Ubisoft: Only Triple-A Games Are Profitable
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Recommended Videos
As far as I can tell, being un-memorable and getting stupider every instalment.Imbechile said:
Hopefully M&B and STALKER are profitable. And that Ubiso- oh, they said it. Of course they're wrong. Is it really Ad Hominem when they really are always wrong?
Considering they're publishing TrackMania 2, it'll be safe to say that Alain Corre's talking out of his arse. It's the DRM wot did it, you fools!
Maybe I'm just a Rockstar fanboy; but other than the huge GTA franchise most of R*'s other games have been pretty original. They do have some other big franchises like Max Payne - but a Max Payne game hasn't been released for 7 years; and Red Dead Redemption is pretty different from Red Dead Revolver (other than settings and some mechanics).josemlopes said:
Valve too seem to come up with original titles on the whole, but with the whole Left 4 Dead 2 thing seem to be going the way of cashing in the bucks on a profitable franchise.
Ubisoft, however, seem to be the prime example of a company focusing on a few big franchises specifically (Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell). Blizzard too. All Blizzard seem to work on now is Warcraft and Starcraft.
Umm, portal was actually just the best damn college thesis ever written. The fact that it got picked up and then turned into a game with a solid concept behind it, and a mechanic already written for it helped to reduce overhead, creation, concept and overall cost.Dany Rioux said:
When it comes to cheap, I think of companies like Armor games and their ilk. We make flash games you can play for free and put up ads. Come play them here.
Not AAA, but not devoid of profit. It's in the black, so it's not bad.
I can't blame them. Gamers, especially PC gamers, are not too keen on actually buying the games they want to play. Experimentation can be disastorous when faced with a crowd as lowly and unintelligent as gamers...
I think triple A games are only profitable because they're usually the only ones that are marketed well.
Once again the gaming industry engages in a lovely little self-fulfilling prophecy. So Ubisoft is focusing on their core franchises. Read: we're still going to produce a bunch of other shit, but there won't be as much time and attention in it. So sales will suffer, so they'll hold it up and say, "Look, see, Other Shit doesn't sell!"
And I find it interesting that they think non-triple-A games don't make money given the lucrative summer season XBLA just had. And didn't they just make a bunch of money on Scott Pilgrim?
And I find it interesting that they think non-triple-A games don't make money given the lucrative summer season XBLA just had. And didn't they just make a bunch of money on Scott Pilgrim?
Blizzard has not made 50 Starcrafts, and its been 10 years since the original, they certainly aren't milking the franchise for all it's worth. Warcraft series had more games, but went a completely different route with WOW, it took the world of their beloved RTS game and turned it into the greatest MMO on the market.Akalistos said:
One of the things I find the most interesting about this article is the comment of how this has changed in the last 18 months. Wait, so smaller-scale or less expensively produced games were profitable before, but now they're not?
Clearly that's not the case, so I think the real issue here is that most of these producers tend to calculate the profitability of a game the same way Hollywood does. Case in point:
http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/07/06/insane-studio-accounting-warner-bros-claims-167-million-loss-over-harry-potter-and-the-order-of-the-phoenix/
What it comes down to is that for a company like Ubisoft, even if they make a game for less then one million and it makes 8 digits in revenue, like Galactic Civilizations II did for Stardock, it's just not enough money to interest them.
And when they make a game that has a budget approaching the 100 million mark, to them it's not going to be 'profitable' unless it breaks the half a billion level. So they'd rather bank it all on trying to make the big bucks using supposedly proven franchises rather then waste time and resources on developing on smaller scale products that won't excite investors or the Board of Directors.
Clearly that's not the case, so I think the real issue here is that most of these producers tend to calculate the profitability of a game the same way Hollywood does. Case in point:
http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/07/06/insane-studio-accounting-warner-bros-claims-167-million-loss-over-harry-potter-and-the-order-of-the-phoenix/
What it comes down to is that for a company like Ubisoft, even if they make a game for less then one million and it makes 8 digits in revenue, like Galactic Civilizations II did for Stardock, it's just not enough money to interest them.
And when they make a game that has a budget approaching the 100 million mark, to them it's not going to be 'profitable' unless it breaks the half a billion level. So they'd rather bank it all on trying to make the big bucks using supposedly proven franchises rather then waste time and resources on developing on smaller scale products that won't excite investors or the Board of Directors.
Say, uh, Ubisoft? How much did it cost you to make the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World game? And on that note, how much has one of the few GOOD licensed games on the market, in turn, made you only about a month or so into its released existence? Just saying.
I think they're referring to the amount of money budgeted for the game, though they're using "AAA" as a means to impress investors. I'm not sure if there is a common rule of thumb for gaming industry, though you could draw an analogy with A-budget and B-budget films, where 'A' represents a high budgeted film, and a B-film is comparatively cheap on a shoe string budget. Good examples can be found by searching "film budgeting" on Wikipedia.Imbechile said: