Game News South Park RPG Combat Video Feature

[thesisko]

Dragon Age sold pretty well - 3.2 mil copies in 6 months.

Dragon Age seems to exist as an exception, everything we've heard from Obsidian indicate that publishers aren't interested in multiplatform RPGs with a similar combat system.
As for the PC, unlike strategy games, I think that publishers simply don't recognize that there is a niche to be filled. We either need a smaller publisher like Paradox to greenlight something or an indie studio with a string of successful games to self-fund a larger project. Larian Studios has the capability, but it's just not their kind of game.

 

[Roguey]

Definitely not. Nobody wants to risk (it's always a risk) tens of millions of dollars for a lousy (let's say 10%) profit after 2 years. I have no idea how many copies NWN2 sold, what the budget was, etc, but clearly it wasn't a commercially successful title. If it was, Nathaniel wouldn't have added "modest" (you just don't do it if you think your game did well), and Atari would have humped Feargus' leg to get NWN3 going.

An article from 2004:

The movie industry's rule of thumb is that just 2 out of 10 movies make a profit. Video game executives say their industry now has about the same batting average.

And from 2008:

Of the games that enter production, only 4% wind up making a profit. But many of those games never reach the market. That means the proportion of games that reach the market that are profitable is 20%.

I doubt the situation has changed all that much for the better and if that's accurate, Obsidian's been doing pretty well compared to the industry as a whole (with only one confirmed flop with Alpha Protocol and two canceled). It seems like Atari decided that an action-oriented Neverwinter OMG MMO would have the potential to make them more money than another NWN with a single-player campaign.

Dragon Age sold pretty well - 3.2 mil copies in 6 months.

Given its 5-year-development cycle with over 200 people contributing, its RoI couldn't have been all that great. Clearly not enough for EA/Bioware considering they felt it necessary to rush out a sequel.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

First of all half the codex pretty much ARE pale basement virgins.

Actually, half the Codex are working people, many of them with families.

I know. Not the half I meant.

 

[bhlaab]

I think the D&D license is completely irrelevent to video games nowadays.

Pretty much. As long as you can press A and do AWESOME, it sells. Fuck this skill and character development shit. It's too confusing!

I don't even mean on that level. I mean you're better off just making your own ruleset that actually fits the medium and making your own lord of the rings ripoff setting than licensing D&D because nobody cares anymore. Or at the very least the people who never cared in the first place now massively overpower the ones who still do.

D&D is still a powerful tabletop license, but it means fuckall for video games nowadays.

 

[Mozgoëbstvo]

D&D is still a powerful tabletop license

I hope that pile of horseshit called the 4th edition gets crushed by Pathfinder.

 

[St. Toxic]

I liked the part where he said:

I'm not gonna say it's so simple that you just mash a button and watch funny things happen... but, y'know, it's an RPG.

 

[Serious_Business]

First of all half the codex pretty much ARE pale basement virgins.

Actually, half the Codex are working people, many of them with families.

That's even worst

 

[damicore]

So, Half the codex are pale basement virgins and the other half are former pale basement virgins amirite?

Some people should start considering coming out of the nerd closet.