The future of Epic?
polycounter lvl 9
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-16-epic-games-working-on-five-new-titles
"It's nice to target the PC as a primary platform again," teased Capps, "not just for ports."
I am excited for this! and then he went on to talk about this, which i support and understand!
Capps went on to suggest that companies need smaller-sized projects to counter-balance the big-bucks, high-stakes blockbusters.
"Everyone knows the middle class is disappearing from the console business," he said. "Gears of War I hope will do really well, but a pretty good game doesn't make its money back any more. A game like Homefront sells a couple of million copies and they close the studio, right?
"That's not enough any more. That's pretty depressing. You don't want to see what happens to an industry where it's Call of Duty, Halo and Gears and no-one else has enough money to make any games any more. That's not a fun industry.
"I can't bet my entire company every time I make a game," declared Capps. "That's a really dangerous business."
Any thoughts?
"It's nice to target the PC as a primary platform again," teased Capps, "not just for ports."
I am excited for this! and then he went on to talk about this, which i support and understand!
Capps went on to suggest that companies need smaller-sized projects to counter-balance the big-bucks, high-stakes blockbusters.
"Everyone knows the middle class is disappearing from the console business," he said. "Gears of War I hope will do really well, but a pretty good game doesn't make its money back any more. A game like Homefront sells a couple of million copies and they close the studio, right?
"That's not enough any more. That's pretty depressing. You don't want to see what happens to an industry where it's Call of Duty, Halo and Gears and no-one else has enough money to make any games any more. That's not a fun industry.
"I can't bet my entire company every time I make a game," declared Capps. "That's a really dangerous business."
Any thoughts?
Replies
The risks tied to big budget AAA games are just too much for non industry top developers to handle imho. So naturally the focus is going to smaller more manageable projects that can offer a very big turnout (Infinity Blade comes to mind) with pretty much "minimal" risk.
Also, smaller projects also have a huge potential to being truly creative and original; something I can only applaud!
I am comfortable working on 3 month to a year game cycles.
Otherwise, GTFO :@:
I think even Activision know that. I expect they are biting there nails at the thought of the moment when their customers, wake up or get tired.
They have to take risks, people need to get excited about things.
What he says doesnt mean much though, he's talking about as if these smaller games will be guaranteed sales. Not if they just make the same old games except smaller and slightly cheaper.
It takes longer to produce assets thus raising your budgets and requiring way more sales to make back any money.
If I had it my way, we would still be at PS2 level game assets. That was a good time. When working on a game for a year and a half meant it was AAA.
Minecraft and Angry birds are the big winners because in the arms race to own a portion of the gaming market, they just put out fun games anyone could easily access for a cheap price.
living room experience? we will see small phone or next gen handheld nintendo/psp can be ported to hdtv.
The official term is the DudeBro gener.
I know I think way more about spending 60 bucks on something than 20. hell, if you spend 15 bucks to go see a 2 hour movie and it sucks its not like the average person get too pissed off. 20-30 bucks on a AAA game thats going to give you 8-20 hours or so of entertainment would fine by me, and I would probably end up buying more games as the risk vs money gamble would be half of what it is now. no one likes a 60 dollar turd.
I would be completely fine with 30 dollar new releases with a one time use registration code to make used game sales go bye bye. if you think about it, thats pretty much how the pc market has become, no trade used games, which allows companies to have awesome sales, especially combined with digital distribution.
/tumbleweed
MS tried to reinvigorate the PC market with "games for windows" but they can't pick up the pieces after they blew it all to hell. Even if Epic wades back into the PC market its a rich mans game and the economy isn't supporting console games (poor mans PC) much less supporting people to a point that they will be dropping 2k on a new PC to play a new game. Those days are long gone and they aren't ever coming back.
If the economy ever bounces back people will be willing to drop 50-60 bucks on trivial entertainment again then you might see a console revival, but a lot of people traded in their games budget for a smart phone data plan and are sticking to the .99 cent end of the industry. I think it will take a new round of console hardware for people to get excited about buying consoles again and I just don't see that happening. Epic will be sitting on the latest and greatest tech for years to come... while the PC crowd still rattles around in their dusty ghost town...
The next generation of console hardware should offer in new pricing structures, they should roll prices back to 25-30 for new games and offer it through digital distribution (exactly like steam) for 15-20. Until prices come in line with the economic reality people face, they'll continue to opt out of buying expensive games.
I haven't payed more then $25 for a single game this gen because I'm willing to wait long enough for them to get within that range (I also never buy used if its still possible to get new). But the problem with selling games at that price when they first come out is that if a game is popular enough they would be significantly undercutting potential profits.
What really needs to happen is companies pricing games based on projected sales, instead of a one-size-fits-all like they currently are. This was common back in the PS1 day, but sense then it only seems to happen near the end of a systems life, and then a new system comes out and for the next few years virtually every game is sold at the same price again.
Of course these days companies can release games exclusively digital to reduce costs, but on the console side this limits your market (sometimes substantially) and is still far from hassle free (especially for indies).
Direct sales through the publisher is another way to improve profits, as it means you can gauge sales numbers better before determining unit production volume (and hence per-unit production cost). Of course you need to include some sort swag occasionally for it to work, but NIS America, a very niche publisher, has done this with great success apparently. It also lets you cater to other markets/regions that you might not otherwise reach. Selling uber limited-edition releases (the $100+ type) can help too if you've got enough fans for it.
Anyhow I'm just saying that their are better ways to try and get additional profits when releasing non-blockbuster/AAA titles then trying to sell them for $60 like everyone else.
In any case, I don't think Epic working on 5 titles surprises any of us, especially since they aren't going to state the level of production any of them are at right now. Most studios usually have 2-3+ projects going at any given time in some capacity anyway.
None of this stops me from being excited about the future of this industry, of course.
Well, that is not what he was implying, quote from the interview:
"Commenting on the size of those projects, in answer to a question from the audience, Capps intimated that the games would be download or mobile titles, and certainly not on the scale of the AAA projects which Epic had previously focused on.
"At Epic we didn't multiply the studio size by five when we started working on these multiple projects, so you can make some assumptions about the size of those projects," Capps told the audience, when asked about spiralling development costs for AAA console titles."
I personally believe that making small titles with limited scope is a good way to keep the revenue flow for companies, specially independent developers, while switching between projects. There is always a period of time when people are just sitting around waiting, better to use that time to build something small and cool. Its a win-win for everyone :]
I don't see whats wrong with Project $10, at least in principal? Making gamers who buy used have to pay extra for the online part of a game seems fine to me as long as its done right, that is:
1. you still have a way to play your game online if you bring it to a friends house
2. single player content doesn't get locked out.
3. It should use a universal payment system like psn points instead of being vendor specific.
4. games should have an online trial period before having to pay, in case the online community is dead or their are other issues.
And yea, store-specific bonuses are bullshit (unless its a direct buy incentive).
That's all I have to say, either learn patience or buy the game day 1, no need to wait for one of your rich friends to get bored with a game then take it off him for less money, that's cheating from a logical point of view, especially if they give away the game about a week after they bought it.
Also, +1 to store pre-orders, honestly, what happened to the good old days of unlocking costumes for characters? I know I pulled a little too many on Jade from MK.
Hair sim / physics would be nice. Cloth deformation physics would save a lot of zbrush/baking time.
Removal of Normal Maps and just support for a lot more polygons (tesselation).
I dunno. I think our current pipeline is incredibly cumbersome, and there's been almost no technological effort to streamline it.
That said, the move to mobile isn't necessarily a bad thing. Keep in mind, my current phone is more powerful than the computer I had 7 years ago.
just take a readymade FPS engine, plop in a bunch of art assets you bought, and off you go.