Assasins Creed 3 will be the last "AAA" game
- Thread starter Vault101
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Awwww, how sweet, I didn't know you cared! ^^ But thing is, the point I was questioning was not hardware capacity. It was financial capacity.TheKasp said:
I was not talking about hardware resource limitations, but about the production resource limitations. In order to keep the budget from overblowing and production times shorter than the one of DN4ever, where are the cuts going to be made?
Now I'm not going to go all snarky on you, because reading back, I guess I did not make that clear enough.
No, it doesn't need to sell 5 million copies. If it needed to sell that much, that would mean it had a development/marketing budget around $300,000,000 (probably a bit lower I guess, because that would just be to make a flat return with no profit). That would literally make it the most expensive game ever created, three times more expensive than Grand Theft Auto IV which currently holds the record.Vault101 said:
I seriously doubt EA has sunk three-hundred million dollars into Dead Space, especially if they're planning on killing it for not selling five million copies.
As for the topic at hand, Kotaku gonna Kotak. I wouldn't mind lower-budget 'AAA' games, because publisher conduct these days is atrocious and that would be a great step toward moving away from the horrible business practices, but I have the feeling that they're going to keep pumping more and more money and tacked on multi-player into games until we get another crash like what happened with Atari back in 1987. The market is already pretty over-saturated.
Of course it's a hole they dug themselves. That's where the industry is and why the industry is slowly crushing itself. Besides, if they could turn a quick profit with 3 million sales, do you think they'd even be announcing this?Vault101 said:
Only if you believe that 3D and voiceovers are the definition of a triple a game, and if you do, then you need to back up a little.
And like I referenced, we have studios being shut down for the crime of not producing COD numbers. There's a reason. To justify the larger budgets they either need to reach more people or increase the price. High graphics games are literally what's crushing the industry, and it's 80% of the reason for online passes, day 1 DLC, and just about every other "evil" of the industry.
In that sense, I really hope AssCreed3 is the last of the Triple A games because I'm freaking sick of games needing to sell a couple million copies just to not be shelved as "failures." Gamers screw themselves over in many ways, one of which is the way they demand games with those graphics but then complain about how they don't want to pay for them. The big devs and publishers push their graphics because they know people will buy shiny stuff, which makes it more expensive, which means more sales are needed, which means fewer niche titles.
I'm starting to really hate gamers in general, because it's like an endless cycle. and it's even more annoying to hear core gamers specifically whine.
"WTF, EA? We put you in an untenable, no-win scenario and you made a choice we didn't like (which was pretty much all of them)? I'm going to boycott you (but not really, I'm going to be playing your next hit on day 1 like everyone else, because having principles is hard)!"
The gaming industry is what we (as a whole) deserve because it is what we (as a whole) made it. And yet, we (as a whole) constantly throw feces at it like we haven't climbed far enough up the evolutionary ladder to clean up our own mess.
Rant over. Back to the point:
The article and original interview are talking about blockbuster-sized games with huge budgets largely bloated by bleeding edge graphics. 3D visuals and voiceovers are both things smaller studios can do and do easily. Not only that, big studios can do with smaller budgets.
Uhhh...No it wouldn't.shrekfan246 said:
300,000,000 would assume that the game cost of 60 dollars ALL went to the publisher, meaning no markup for the stores, distributors, etc and no actual production cost. The amount that would have to go into marketing/budgeting is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than 60 dollars per disc, and even approaching half that would be MADNESS.
The above math and marketing fail aside, they never said anything about it being the break even point. You have simply inserted that into your logic for why they don't need that. There is no incentive without profit, so it naturally falls that the break even point is significantly less than the desired numbers. This was already understood within my original statement, along with the various markups and other costs that go outside of marketing/dev costs.
what makes me wonder though is how much needs to go into a game to get a "certain" level of quality, I know you need to spend big to get stuff on par with COD or Asssasins creed..however I wonder how much of it is having a bad production process and corporate meddlingZachary Amaranth said:
and how much of what you mention is eather greed or just going about it the wrong way
I mean theres Valve...their stuff may not be at the absolute forfront in technical terms (well I'm not sure..at least at the time the scource engine was and is a [/b]beast[/b] of a thing)
[quote/]
The gaming industry is what we (as a whole) deserve because it is what we (as a whole) made it. And yet, we (as a whole) constantly throw feces at it like we haven't climbed far enough up the evolutionary ladder to clean up our own mess.
[/quote]
TBH I don't agree with blaming gamers as a whole.....because there is no concious desicion making going on there..the only crime was buying the games they wanted...to me people to who buy the latest COD every year seem the worst offenders, but I hate to say that beause they are kind of an easy target
EA and other publishers however I feel have more to blame because there are actual concious decisions going on there...whatever bullshit anti-consumer thing that has come along they have embraced with open arms
and don't get me started on Boycotts...they are BULLSHIT as far as I'm concerned, why? because lets be honest....this is not world hunger and starving children, its not clear cut black and white, for one person it may be a moral crusade to not by AC2 because of its DRM, for another its "*sigh*...whatever" and sure you may think that person lacks principles...but its a fucking [b/]game[/b], a game that they still want to play even if it is somwhat inconvinient...that doesnt make them bad or lacking principles or anything...they just have different priorities...as in "I'm so exciting for this game I WILL play it...DRM be damned!"
in other words they arent part of your "moral crusade" they just want to play a damn videogame, so stop chastising them for it (not YOU personally but that attitude)
and as Jim said...boycotss jsut plain don't work because you simply cannot get enough unity for those reasons,in fact IMO they do more harm because they send the wrong message... but getting ones rage on DOES work
and then people go on to say "people buy all this crap from EA..its your fault!" but you know what? I ENJOYED ME3 and if Dead Space 3 is any good then I will get it and play it because I love dead space...I would at least like to think in buying thease games I'm somhow helping thease studios not get shut down by EA or whatever other publisher
Well... I think that they refer more to the idea that a single player centric AAA game. Things like Halo and CoD will thrive because of their multiplayer.
I think if that's the case, the industry will undergo a correction to its size and lose some people to fit the times. But that's just me.
I think if that's the case, the industry will undergo a correction to its size and lose some people to fit the times. But that's just me.
Err...Assassin's Creed 3, a game coming out IN OCTOBER, is the last AAA game?
That's the most retarded statement I've heard today.
My opinion on the franchise aside, last I checked, Call of Duty is considered a AAA franchise, and has a game coming out in November. Battlefield 4 is coming out next year (probably), and similarly has a pretty big budget.
Big budget games aren't disappearing anytime soon, and I can tell that, from the headline alone, the writer is an asshat, even if the article itself has nothing to do with that absolutely stupid headline.
Edit: After reading said article, my hypothesis was mostly confirmed, though it wasn't the writer that was an asshat, but the developer with an ego the size of a planet.
That's the most retarded statement I've heard today.
My opinion on the franchise aside, last I checked, Call of Duty is considered a AAA franchise, and has a game coming out in November. Battlefield 4 is coming out next year (probably), and similarly has a pretty big budget.
Big budget games aren't disappearing anytime soon, and I can tell that, from the headline alone, the writer is an asshat, even if the article itself has nothing to do with that absolutely stupid headline.
Edit: After reading said article, my hypothesis was mostly confirmed, though it wasn't the writer that was an asshat, but the developer with an ego the size of a planet.