QUOTE | “If you want to sell a game for $60, to the player it has to feel like $200…In 2014, $60 for a game is a little insane.” – Creative director Adrian Chmielarz talking about the lessons of Bulletstorm and the problem with prices.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “We have to rigorously pursue install-base numbers. The biggest driver for our network business will be the PlayStation 4 .” – Sony CEO Kaz Hirai, emphasising the importance of the PlayStation 4 to the company’s future.
QUOTE | “I have no intent to do anything different with Xbox than we are doing today.” – New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, reassuring the public that he has no plans to sell the Xbox business.
QUOTE | “You’ve got to listen to what they want…and those people wanted a Kinect-less Xbox One.” – Capy Games cofounder Nathan Vella, talking about why he liked Microsoft’s decision to create a $499 Xbox One.
QUOTE | “Success buys freedom. It’s really just as simple as that.” – Massive Entertainment’s David Polfeldt talking about Ubisoft, F2P and new technology, and how you get to do what you want.
QUOTE | “It seems quite obvious that Red Dead is a permanent franchise… or Borderlands, for example, and NBA and others.” – Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, talking about which franchises will see sequels, including GTA of course.
QUOTE | “It’s not just an ESO thing… It doesn’t matter the way that we want to do it — it has to fit their requirements.” – Bethesda VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines, explaining the delay of The Elder Scrolls Online for consoles is partly because of the console requirements.
QUOTE | “[Art] is usually the single biggest tripping point for Western devs hoping to reach Japan.” – Shintaro Kanaoya, founder and CEO of Chorus Worldwide, giving tips on how to make Western games successful in Japan.
QUOTE | “Games aren’t going to be in their own little world anymore. They’re going to become something really important for society.” – Improbable CEO Herman Narula, talking about his company’s mission to change nearly everything about game worlds.
Comments
9 responses to “This Week In The Business: Our Prices Are Insane”
Good one Steve, I sure would!
Yet when we the gamer, try to sell a game, we only get $12.50! Now that’s what I call value!
True. Also I was having a stab at how games are not $60 here. Some of these articles should be kept off the Australian website because they’re totally irrelevant – just for the sake of content padding.
Nah – just has to be a good game! Thinking of a game as a product, instead of an original experience, will only give your company the reputation of a cheap fast-food restaurant. Originality always trumps copycatting. And selling cheap plastic crap with a game as “special edition” is nothing more than a happy-meal.
“Franchising is the practice of selling the right to use a firm’s successful business model. For the franchisor, the franchise is an alternative to building “chain stores” to distribute goods that avoids the investments and liability of a chain. Essentially, and in terms of distribution, the franchisor is a supplier who allows an operator, or a franchisee, to use the supplier’s trademark and distribute the supplier’s goods.” (Wiki)
This is not how great games are made. Franchising is how great games are gutted and destroyed.
My understanding is that Take-Two owns the rights to the Red Dead name and concept as the publisher, but Rockstar (San Diego?) are the developers. Take-Two licenses Rockstar to build the game and then splits the proceeds of the distribution with them. To Take-Two, Red Dead is a franchise, so it’s technically correct.
It’s not the point. The point is thinking of a series as a franchise is the problem.
Or another way; a great game is not a cheeseburger.
Walking dead is a franchise but it still manages to be amazing in each separate media it’s chosen to partake in. Just because something is being classified as a franchise doesn’t mean the quality will diminish, especially if great developers are chosen to work on it, such as rockstar.
There was that FPS TWD game – It sucked. The comics are losing their spine and the TV show is a diluted version of what made the comics popular in the first place.
Each to their own, really. Personally I don’t like cheeseburgers.