Company News Obsidian to reveal a new game at GDC 2014

[Spectacle]

Imagine if PE sells so well that Obsidian can afford to self-fund an AAA project!

 

[Duraframe300]

Imagine if PE sells so well that Obsidian can afford to self-fund an AAA project!

PE alone wouldn't be enough even if it has amazing sales. Unless they want to throw down it's entire revenue. Which wouldn't be very smart.

Depending on how the whole thing develops that might become reality a few years down the line though.

 

[Roguey]

PE alone wouldn't be enough even if it has amazing sales. Unless they want to throw down it's entire revenue. Which wouldn't be very smart.

Depending on how the whole thing develops that might become reality a few years down the line though.

If PoE ends up selling at least a couple of million copies at the full Kickstarter price they'd have more than enough to fund a game comparable in graphics and VO quality to the ones they've already released.

 

[Duraframe300]

PE alone wouldn't be enough even if it has amazing sales. Unless they want to throw down it's entire revenue. Which wouldn't be very smart.

Depending on how the whole thing develops that might become reality a few years down the line though.

If PoE ends up selling at least a couple of million copies at the full Kickstarter price they'd have more than enough to fund a game comparable in graphics and VO quality to the ones they've already released.

Unless they want to throw down it's entire revenue. Which wouldn't be very smart.

There would much better ways and less riskier ones to use that revenue.

 

[Roguey]

Unless they want to throw down it's entire revenue. Which wouldn't be very smart.

There would much better ways and less riskier ones to use that revenue.

They wouldn't need to use up all the revenue.

 

[Duraframe300]

Unless they want to throw down it's entire revenue. Which wouldn't be very smart.

There would much better ways and less riskier ones to use that revenue.

They wouldn't need to use up all the revenue.

They would need to use up enough. Apart from that higher budget is also a riskier/easier road to go overbudget especially regarding the production values. Big Voice acting session gone wrong for example.

It just seems smarter to wait until such a project would be safe to do with for example smaller ones then do a big one a few successful year(s) down the line. Considering as well they also now have to provide support...

 

[Kem0sabe]

Im not sure they can handle the Q&A on a AAA next gen console release, would probably sink the company if they tried to do by themselves a next gen AAA RPG.

 

[tuluse]

I wouldnt mind a publisher project. As a matter of fact, I dislike comments from Urquhart and Avellone where they strongly hint at "user-financed games being the future" etc. etc. I think its a detrimental discourse, dispite their Kickstarter success. Just look at Fallout NW: would they ever had had the means do accomplish that without the means of Bethesda? No.

Kickstarter is cool but dont shoot yourselves in the foot, guys.

You've made a false assumption, that I would prefer New Vegas to 5 project eternities.

 

[Diggfinger]

I wouldnt mind a publisher project. As a matter of fact, I dislike comments from Urquhart and Avellone where they strongly hint at "user-financed games being the future" etc. etc. I think its a detrimental discourse, dispite their Kickstarter success. Just look at Fallout NW: would they ever had had the means do accomplish that without the means of Bethesda? No.

Kickstarter is cool but dont shoot yourselves in the foot, guys.

You've made a false assumption, that I would prefer New Vegas to 5 project eternities.

Is that a double negative? (see 1 min 45) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymS_zoClpYw

So that means that you would prefer 5 project eternities instead of one New Vegas?

 

[tuluse]

Is that a double negative? (see 1 min 45) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymS_zoClpYw

So that means that you would prefer 5 project eternities instead of one New Vegas?

There are no negatives in my sentence.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Money from PE will be spend most appropriately to fund others izo games. Any game made will be bringing fresh revenue for at least a decade or two. Having 5, 6 those games can secure funds for an AAA project and another isometric games. AAA project will bring even more cash, for more AAA and isometric games.

 

[Morality Games]

Unless they want to throw down it's entire revenue. Which wouldn't be very smart.

There would much better ways and less riskier ones to use that revenue.

They wouldn't need to use up all the revenue.

If they sold several million. However, the odds Obsidian will sell even a million copies of a PC exclusive RPG indie with their marketing muscle are low. Selling a million at $30 gets them $30,000,000, enough to finance their own triple A-title, but that entails a 70-30 cut from retailers, so $21,000,000. The effective corporate tax rate in the games industry is lower than the official 35%, but that brings you down another $6,000,000 to $15,000,000. Then you have unity and middleware fees, which are probably low in Project Eternity's case, but lets lop off another couple million for good measure. You're between $10,000,000 and $15,000,000. Factor in the fact they want to make the next Eternity from the profits of the first and you're left standing with slightly less than $10,000,000.

You could barely squeeze a triple-A title out of that, but a million copies (the same amount as the original Witcher sold globally) is a golden number. Optimistically it would sell 700k and just as easily no more than the Troika games (300k). So really they're lucky to have more than $5,000,000 in uncommitted dollars by the end of it, which admittedly is more than the free $4,000,000 they started with.

The idea isn't bad, but it would take multiple high selling indies before Obsidian was in a comfortable position to become self publishing for real.

 

[cherry blossom]

I'm pretty sure Pillars of Eternity incorporates some hazy ideas Obsidian developers had about Wheel of Time.

Have they given any indication at all about that or are you just going with what you feel?

Oh geez, how did so much of Van Buren material ended up in New Vegas, I thought that once an idea is dead, it is dead for good but apparently not.

 

[Bitcher1]

If you guys are into making such far-flung predictions in regards to how many kickstarter games it will take to finance an AAA project, you should probably take into account the law of diminishing returns. It certainly cannot be ruled out in this case seeing as interest in P:E is largely a result of nostalgia and current lack of similar games on the market. Once people have their iso-RPG fix, who is to say the audience for the next titles will not shrink? Does the traditional RPG niche have a lot of room to grow, to consistently generate multimillion $ profits? Somehow, I'm not so sure of that, it's not like the classic games in this mold were ever big sellers (with exception of BG). And let's not forget the frequently made predictions that the costs of development for next-gen consoles are about to rise.
Being able to finance an AAA title without publishers is a luxury extremely few studios have and a big risk to boot. Frankly, I'd be shocked if Obsidian did that in any foreseeable future.

 

[Decado]

Whatever it is, I hope to fucking Christ it is not another goddamn Star Wars game. Fuck Star Wars. Let that shitty franchise die a hundred thousand deaths already. Hopefully JJ Abrams will fuck the whole thing into the ground and nobody will ever want to watch another piece of shitty Star Wars fiction ever again.

 

[Morality Games]

If you guys are into making such far-flung predictions in regards to how many kickstarter games it will take to finance an AAA project, you should probably take into account the law of diminishing returns. It certainly cannot be ruled out in this case seeing as interest in P:E is largely a result of nostalgia and current lack of similar games on the market. Once people have their iso-RPG fix, who is to say the audience for the next titles will not shrink? Does the traditional RPG niche have a lot of room to grow, to consistently generate multimillion $ profits? Somehow, I'm not so sure of that, it's not like the classic games in this mold were ever big sellers (with exception of BG). And let's not forget the frequently made predictions that the costs of development for next-gen consoles are about to rise.
Being able to finance an AAA title without publishers is a luxury extremely few studios have and a big risk to boot. Frankly, I'd be shocked if Obsidian did that in any foreseeable future.

Statistically there are no guarantees and a lot of this is uncharted territory. The thing is, iso-RPGs are a mostly dead genre that a certain amount people love and would play as enthusiastically as casuals devour first person shooters, the same way millions of people devour multiple speculative fiction books by the month or year. The nearly synonymous narrative-driven RPGs (including Dragon Age II and Witcher 2) are only slightly less rare, with only three or four companies producing them consistently every couple of years. On PC, the iso-RPG market clocks somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 (judging by Dragon Age: Origins sales), the most dedicated of which (about 70,000) has already been burned on funding Project Eternity. Nonetheless, I would consider it very unusual if Project Eternity didn't capture the bulk of the PC audience that played Dragon Age: Origins, which is why I would say a 300k in addition to the 70,000 is a pretty safe projection. 300k happens to be the number that Obsidian needs to have the 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 to finance Eternity's touted sequel. To be honest, I expect the actual lfie times sales with this crowd to be closer to 400k.

After that, it's a question of how many PC outliers and console primes Obsidian nets -- say what you want about them, but by bringing Dragon Age and Mass Effect to consoles Bioware created a much bigger audience for narrative-driven RPGs than existed historically (3-5 million). The specs are low, and most console primes have some sort of PC or laptop so they can play World of Warcraft-a-be's. By this point a large number of people I wouldn't characterize as primary iso-RPG are acquainted enough with and enjoy things like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Diablo to see the much hyped Eternity as a plausible game to buy. I expect between PC outliers and console primes with modest exposure to iso-RPGs and iso-RPG type concepts you would be able to equal the 300k of the primary audience, maybe surpass it. I don't consider this to be anywhere near a remote possibility, since Bioware has a large number of fans and most of them would play, enjoy, and most importantly, know about Project Eternity.

So I expect that the actual number for Project Eternity will be 500k within the year, with an additional 100-200k strung out over its lifetime. And assuming its well reviewed and received, most historical precedents suggest it should spawn a sequel with slightly higher sales; there isn't enough competition for the core audience to get bored and outliers tend to stick more than they leave. That is, although a few jump off the wagon, more come over time than leave.

As for the other KickStarter, I work from the premise that it will be some kind of success based on the notion that Obsidian is plotting for success and has maybe, just maybe, learned from its failures.

The other notion is that both the core crowd and the outliers/console primes fail to materialize at the projected rates, which strands us at 200,000-300,000k; enough gas to make an Eternity sequel or whatever Obsidian wants to do with it.

Assuming the turn Eternity and the new KickStarter into successful franchises, with good banking it would take about 5-10 years before Obsidian was in a position to be self publishing.

 

[Broseph]

I am very angry about Star Wars

 

[Decado]

I want to murder Star Wars on the field of battle. I want to impale it, rifle through its possessions, then mail a letter to the widow and threaten her with death. I want to physically ruin Star Wars. If I were the president I would label it a terrorist organization and spend every dime in the NSA's budget to make Star Wars look like a child pornographer, then throw it in prison without access to an attorney and water board it.

 

[tuluse]

Morality Games, Dragon Age: Origins sold 400k on pc in Europe alone, http://www.vgchartz.com/game/33504/dragon-age-origins/

North America numbers are not available.

 

[Bitcher1]

Yeah, seeing as Grimrock sold something like 700k copies, I'd imagine DAO at least matched that number. Question is, how many copies will PE sell at full price and how many at Steam turbodiscounts. Also, I wouldn't completely disregard the marketing power behind the more mainstream titles.

 

[Morality Games]

Morality Games, Dragon Age: Origins sold 400k on pc in Europe alone, http://www.vgchartz.com/game/33504/dragon-age-origins/

North America numbers are not available.

I hate when companies hide statistics.

Well, the lesson to take away from that is that Eternity's prognosis is that much more favorable and the odds of pushing over a million higher.

I still find it unlikely that a PC exclusive RPG indie will sell as much as even say Dragon Age II, but with Bethesda, Blizzard, and Bioware popularizing so many of the core design concepts of a story-setting driven iso-RPG and the free marketing power of KickStarter and social media the odds of establishing a successful franchise are higher than they are lower.

What I can say post-Skyrim is that RPGs in general are a growth genre.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

If you guys are into making such far-flung predictions in regards to how many kickstarter games it will take to finance an AAA project, you should probably take into account the law of diminishing returns. It certainly cannot be ruled out in this case seeing as interest in P:E is largely a result of nostalgia and current lack of similar games on the market. Once people have their iso-RPG fix, who is to say the audience for the next titles will not shrink? Does the traditional RPG niche have a lot of room to grow, to consistently generate multimillion $ profits? Somehow, I'm not so sure of that, it's not like the classic games in this mold were ever big sellers (with exception of BG). And let's not forget the frequently made predictions that the costs of development for next-gen consoles are about to rise.
Being able to finance an AAA title without publishers is a luxury extremely few studios have and a big risk to boot. Frankly, I'd be shocked if Obsidian did that in any foreseeable future.

Statistically there are no guarantees and a lot of this is uncharted territory. The thing is, iso-RPGs are a mostly dead genre that a certain amount people love and would play as enthusiastically as casuals devour first person shooters, the same way millions of people devour multiple speculative fiction books by the month or year. The nearly synonymous narrative-driven RPGs (including Dragon Age II and Witcher 2) are only slightly less rare, with only three or four companies producing them consistently every couple of years. On PC, the iso-RPG market clocks somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 (judging by Dragon Age: Origins sales), the most dedicated of which (about 70,000) has already been burned on funding Project Eternity. Nonetheless, I would consider it very unusual if Project Eternity didn't capture the bulk of the PC audience that played Dragon Age: Origins, which is why I would say a 300k in addition to the 70,000 is a pretty safe projection. 300k happens to be the number that Obsidian needs to have the 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 to finance Eternity's touted sequel. To be honest, I expect the actual lfie times sales with this crowd to be closer to 400k.

After that, it's a question of how many PC outliers and console primes Obsidian nets -- say what you want about them, but by bringing Dragon Age and Mass Effect to consoles Bioware created a much bigger audience for narrative-driven RPGs than existed historically (3-5 million). The specs are low, and most console primes have some sort of PC or laptop so they can play World of Warcraft-a-be's. By this point a large number of people I wouldn't characterize as primary iso-RPG are acquainted enough with and enjoy things like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Diablo to see the much hyped Eternity as a plausible game to buy. I expect between PC outliers and console primes with modest exposure to iso-RPGs and iso-RPG type concepts you would be able to equal the 300k of the primary audience, maybe surpass it. I don't consider this to be anywhere near a remote possibility, since Bioware has a large number of fans and most of them would play, enjoy, and most importantly, know about Project Eternity.

So I expect that the actual number for Project Eternity will be 500k within the year, with an additional 100-200k strung out over its lifetime. And assuming its well reviewed and received, most historical precedents suggest it should spawn a sequel with slightly higher sales; there isn't enough competition for the core audience to get bored and outliers tend to stick more than they leave. That is, although a few jump off the wagon, more come over time than leave.

As for the other KickStarter, I work from the premise that it will be some kind of success based on the notion that Obsidian is plotting for success and has maybe, just maybe, learned from its failures.

The other notion is that both the core crowd and the outliers/console primes fail to materialize at the projected rates, which strands us at 200,000-300,000k; enough gas to make an Eternity sequel or whatever Obsidian wants to do with it.

Assuming the turn Eternity and the new KickStarter into successful franchises, with good banking it would take about 5-10 years before Obsidian was in a position to be self publishing.

I think that there were plans to port Eternity on tablets. It would easily grant additional amount of money.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

I want to murder Star Wars on the field of battle. I want to impale it, rifle through its possessions, then mail a letter to the widow and threaten her with death. I want to physically ruin Star Wars. If I were the president I would label it a terrorist organization and spend every dime in the NSA's budget to make Star Wars look like a child pornographer, then throw it in prison without access to an attorney and water board it.

 

[Roguey]

Big Voice acting session gone wrong for example.

Voice overs aren't that expensive.

I'm confident the Obsidian co-owners would know what to do with the money they get from PoE better than anyone itt, myself included. If that's EPISODIC SKYRIM so be it.

 

[Rake]

So that means that you would prefer 5 project eternities instead of one New Vegas?

I would prefer one Project Eternity instead of five New Vegas.