Information Might & Magic X Teased by Ubisoft, To Be Revealed at PAX East

[InspectorRumpole]

I'm betting open world pseudo-sandbox. No party.

Luckily memories of IX dull the pain in recalling their own.

And an aRPG, that's my guess as well.
They're smelling Skyrim/Witcher money.

 

[Stabwound]

The MM setting is one of the turdiest and generic imaginable for an MMO. I still think it's going to be a Skyrim simulator or an honest attempt at a CRPG blobber.

 

[Sceptic]

What kind of idiot would take a classic single player franchise and then make a shitty MMO out of it?

The creator of the classic single player franchise

Seriously, does no one remember WHY he sold out to 3DO in the first place?

 

[Kirtai]

Maybe it's just not profitable enough for the big guys to bother with.

That's likely it (opportunity cost), plus they see big profits NAO! as vastly better for their quarterly bottom line than smaller profits over a longer period the way RPGs tend to do. Or even bigger cumulative profits for that matter.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Everything after 5 was kind of bad anyways, so I don't really care if they fuck it up.

Initiating chargeback on Barkley 2 pledge

 

[Excidium]

Let's just settle that everything after 5 was progressively worse.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Let's just settle that everything after VI was progressively worse.

 

[Gozma]

God a completely publisher-run Kickstarter attempt would be hilarious. I'm hoping they actually pull it half-cocked now instead of planning out how to do it in subtle astroturf straw-auteur ways that will work.

 

[deuxhero]

It will be interesting to see how kickstarter-funded games do when they're actually released. Unless they totally screwed the budget up, any sales post-kickstarter are free profit because they've already been paid for their time. I can't wait to see sales figures for Wasteland 2 and the like. Maybe it's just not profitable enough for the big guys to bother with.

The annoying thing is, even from a traditional business background led around by stupid analysit about what will sell, AAA titles simply don't make sense. They are a huge risk, and compared to many niche titles, they don't really give that big a profit relative to the cost of production.

The average cost for these games is somewhere from 15 million to 30 million, not even including marketing, which doubles it. Even assuming half the $60 new is raw profit (pretty sure it isn't, at least not for the publisher. There's a chart that breaks it down, but I don't have it saved), that's half a million copies at the bare minimum cost (other sources suggest the average is 23 mil). It doesn't make sense from the prospective of basic math to make that kind of risk.

 

[Stabwound]

Bigger is better is ingrained in our minds. There's a whole huge demographic out there that expects AAA action console games on a monthly basis. They're the vast majority. The sad thing is that it only ballooned to this point of absurd budgets because people let it. I have no interest in fully voiced, motion captured "press the button at the right time" games but that's what everyone wants now. Of course, like you say, there is a small and desperate market for smaller niche titles. You don't even have to worry about throwing around $50,000,000 on a project. You don't need Captain Picard to voice the king NPC.

Another thought, Might & Magic already has an online browser-based microtransaction game in progress. It would be weird if they wanted to have 2 come out.

 

[Kirtai]

The annoying thing is, even from a traditional business background led around by stupid analysit about what will sell, AAA titles simply don't make sense. They are a huge risk, and compared to many niche titles, they don't really give that big a profit relative to the cost of production.

The average cost for these games is somewhere from 15 million to 30 million, not even including marketing, which doubles it. Even assuming half the $60 new is raw profit (pretty sure it isn't, at least not for the publisher. There's a chart that breaks it down, but I don't have it saved), that's half a million copies at the bare minimum cost (other sources suggest the average is 23 mil). It doesn't make sense from the prospective of basic math to make that kind of risk.

Isn't it caused by the quarterly bottom line cycle that publicly held companies are beholden to? That is, it doesn't matter how much profit in total they get, it's how much appears on the bottom line of this quarter? Short sighted but it happens.

 

[eric__s]

Let's just settle that everything after 5 was progressively worse.

8 was better than 6 or 7 ; )

I actually bought 7 on GoG last night, played through the whole starting island and wondered how I was able to stomach this when I was a kid. The difference in quality between 1-5 and 6-8 is unbelievable. It's a totally different series.

 

[deuxhero]

The annoying thing is, even from a traditional business background led around by stupid analysit about what will sell, AAA titles simply don't make sense. They are a huge risk, and compared to many niche titles, they don't really give that big a profit relative to the cost of production.

The average cost for these games is somewhere from 15 million to 30 million, not even including marketing, which doubles it. Even assuming half the $60 new is raw profit (pretty sure it isn't, at least not for the publisher. There's a chart that breaks it down, but I don't have it saved), that's half a million copies at the bare minimum cost (other sources suggest the average is 23 mil). It doesn't make sense from the prospective of basic math to make that kind of risk.

Isn't it caused by the quarterly bottom line cycle that publicly held companies are beholden to? That is, it doesn't matter how much profit in total they get, it's how much appears on the bottom line of this quarter? Short sighted but it happens.

Possibly.

 

[hoverdog]

Let's just settle that everything after 5 was progressively worse.

8 was better than 6 or 7 ; )

WHAT.

 

[Gozma]

There are giant firehoses of capital out there that desperately want to buy into profitable sectors. AAA is a financial phenomenon of engorging the business to the point of unprofitability (relative to other investments, anyway) with capital, not a strict profit maximizing and risk minimizing enterprise.

 

[Jaesun]

Maybe it will have Arcomage. ;_;

 

[commie]

So, I assume this will outsourced to potato like the last two Heroes games, huh?

Those game went to the unwashed Hungarians, not to the glorious Polish nation.

 

[Castanova]

It will be interesting to see how kickstarter-funded games do when they're actually released. Unless they totally screwed the budget up, any sales post-kickstarter are free profit because they've already been paid for their time. I can't wait to see sales figures for Wasteland 2 and the like. Maybe it's just not profitable enough for the big guys to bother with.

The annoying thing is, even from a traditional business background led around by stupid analysit about what will sell, AAA titles simply don't make sense. They are a huge risk, and compared to many niche titles, they don't really give that big a profit relative to the cost of production.

The average cost for these games is somewhere from 15 million to 30 million, not even including marketing, which doubles it. Even assuming half the $60 new is raw profit (pretty sure it isn't, at least not for the publisher. There's a chart that breaks it down, but I don't have it saved), that's half a million copies at the bare minimum cost (other sources suggest the average is 23 mil). It doesn't make sense from the prospective of basic math to make that kind of risk.

On the contrary, it's the only type of risk that makes sense. These are massive corporations with BILLIONS of dollars of revenue. If they need to grow their stock price by 5-15% a year, it's simply impossible to achieve that on a regular basis by investing in smaller games. Sure, once in a while you'll make a game on the cheap which turns into a massive success but you can't rely on that year by year. Further, investing in many small titles versus a few big titles creates much more overhead and requires more management staff to oversee everything. Big budget AAA titles are literally the only option available for growing their revenue in ways that matter for a company so large.

 

[commie]

Maybe it will have Arcomage. ;_;

Don't even joke about it my son. About the only thing that would piss me off more than Ubishit raping M&M would be Bioware re-imagining a Gold Box game as a third person cover shooter where you get to romance the Mulmaster Beholder Corps.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[jewboy]

Let's just settle that everything after 5 was progressively worse.

8 was better than 6 or 7 ; )

I actually bought 7 on GoG last night, played through the whole starting island and wondered how I was able to stomach this when I was a kid. The difference in quality between 1-5 and 6-8 is unbelievable. It's a totally different series.

What OS did you play it on? Isn't windows 95/98 required? That's one reason I've almost never tried to replay MM6/7/8. It's pretty much the only reason I would need Win98.

 

[commie]

Let's just settle that everything after 5 was progressively worse.

8 was better than 6 or 7 ; )

I actually bought 7 on GoG last night, played through the whole starting island and wondered how I was able to stomach this when I was a kid. The difference in quality between 1-5 and 6-8 is unbelievable. It's a totally different series.

What OS did you play it on? Isn't windows 95/98 required? That's one reason I've almost never tried to replay MM6/7/8. It's pretty much the only reason I would need Win98.

A Codexer that doesn't have a mandatory native Win98/Dos machine? :monocle shatter:

 

[Wizfall]

I actually bought 7 on GoG last night, played through the whole starting island and wondered how I was able to stomach this when I was a kid. The difference in quality between 1-5 and 6-8 is unbelievable. It's a totally different series.

Glad to know someone who had the same feeling about the franchise.
Couldn't get into MM6, it was not horrible though.
The early MM were superior or at least quite different IMO.
I always liked better the Wizardry games anyways

 

[Grunker]

Let's just settle that everything after VII was progressively worse.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

The decline had already started with VII, New World Computing had contractual obligations with 3DO that forced them to drastically shorten their development cycles, and it shows. VI was a much more complete and polished product, with a lot more content and a much bigger world.