Atari cutting back on the PC market

[Vault Dweller]

According to this <a href=http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1084907874771>article</a>, <a href=http://www.atari.com/>Atari</a> is reducing the number of overall titles by 20% and the share of PC games to only <b>20%</b>, because everybody knows that PC games don't sell. I think I heard such reasoning <a href=http://www.interplay.com>before</a>, and we all know how well that worked out. What can I say? I wish <b>Atari</b> the same success! Here are some quotes:

<blockquote>Mr Bonnell said he plans to cut the number of releases by 20 per cent to enable Infogrames to invest more in its main franchises such as Dungeons and Dragons and Dragon Ball Z. "Why bother having 20 per cent more titles when they don't reach the threshold of profitability?" he asked.

Sales of games for PCs, which represented 35 per cent two years ago, should fall from a quarter to a fifth this year although Mr Bonnell said he wanted to remain in the market, which could benefit from the future take-off of online gaming.

Infogrames is expecting the console games market to grow in double figures offsetting the decline in the PC business.</blockquote>Fucking morons!

 

[Volourn]

Doesn't he realize that outside of BGDA the most successful D&D games have been PC? Hmm..

 

[bobbob]

Whats the big deal? PC games have gotten simpler and simpler, these days fallout and even TOEE is far too complex. KOTOR and other more acessible/simpler games are the way of the future, and very console friendly.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Its not like that had many good games on PC anyways.

 

[Spazmo]

So it's all D&D and Dragonball from Atari now? Great! That means I won't have to buy any more games from that shitty publisher.

 

[Nightjed]

considering their last few pc releases (specially what they did to toee), im glad they are planning in leaving us alone, and they can take that crappy FR Baldur's gate license and shove it in every console ass for all i care

 

[Rayt]

Didn't someone link in another thread (somewhere in general discussion?) that most of the games bought were single player only or only bought for the single player part? I don't get it why the games business focuses so much on the multiplayer thing. So Battle.net has like wat, 80,000 people playing Blizzard games online. And that's Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 combined, two massively sold games. But I'd reckon there are 10 million people playing The Sims at any given time at home, with only the computer as their opponent. Because most people hate playing online because of all those goddamned teens out there yelling and screaming at everything that doesn't please them.

I do understand the focus on console games. It's easier to make money on a console game than on a pc game, I'd think.

Anyway: fuck you, Atari.

 

[Anonymous]

And phone's ass too, remember.

Jesus H. Christ on a flying bike, why dont these hotshot who say this garbage ever point to proof? The proof I always see shows about the same in sales for both sides, sometimes more than the other for some (RPGs sell better on PCs).

Console market is way bloated, it feels like around the time MMORPG boom took off. Whats next? Phone boom?

 

[Sheriff05]

The sooner PC games are completely removed from the hands of mega-corporate assholes and put into the hands of independent developers the better, yeah publishing will be nightmare but I have no problem buying games direct from websites of developers in the future. Small firms designing and publishing their own games in limited quality just like the 'old days" is the writing on the wall and we will all be better off. PC games wiill be harder to get and they'll be less of them but that's that way it was when games were consistently good. How the fuck can they continue to compare PC games sales against console games sales like they are the same thing, they are two entirely different demographics it's fucking beyond idiotic. I hope the stupid SOB VD quotes up top catches a stray bullet or better yet-
a stray bus, that way the average IQ at Atari will go up half a point, Yay!!

 

[Anonymous]

Atari is run by the French.

I swear to god those bastards are popping up in power of all the corporate places and running for consoles. Someone drop a giant note on France that explains why consoles = bad idea.

 

[Lemon]

Small firms designing and publishing their own games in limited quality just like the 'old days":

It would be much like this current world, the rare decent title and lots of mediocre efforts.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Didn't someone link in another thread (somewhere in general discussion?) that most of the games bought were single player only or only bought for the single player part? I don't get it why the games business focuses so much on the multiplayer thing. So Battle.net has like wat, 80,000 people playing Blizzard games online. And that's Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 combined, two massively sold games.

Oh, they don't give a damn about D2 and WC3, that MP is free. I think they're still drooling over the possibility there are enough people with absolutely no life but not playing Everquest and kin yet who will gladly plunk down $19.99 a month to spend hours gathering ore and crafting swords in their new MMORPG. Hence holding out for "the future take-off of online gaming," where all those hordes of moms and dads soon won't be able to wait to come home from sitting 8 hours in front of the computer in the cubicle to hook up with [FU_PCW]xXx_R1pp3r_xXx and spend another 8 hours a day in front of the computer killing rabbits.

 

[Sheriff05]

Small firms designing and publishing their own games in limited quality just like the 'old days":

It would be much like this current world, the rare decent title and lots of mediocre efforts.

Ok, well, the "rare decent title" and "lots of mediocre efforts" is still better than
the hordes of total shit we have today

 

[Rosh]

Sounds like they are going the way of Titus. Atari will soon be known as the license whore of the industry. The funny thing about it is that Warner Bros. seems to take the initiative to show that you have to use protection when sleeping with a dirty whore like Atari and that because one game sold well, it doesn't mean the license was properly treated.

More here.

 

[Azael]

I do understand the focus on console games. It's easier to make money on a console game than on a pc game, I'd think.

Anyway: fuck you, Atari.

Why exactly is it easier to make money on a console game though? I see this argument posted just about everywhere, but have never really heard a good explanation of why it's so.

Can't say that I care much about Atari's decision, can't really remember the last game that they published that I liked.

 

[Talorc]

How about the whole PC market?

Does anyone have any stats for what the WHOLE PC Games market is doing? eg not just what PC sales are doing as a percentage of fucktard publishers revenue?

It would be interesting to see if the PC Games market in total is getter smaller or bigger.

 

[Rosh]

Why exactly is it easier to make money on a console game though? I see this argument posted just about everywhere, but have never really heard a good explanation of why it's so.

It's a myth that stupid developers and publishers have fallen for quite some time. If they aren't in it for the "more sales" (and the more stupid ones think that anything developed for the console = $$$$), they are for the other aspects of console games. True that console games sell, but there's many other reasons why developers go into it.

COST: You have the licensing for the trademarked material (opt)
COST: You have the "console cut" taken by the console manufacturer, whcih can be quite a substantial bit.
COST: You have to buy console development kits...well, some would insist that every memeber have one. These can cost quite a bit.
SLEAZE: Console QA is easy, cheap, and doesn't take much experience. "Can you mash buttons and raise your hand when the screen goes black?" Therefore, any kid will do, and hey, look, console QA is going down the shitter. Shitty and Enter the Matrix for some good ideas on this one, with the bugs involved.
SLEAZE: Instead of looking like a lone item (or in the back rack so nobody would mock the store), they are put in a collection of games that share the console label, sometimes put right next to a good game but at a lower price. Granny isn't going to care much about the gameplay, she has to be able to afford the present for little Gimpy with her Social Security check. This is a common marketing tactic used by chains, notably Wal-Mart and K-Mart.

The truth is you can only make wild money in the console market the same way you do by making it in the PC market - either you make an appealing game any moron can play, or you make a good game that builds up a fan base for subsequent games. Either that, or they hope that a few million idiots buy a shitty game based on The Matrix.

Many developers/publishers drool at the success of Squaresoft and their sales figures, but like much of the gaming press, they have absolutely no clue from where they went from making a crappy action game (The 3D Battles of World Runner), to the industry giant they are today. The development house was going to close if it weren't for another of their titles.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Leave it to non-French publishers to give us what we want. Codemasters, you have my money for Soldiers. Activision, you have my money for Vampire -and- the Call of Duty expansion. Atari, you get NOTHING.

Back on track, I don't see Atari releasing more titles with higher quality than they do now. Most of the titles do indeed suck and the reason they're so poor is because Atari has a tendency to release games before they're due in order to meet 'investor commitments' and to make a maximum amount of profit in the shortest amount of time during rush periods (e.g. summer holidays, Christmas holidays, etc) unlike other companies.

They can pour as much money as they want into game development for fewer products but I doubt the quality of their upcoming products will be much better than what they have now. Knowing them, they'll spend 95% of the excess money intended for development on marketing and advertising campaigns, instead of actual development and QA.

If they can barely 'afford' to give Steve Moret and the Troika TOEE team the QA manpower they asked for (about $5K in wages) I don't see them doing anything different in the future to alleviate the problem of poor development.

As opposed to having lots of mediocre titles, we'll just get few mediocre titles.

My response to this statement: "Why bother having 20 per cent more titles when they don't reach the threshold of profitability?"

Why, because it gives you a LARGER PROFIT MARGIN, jackass.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Soon, everyone will flood to the magic console machine, overwhelm the market and make it just as saturated as the PC market is with product, before just as quickly, everyone moves back to PC's.

 

[Briosafreak]

Vivendi is going into a different direction because:

"The PC is far more profitable for us than the console," said O'Neil. "You're not playing platform fees to manufactures, for one thing, which range ... from $7-$10 [for each copy of the game that is sold]. The console business is very high volume and very low margin."

http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/10/comment ... mn_gaming/


Seems logic, Atari is dreaming if they think they can put the Unreal Tournament and Baldurs Gateseries as mainly console oriented. Someone send him a mail with the Interplay story and explain to him that the online gaming business is OLD on the PC, and saturated, and the revenues from the console online business are going mainly to Microsoft and Sony pockets.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Ah yes, the ups and downs of the gaming industry. PC games these days are so uninspired, it's no wonder people are moving elsewhere. I mean, take a look at FF Tactics - it's a whole lot better than the majority of PC games out these days. Just wait till the console market gets flooded with 1000 clones of each popular game and everyone will come running back to games that only PCs can offer, like First person shooters, advanced turn based strategy (JA2/TOEE) and space sims (Freespace 2). It'd be nice if those games came out a little sooner, though.

Oh well, at least Splinter Cell 3 is coming out for the PC, and that looks VERY slick. Not to mention Soldiers, which is out in a couple of days (woohoo!) Heh, screw Atari, they never release anything good these days anyway.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Here's praying that Bumblefuck doesn't get his grubby little hands on Fallout.

 

[DemonKing]

Anyway: fuck you, Atari.

That is exactly what I wrote on the Interplay boards late last year when they announced their grand scheme to cease development on PC games and concentrate on consoles (well I wrote F.U. Interplay but it still got deleted)...and what a great strategy that turned out to be.

I wouldn't care less if Atari didn't have the D&D license, but I guess after a few flopped versions of Forgotten Realms: Drizzt's Big Adventure on consoles they might sell it on to someone else.

It is interesting that Vivendi is now going back to PCs though. Maybe other companies will see the light and follow suit...although of course, for some it's already too late.

 

[Lemon]

Re: How about the whole PC market?

Does anyone have any stats for what the WHOLE PC Games market is doing? eg not just what PC sales are doing as a percentage of fucktard publishers revenue?

It would be interesting to see if the PC Games market in total is getter smaller or bigger.

Up only 4% last year.

 

[the_dagon]

console publishers - PC publishers - french publishers

Atari is bad, we all know that...
still waiting for the release of the english translation of the Gothic 2 expansion pack.

seems Interplay made big mistakes, as is doing Atari now...

My two cents:
stop bashing french publishers because:
- I'm french :shock:
- there are OTHER french companies who are still making PC games (Arx Fatalis which is 100% made in France, and of course Ubisoft - I don't like their game though)

hopefully there are some companies which will release good PC games, maybe not the leading companies... except for MMORPGs.

I think we have to look east for the future of solo CRPGs. Countries like Germany (Gothic 3) Poland, ...

remember that there wasn't a single North American company who wanted to publish Wizardry 8 ? I wouldn't be very proud of this :wink:

one last thing I wish to add:
I think there is a huge mistake publishers are doing these days
the PC customers are NOT the same as CONSOLE customers.
- PC games should be more complex, more adult games (ie: fallout)
- console games should be more action oriented, simplier and teenagers oriented.
THAT'S THE KEY TO SUCCESS