Creating Games for Legacy systems and late adopters

[Laggard]

Marketing 101 teaches to find and serve segments of the population that are currently not being met. With 1 in 3 households in America owning a PS2 it seems like there would be quite a market for creating high quality triple A games on older systems. If the success of the Wii Virtual Console and Xbox Live arcade have tought us anything, you do not need the latest technology to sell your wares. The lifespan of the PC is getting longer and people are no longer willing to accept purchasing a new one every two years.

I work for a company (nongaming)that has carved out a profitable niche serving legacy operating system users. I see a market here. Are there barriers to serving this segment? Why hasn't this already happened?

 

[diemkay]

There are no 'segments of the population currently not being met' because marketing 202 (yes, pun intended) says that there is no consumer market not yet segmented.

Think of the fact that by 2045 if technology keeps evolving in the same rhythm we could see a discovery as important as the internet occur every day. The segmentation will start being 'people that have access to technology' and 'people who don't'

If you could be more specific it would help a lot too

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

The Playstation 2 actually still has a surprising steady of releases out there. XBox and GameCube however are quite dead, just a handful of releases and nothing notable in quite a while. If you check the major game sites you see a lot of very recent reviews for the PS2, at first glance you wouldn't know it's successor has been out for a year now.

But if you look at it, the quality of the titles out there is rather wanting. God of War II is the last release I can think of on the PS2 that met with real critical acclaim. The other titles are mostly rehashed sports franchises, games based on recent movies, and other things that rarely come on the radar for anyone.

I assume the quality thing is simple. The major developers with the big budgets also want to go with the latest consoles, they get the most attention in the gaming press, and the visual aspects of video games are a driving force. It's hard to compete on last-gen hardware with the current generation when it comes to visuals, and even if they're top notch for the console, they will be compared to the newer consoles. So it makes sense for them to go with the newer hardware.

I don't know if there are other constraints though in developing for an older console, development kits and legal stuff.

 

[Girlysprite]

It would be interesting to know how many people have a PS2 and *also* a console of the latest generation. And how many of those people still buy games for it?

 

[Dr Faust]

I've had the tendency in recent years to hover like a vulture over dying systems. I just bought a Gamecube this May, in fact. I have an Xbox 360, and enjoy the occasional new release, but I spend most of my gaming money on older classics. Even though there aren't a whole lot of great new games for the PS2, there are still a lot of great games that I never got around to in the heyday. Games like God of War, Psychonauts, Beyond Good and Evil, Kingdom Hearts, Dark Cloud 2, Crazy Taxi, Soul Caliber, GTA, Okami, Guitar Hero, Maximo, Shadow of the Colossus and Jak and Daxter were all great games that I decided to pick up after the hype (and price) died down a bit.

 

[Laggard]

Dear diemkay,

Either I do not understand your logic, or I do not understand your pun, or I need to take more marketing classes

I will reply to your comments in ths post and restate the question in a different way in the next.

"there is no consumer market not yet segmented"

The fact that a consumer market is segmented does not imply it is being served. I can find out that there is a market and choose not to serve it. The premise of my topic implies that when new systems are created, older systems are no longer supported by software developers. If this logic is faulty please comment.

"Think of the fact that by 2045 if technology keeps evolving in the same rhythm we could see a discovery as important as the internet occur every day."

Technology creation does not imply technology adoption. A good example is the laser disc. Although it was superior to the VCR, it failed commercially. Another example is the mp3 player. Although the mp3 player technology existed, it was not popularized until the Ipod came out. 90% of technology innovation stays niche and does not cross into the mass market.

(Here is a picture of the The Technology Adoption Lifecycle for referrence)
http://www.iec.org/newsletter/aug06_2/imgs/bb2_fig_1.gif

"The segmentation will start being 'people that have access to technology' and 'people who don't"

This statement proves my point. The "people who don't" have access to technology is the market that I believe is currently not being served with new media. A case may be made that the market itself is saturated after 5-7 years of games entering the market, but I believe there still can be a market for new high quality games.

 

[Laggard]

Here is my second go at my topic

Consider the following hardware sales figures from http://vgchartz.com/

VGChartz Hardware data for the period 03rd Dec 2006 to 02nd Dec 2007:

Wii: 15,030,648
PS3: 6,342,600
X360: 8,206,318
PS2: 10,247,733

Over the course of 2007, Nintendo has come in first in hardware sales and PS2 has come in second handily beating the PS3.

I own a PS2 and am currently not planning on purchasing a PS3
Sony has the following options in relation to me as a customer

1) Sony can convince me that it is worth upgrading to PS3
2) Sony can lower the price of the PS3 to a price point that I deem reasonable to purchase
3) Sony can drop me as a customer

Assume Sony chooses option 3 meaning I own a PS2 and will not buy a PS3.
The market is now open for a third party sofware developer to gain my business by creating games for PS2 that I will buy. While I may not be interested in spending $500 USD to buy a PS3, I still may be interested in spending $40 USD to buy a new game.

The incentives I see for 3rd party sofware developers are:
1. PS2 games are cheaper to make than PS3 games
2. There is already an installed base of 40 million US PS2 users. Compare this to 6 million PS3 users.
3. There is less risk involved creating software for existing technology. You already know the features and flaws of the hardware.
4. Over time, developing for existing technology becomes optimized, meaning that you can maximize what the hardware has to offer.

This does happen to some extent in the beginning of the new hardware lifecycle (Primeginia's example of "smackdown vs raw 08," or "God of War 2"). However after about a year into the next gen hardware's release, you pretty much see an absolute stoppage of new games.

The 10 million PS2's that were purchased in 2007 are new, yet considered by game developers as obsolete technology. EA or UbiSoft (ie big companies) may see no reason to continue with old technology, but that does not mean small companies can not create a niche market by serving the current PS2 owners for years to come.

Agree or Disagree? Comments?

 

[Girlysprite]

It seems reasonable, especially for niche developers. If it goes for sales, comparing the Ps2 with the Ps3 isn't really good, better compare it with the Xbox360, since it is the most popular console now. Look at that, also from from VGcharts, I see that the Xbox360 sells more last months then the Ps2, easily twice as much even.
So it is not entirely surprising that developers choose to develop for the newer machines. And not only that, in the PS2 there is a larger library of games to compete with.

 

[KaynSlamdyke]

It seems even more reasonable to me that people could ask Sony to resell the Yaroze kits. For those who don't remember them, they're Black Playstations that came bundled with Code Warrior. Programmable PS1s. Sold for far more than any lay person could buy them, but they were a full dev-kit for what was then the defacto leading console on the market that anyone could buy and share games with

Now think about it. There are hundreds of us now who played the Playstation when we were too young, or too experienced with gaming to think about programming or too badly connected to know people who could help us out with it.

But now we've grown up and gaming's become far less geeky even when Sony were marketting Wip3out to clubbers in Britain. And we've now got a console that, yes, has little power, but it has enough and it's backwards compatable with a console that (if the original figures are correct) are in 1 in 3 homes in the States - more if we include the PS3.

And of course you couldn't try selling these at the obscene prices, but you could easy make a lot of small games that the Net Yaroze project was famous for (the example that sticks out for me is Terra Incognita) and sell them for £5 a pop over mail order. Since it'd only be small stuff, teams of four making niche games that could expand into ALL fields, not just the stuff people currently want to play, but genres no one's thought about.

That's a seriously large set of niches... but only if you could work a miracle of promoting technology that was made obselete at the turn of the century and somehow score licensing rights from Sony, who would probably feel it's a bit off message to the sales promotions for thier new supercomputer...

 

[Arbre]

But if you look at it, the quality of the titles out there is rather wanting. God of War II is the last release I can think of on the PS2 that met with real critical acclaim. The other titles are mostly rehashed sports franchises, games based on recent movies, and other things that rarely come on the radar for anyone.

GoW II came about the same time as Burnout Dominator, Odin Sphere, and for those who like it, Rogue Galaxy. I mean, same year, a bit later than sooner.

I think it would be nice if by the end of 2008, Sony would be supporting their two consoles by 80% for the PS3 and at least 20% for the PS2.

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

I forgot all about Odin Sphere, I had not even really heard much of that one, but it gets a lot of praise (particularly around here). It's one I'm keeping an eye out for as prices sink for PS2 games (last I checked Odin Sphere retails for about 40 USD).

PS2 has been enjoying a fairly good twilight though, especially compared to it's counterparts of the last generation. Okami and Final Fantasy XII came very soon before the PS3's launch and were both highly rated titles, and in the past year there has been a trickle of good titles.

I think it's the sheer size of the library that has always helped carry the PS2 that still benefits it today. It has a giant existing library, and a lot of games still coming out, and a partial consequence of that is that there are gems to be found. Considering how cheap it is these days, and the library, there's little reason for a gamer not to own one.