Best Ogre
Near as popular as it is today? No, but no one was saying that. Just that it was popluar.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on May 8th 2024 at 8:37:56 AM
SoundCloud
Planeswalker
To be fair to Dead Space, EA is ridiculous about their sales expectations. And it's not the first time Dead Space was canned for completely unreasonable expectations. The third entry sold 605 000 copies in a single month in the US after significant Executive Meddling and EA still cancelled all plans for a sequel.
Oissu!
Deadspace 3 was set up to fail, but the remake really wasn't.
It just didn't even break even on dev costs, because the amount of money games make, as well as the amount of expectations on them is through the roof since the mid 2000s.
"Blockbuster" titles now make billions with a B, while your average development budget is measured in millions.
And no its not a graphics thing, many developers (not companies mind, the individual devs, as well as independents) have talked about how they are the scapegoat used by gamers, but the reality is that the largest cost inflation is marketing...
And even without marketing, programer hours are just expensive these days.
Edited by Imca on May 8th 2024 at 10:04:47 PM
Planeswalker
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
This was back in 2013 and the game still sold millions overall, staying #1 on the charts for some time. And again, this was after severe Executive Meddling from EA hampering development.
Budgets are far too bloated if 5 million copies sold for a decades-old game aren't good sales.
Edited by PhiSat on May 8th 2024 at 6:04:39 AM
Oissu!
... you do realize I have been talking about the remake right? From 2023?
Planeswalker
I am talking about the remake with the 5 million copies comment. 5 million copies sold of a decades-old game should be good. That shouldn't be disappointing. So either EA is very greedy and unrealistic in their expectations, the project was bloated and mismanaged, or both.
Oissu!
Game companies really need to learn to dial things back a bit.
They won't of course, because most of the big companies have built their brands on spectacle. Not to mention shareholders expecting constant growth.
Lu-cha! Lu-cha! Lu-cha!
Knowing EA, likely both.
Help me. I can't get it out of my head.
... Right, so a game that takes hundreds of devs paid 40$ an hour, years to make.... can just magically be deflated to break even... and its solely corporate greed that is making games fail.
That's sadly not how things work, what is demanded from modern games has grown, which means hiring more skilled programers, for more man hours, meaning production budgets get higher, and the amount of sales needed to break even goes up.
Also before it goes there, multiple devs have spoke out about it, no its not "graphics" that's just the gamer bogyman that every one likes to blame the budgets on.. its programing and marketing.
...
And I feel they had to have cut back on the later for the deadspace remake given how most of what was said about it was word of mouth, but I don't exactly have there spreadsheets on that one.
Edited by Imca on May 8th 2024 at 10:21:14 PM
Owl House / Infinity Train / Inside Job Fan
The Verge posted an article about Microsoft saying they need games like Hi-Fi Rush… right after…
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/8/24152137/xbox-hi-fi-rush-tango-gameworks-matt-booty
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
So…um. From this convo, I can gather:
A. Relativity and context are pretty important factors in judging success, failure, and popularity.
B. How can you be referring to the remake and still call it a “decades-old game” when the original and remake are different games? You don’t buy the original on Steam, then the remake, and have the remake replace the original in your library.
C. Imca, could you please explain in a bit more detail how marketing and programming are the main factors in budget expansion and the required sales needed to break even for a series?
What you’re saying has the ring of truth (I think movies also need to make double their budget back to break even and much of that budget is sunk into marketing) and I don’t think it’s mentioned very much, buried under the more common (but also more specious) complaint of graphics.
How did we get diverted from paying attention to marketing and programming as key factors for budgets to, somehow, blaming graphics?
Edited by fredhot16 on May 8th 2024 at 7:20:09 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
The Scrappy of the Trope Pantheon, God of Thumps
Bobby Kotick’s ghost (he is not dead) must have been absorbed into Phil Spencer to do all this
Never mind Tom Warren, senior editor of The Verge stated in a tweet that Microsoft is considering on an increase to the Ultimate Game Pass. Imagine Microsoft revealing this after all of this. Like Sony and Helldivers, these moves aligning with the upcoming quarter is most probably not a coincidence.
☆♥☆
I have doubts on the idea that graphics don't take up that much budget since we got those leaked budget spreadsheets from Insomniac that literally showed art and animation taking up the biggest percentages of the budget for Spider-Man 2.
The Scrappy of the Trope Pantheon, God of Thumps
Who says Graphics, aka rendering an entire game isnt expensive?
Pantheon server for all who click here. Freaking lost $410 and I am hunting down for a nuke to reign down.
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
Nobody said that! Neither Imca or I said that “graphics aren’t expensive”, it’s that programming and marketing are much larger factors that dictate the size of a budget.
“ but the reality is that the largest cost inflation is marketing...
And even without marketing, programer hours are just expensive these days.”
Edited by fredhot16 on May 8th 2024 at 7:24:41 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
The Unknown
Microsoft is so cooked lol. Literally no idea what they're doing despite being in the game for over two decades.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Even the super-successful Xbox 360 wasn't free of incompetence.
Edited by diddyknux on May 8th 2024 at 12:58:00 PM
Team Rocket Boss.
Something something Red Rings of Death.
I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.
A VGC article speculates that the reason Microsoft shuttered the four studios is that Activision-Blizzard, which Microsoft fully acquired in October 2023, has much higher revenue compared to every other studio under Microsoft, so anything those studios make that doesn't sell as well as Call of Duty won't move the needle as much in terms of growth.
To satisfy shareholders, Microsoft must continue showing growth. Anything less than increasing revenues looks like a failure, impacting the company’s share price. We know this is on Xbox CEO Phil Spencer’s mind because he said as much in March this year.
“The thing that has me most concerned for the industry is the lack of growth,” Spencer said in an interview with Polygon . “When you have an industry that is projected to be smaller next year in terms of players and dollars, and you get a lot of publicly traded companies that are in the industry that have to show their investors growth — because why else does somebody own a share of someone’s stock if it’s not going to grow? — the side of the business that gets scrutinised is the cost side. Because if you’re not going to grow the revenue side, then the cost side becomes challenged.”
The problem Microsoft faces—and it was one entirely of its own making—is that it now owns a string of studios working on games that, when compared to Activision-Blizzard’s titles, will barely move the needle in terms of revenue growth.
For evidence of this change, look to a statement Xbox marketing VP Aaron Greenberg made in April last year, before the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. Speaking of Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush, he said the game “was a breakout hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations.” Yesterday, Microsoft closed the studio.
What was a success last year has clearly been recontextualised by the new scale Microsoft is working to. The cost side of Tango Gameworks became challenged in light of an updated balance book.
This puts every one of Microsoft’s earlier acquisitions in a horrible position. In Xile, Double Fine, Undead Labs, Ninja Theory, and Obsidian Entertainment all make fantastic games, some of which have been massive hits for studios of their scale, but put alongside World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, they’re small fry.
Even if it’s profitable, how many copies will Hellblade 2 need to sell for Ninja Theory’s title to look like a worthwhile cost alongside the revenue generated by the next Call of Duty?
Oh, bother.
All of the acquired studios: Shit, I never expected to have to compete with Activision-Blizzard.
Microsoft is like a mother bird only feeding her biggest and strongest chick. The others meanwhile get pushed out of the nest either by the mother bird or by said strongest chick.
Disgusted, but not surprised
The Scrappy of the Trope Pantheon, God of Thumps
You know what's effed? The peak of the Xbox brand will always be what people point to being the 360. But the 360 still lost to the PS 3 in the end because of bad direction for the brand while Sony rebuilt themselves. This is an indicator how bad leadership is at Microsoft gaming, especially Phil Spencer right now.
See pople trying to justify Tango being killed by saying "the brains of the team left" and that is true, though other devs still exist and were in the process of proposing a sequel. I really hate the culture of defending big corporations
Pantheon server for all who click here. Freaking lost $410 and I am hunting down for a nuke to reign down.
I'll always defend Nintendo IF I think the criticism being levied is something I view as inaccurate or misinformed (which is almost all the time), but I will also comment that DON'T like their decisions even I understand where it's coming from(ditto for said decisions not being immoral, illegal, or whatever else people make up). All of this is due to them just being REALLY FUCKING GOOD at the whole games thing and cultivating their studios and talent as well as other great work place and business related decisions they've made.
I mention this because a lot of the games community regard Nintendo as an evil megacorp because of their VERY harsh and heavy handed IP protection decisions when we have ACTUAL full-on megacorps doing evil business shit casually every season that barely gets noticed and they know this.
Oh, bother.
That's because Nintendo's ip stuff makes it harder for them to get stuff like mods, emulated pirated copies of games, etc.
The other companies' shit just ruins the lives of their employees, and gamers don't give a shit about them. Certainly not enough to stop buying the games.
And hey, it's not like I am any better. Sure, I don't buy Activision-Blizzard or Ubisoft games anymore. But that's mostly because I think their games are crap now.
Edited by M84 on May 10th 2024 at 3:59:06 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Oh I 100% know don't get me wrong, just commenting on it. I'm not fond of what Nintendo does, but I get it and don't take it personally. The stuff that Sony, M$, and a whole slew of other publishers and even devs do though legit offends me and I can't recall the last time I PAID for some of their games that weren't included in some bundle unrelated to them.
Edited by doomrider7 on May 9th 2024 at 9:39:32 AM
Meanwhile, Dead Space Remake is over there selling 5 million units, more then every other dead-space title in the series combined... and getting its series canceled because the sales were poor.
Are we seriously going to try and argue that gaming in the 80s and 90s was any where near as popular as it was today?
because it doesn't even really come close
◊
If your planing a command economy, why would you bother developing an entertainment field that hasn't yet carved out a substantial niche from TV yet?
Edit: Now to be fair, by 1991 the field was rapidly starting to close, with the box office being a 5 billion dollar industry, and video-games being a 2 billion dollar industry.... but they wouldn't overtake until 2001, where they have stayed out on top ever since.
But as you will notice, by 2001 the amount of communist countries on the planet are.... China*, Cuba, and NK.
China does have a thriving video-game industry despite them basically being extremely heavily regulated, but you can argue there not really communist.... Cuba and NK's economies are.... not really large enough to have game studios.
Edited by Imca on May 8th 2024 at 9:28:42 PM