90s and early 00s yet the actual sale figures of titles outside of the big ones such as CoD, Fifa et al haven't seen anything close to such an increase.

As for the digital distribution figures, they're generally not mentioned in these early reports for a bunch of reasons. Valve's confidentiality clause has been mentioned previously but there's also the fact that they also only send monthly statements and payments for titles sold on their platform so they wouldn't be available for these publisher release reports yet. Needless to say, when the decision is made whether a game was ultimately financially successful or not, those figures will be include.

Azza wrote: »

That article is terrible.

If you google Capcoms expected sales of Dragons Dogma you will they actually expected sales of only 1.5 million. The game was considered highly successful by Capcom and its sequel has already been confirmed. Where he got 10 million from I don't know.

Reisdent Evil 6 was expected to sell 7 million copies and it probably would of it was a better game. Selling 5 million copies for a game average in the mid 60's on metacritic is pretty good and shows the popularity of the brand. Those sale targets where realistic enough, they had the marketing and they had the right franchise to do it with but they needed to make a better game. It was Capcoms biggest ever development with some 600 people working on it for a year or two. So they bet heavily on it.

There were reports prior to release that their expectations were for around 10 million sales. The wording, however, suggests it wasn't exactly a company position and more of a general desire to see the game sell well from the Producer.

ScumLord

COYVB wrote: »

That's not really the reason larger corporations burn through money though.

It creates a ecosystem of lazy money spending. When they extend that out to hire unnecessary workers it shows (to me at least) that there is little thought given to expenses.

But even in the best run multinationals when times are good they get used to spending money. Were a small start up may go with one prototype of a product they'll make 40, just because they can. It becomes the norm and then when times turn though again they don't know how to get value for money anymore.

Tomk1

If steam or any other online shop takes 30% that seems reasonable, no matter what product is manufactured a huge % goes on distribution and sales, and in this case anti-piracy. I assume the publishers make more from online shops than bricks&mortor shops, I've bought games in B&M shops with steam activation, then auto-unpdates bug patches supplied by steam.

The Game industry is seen as the new hollywood, so bigger investments with big budgets expect bigger returns. Also we are in a global recession, not as if everyone can buy the new release in the first few weeks. Maybe releasing a big budget game in March isn't a great idea, many people still clearing xmas costs, and higher winter fuel cost.

I hav't got TR yet maybe in a few weeks, still have a dozen games yet to download. Download "The Angel of Darkness" last week though the game was annoying at times some parts was run of the mill but other parts towards the end was great, though minority and many players may have given up on the game before finishing.
I'd like to see a TR similar to skyrim-world, a few main quests and loads of side quests in a free ranging world. The lack of exploration in The Angel of darkness made it boaring.

I bought 5 games in the squire-enix sale last week and hope the TR sales picks up so this franchise can keep going.