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Incline Square Enix claims "an intrinsic problem within the HD game business model."

deuxhero

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http://www.shacknews.com/article/81070/

It's just not sensible to work on a game for years, losing money, then release it and hope you'll make enough back

Annoyingly though, coming from SE this probably just means more iOS games, not the mid-budget wonders they made in the 90s, or the unique handheld games they occasionally make.
 

Metro

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Tends to happen when you spend two thirds (or more) of your budget on marketing and graphics. They're selling all three of those games in a $15 bundle on Amazon and I fully expect them to follow suit with EA and have their own Humble Bundle.
 

Spectacle

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Casuals are simply too unreliable a market when you don't have an established fanbase. They may not make rational purchase decisions, but for whatever reasons they don't buy every game either, and you never know where they'll spend their money.
 

MrBadIvan

Barely Literate
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Sep 10, 2013
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2
Huh? They complains, that business is too risky? Seems like someone there become too fat and clumsy...
 
Unwanted

Hornawkawk

Unwanted
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Does it mean we are not going to see any Final Fantasy games any time soon?
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I'm hoping this means they'll cancel Thief.

But it's more probable than this will serve as a lesson in hypocracy.

If I could manage the :effort: to make a scumbag memepic, it would have this text:

CLAIMS SPENDING YEARS BLEEDING MONEY INTO GAME DEVELOPMENT IS NOT A SENSIBLE BUSINESS MODEL

RELEASES A GAME THAT'S BEEN YEARS IN DEVELOPMENT, COSTING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND IS UNWANTED BY ALL
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
If they were serious, they'd cancel Thi4f and re-launch it as a medium budget game staying true to the old games, and they're hire either the TDM devs or some fan mission makers or track down the guy who made NewDark. Then they'd have a guaranteed success.
 

DalekFlay

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The obvious path is making lower budget games for dedicated audiences you know will buy them. Corporations always go after the big score though, like a drunk in Vegas, so they will probably jump to phone casual games hoping to make the next Angry Birds, then get lost in the shuffle (again) and spend a lot of time making nothing.

I doubt it will ever dawn on these companies to focus on their dedicated market.
 

baturinsky

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I think DLCs, addons and sequels-that-could-as-well-be-addons (like SR4 or Tropico 4) are ways to reduce high costs of making HD assets.
 

Dr Tomo

Learned
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Surprisingly Square actually isn't that bad of a company as they do take some risks unlike other publishers. The problem is that they are so bloated at this point that they are losing money to inefficiency and misplacement of resources and just bad decisions. A couple good examples is still trying to make the FF mmo work and re doing the whole thing from scratch on top of a cinematic to pretty up the failure of the first one and the other was moving to a different office building because a fortune teller said it was a good idea.
 

Name

Cipher
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What's Eidos's next big game? There is only Thief on the horizon. Square Enix has become my favorite publisher these years.
Are the new Legacy of Kain games going to be MMO only?
Well I guess they still have Tomb Raider 2, Hitman 6. And new IP Murdered: Soul Suspect.
Not bad I'd say. Big publisher. Very Great.
 

DeepOcean

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Nov 8, 2012
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What's Eidos's next big game? There is only Thief on the horizon. Square Enix has become my favorite publisher these years.
Are the new Legacy of Kain games going to be MMO only?
Well I guess they still have Tomb Raider 2, Hitman 6. And new IP Murdered: Soul Suspect.
Not bad I'd say. Big publisher. Very Great.
They fuck Thief.
They fuck Hitman.
They fuck Tomb Raider.
They make a passable Deus Ex sequel that people liked only because Invisible War was awful.
They turn Legacy of Kain on a MMO thing.
They fucked Final Fantasy games since VII.
Only game they made these days that are passable are Deus Ex and Sleeping dogs but both aren't mind blowing either.
So, Are they your favorite publisher? They aren't stone evil like Activision and EA but your favorite publisher, really?
 

sea

inXile Entertainment
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What's Eidos's next big game?
There's been no news yet. I know with Eidos Montreal, most people suspect a Deus Ex sequel (again) and it was also responsible for making that iPad Deus Ex game that nobody cares about as well. "Common thinking" says that if the next Deus Ex doesn't sell eighty billion copies, Eidos Montreal will be shuttered.

Not much better for Eidos as a whole. Tomb Raider was a success but fell below expectations and probably broke even (or maybe made a modest profit) while Hitman didn't sell very well for "modern standards" either (though I think it was on par with previous games).

Basically, Square Enix is just kinda oblivious at this point. It funnels huge amounts of money into games with what seems like very poor management and no plan on how to effectively appeal to both original fans and new audiences, it keeps shelling out for extremely expensive and time-consuming cutscenes to be made even though it's likely one of the company's biggest money sinks, and meanwhile it seems all of its developers have little to no oversight so end up making stupid decisions and then Square Enix only finds out after it's too late to save the projects.

Square Enix could actually learn a thing or two about EA and Activision. Shitty practices and evilness aside, those two companies generally don't bleed money and know how to manage projects efficiently.

FYI, Hitman's failure was largely a result of IO Interactive, not Square Enix. From what I have heard, IO got a lot of its art department guys to start doing game design on the team, and the result was a game where the focus was largely on pretty graphics, cool cutscenes and stylish, highly-scripted sequences and kills, rather than the open sandbox levels of past games. It only sold based on the reputation of the earlier games and most fans weren't happy with it, and since it's not a mainstream franchise that most people know about, it had no hope of bringing in too many new players either.

As others said, publishers need to realize where a game's appeal lies and to budget according to realistic projected sales, not "if we turn this kiddie platform game into a Call of Duty clone, but keep the kiddie graphics, art style, characters and themes, it'll sell as well of Call of Duty because kids all want Call of Duty but can't buy M-rated games, right?" I realize that publishers (especially shareholders) are afraid of new intellectual property because it's unproven, but generally speaking if you want to compete with Halo, Gears, Call of Duty, etc. then you need to show the public something new that looks cooler and better than what they already like, otherwise they will have no reason to care no matter how established the franchise they're diddling is.
 

DalekFlay

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As others said, publishers need to realize where a game's appeal lies and to budget according to realistic projected sales, not "if we turn this kiddie platform game into a Call of Duty clone, but keep the kiddie graphics, art style, characters and themes, it'll sell as well of Call of Duty because kids all want Call of Duty but can't buy M-rated games, right?" I realize that publishers (especially shareholders) are afraid of new intellectual property because it's unproven, but generally speaking if you want to compete with Halo, Gears, Call of Duty, etc. then you need to show the public something new that looks cooler and better than what they already like, otherwise they will have no reason to care no matter how established the franchise they're diddling is.

I think the rich people at the top want to roll the dice every single time because a) they get millions no matter what, b) the layoffs don't effect them, and c) if they happen to hit it lucky with a World of Warcraft then they get a huge payoff.
 

Turjan

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Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
I think the rich people at the top want to roll the dice every single time because a) they get millions no matter what, b) the layoffs don't effect them, and c) if they happen to hit it lucky with a World of Warcraft then they get a huge payoff.

Oh, they do affect them. Stock prices rise after layoffs, which means a bigger bonus.

I see one major failure missing from the discussions: Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days :D . Or is three years already too old? At least they still list it on their PC Games page.
 

DalekFlay

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I see one major failure missing from the discussions: Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days :D .

That's an amusing example where game one sells pretty well based on hype and early console software droughts, but game two sells like shit because no one actually liked game one. Sales don't equate to consumer satisfaction, you find out the next game what they really thought.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
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Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
As others said, publishers need to realize where a game's appeal lies and to budget according to realistic projected sales, not "if we turn this kiddie platform game into a Call of Duty clone, but keep the kiddie graphics, art style, characters and themes, it'll sell as well of Call of Duty because kids all want Call of Duty but can't buy M-rated games, right?"
Sea, You were joking but accidentaly guessed the EA mode of thinking:lol::
 

DalekFlay

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There was a gamasutra article recently that praised that shit as the real way to get mainstreamers to play shooters.
 

tuluse

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Jul 20, 2008
Messages
11,400
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
As others said, publishers need to realize where a game's appeal lies and to budget according to realistic projected sales, not "if we turn this kiddie platform game into a Call of Duty clone, but keep the kiddie graphics, art style, characters and themes, it'll sell as well of Call of Duty because kids all want Call of Duty but can't buy M-rated games, right?" I realize that publishers (especially shareholders) are afraid of new intellectual property because it's unproven, but generally speaking if you want to compete with Halo, Gears, Call of Duty, etc. then you need to show the public something new that looks cooler and better than what they already like, otherwise they will have no reason to care no matter how established the franchise they're diddling is.

I think the rich people at the top want to roll the dice every single time because a) they get millions no matter what, b) the layoffs don't effect them, and c) if they happen to hit it lucky with a World of Warcraft then they get a huge payoff.
They're not rolling the dice though. They're doing what they think is playing it safe.
 

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