About that thread...

[FreedomFighter7]

I realized something last night, about a thread that linked to an article claiming the game industry isn't profitable or doing well. I couldn't find the thread.

The article is complete bullshit, total opinion. It claimed that it costs too much to develop a game and sell it and make a profit. It pulled some figures, that back in 2002 or so you could develop a game for 2 million with some features, but these days its around 6 million, with more features demanded of the game. MW2 sold 4.7 units in the first 24 hours. The game cost $60 USD for both PC and console versions. Nevermind the fact that this is the most popular game to date. 4,700,000 times 60 dollars is 282,000,000.

That's a fucking profit if I ever saw one. I bought Red Faction Guerilla, it sold around 1 million copies to date. I never heard anyone say whether its a good game or not, (hype, people's opinions) but it made a million copies. The game cost $60 for Xbox 360. The article claimed most games don't do well, and if this can be compared equal to the amount of games sold for a regular game, we can see that the games industry is NOT failing. Do the math, $60 million is way over $6 million, and if other games sell for this price, or near this price, with close to this many sales, you can see how this article is utter tripe.

[Ganon]

MW2 sold 4.7 units in the first 24 hours.

man those boycotters did good

[FreedomFighter7]

Oops, I meant 4.7 million, damn wikipedia put it as 4.7 million and I just remembered the 4.7 part. LOL.

[Heathen]

I read it as 4.7 million anyways.

And yeah, that article is bullshit.

[MetKiller Joe]

~stuff~

What you say makes sense to a point, but I thought that MS lost money on every console they made? Still, even after that, I'd imagine that they'd get a profit.

Well, I don't know anybody at IW, but if they still had that much money leftover I'd guess they're employees would get bonuses. The real question I would want to ask is what does the 6 mill factor in? Because if it factors in everything from labor, to pictures taken for texture work, to 3rd parties contracted to do specific tasks.. for such a large game doesn't make sense to me. Average pay for an experienced artist (from what I've read) is roughly 60,000 a year[Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_artist)]. So, 100 artists alone would take up the 6 mill this article talks about. Thought I'm pretty sure there are more artists than that considering the amount of content in the game, as well as managers, PR people, and everybody else; and those people get paid 100,000 or more.

That being said, I don't think the game industry is losing money; with all that is being bought from it at such a high rate, I doubt it.

[Dwood]

Eh 2D Boy has made a KILLING with World of Goo even only at a penny. :P

[Ganon]

From my understanding, game design is like slave labor.

[Limited]

The games industry is doing just fine and dandy. Yes it has been effected by the recession, but not dramatically. Also the areas it has, is due to idiots making stupid decisions which now due to the financial market has cost them dearly.

Just for your information, game budgets are increasing alot, GT5 is costing $60 million.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

But, then again, it is going to run at 1080p, 60fps on the ps3.

[Warsaw]

MS lifted the 720p requirement so game devs can make games run at native 1080p on the XBOX 360 now.

[jcap]

Heh, 720p and 1080p mean nothing when the hardware can't handle it. Halo 3 has a frame height of 640; MW2 only 600. I'd LOVE to see a graphically-heavy, system resource-hogging game that can natively run at 1080p.

(The reason I say heavy on graphics and system resources is because you can have a simple racetrack that looks pretty, but is small loop with only a few AI drivers. Compare that to a massive environment with hundreds of NPCs, explosions, sounds, and scripted events, and you have a lot more that needs to be done with a limited amount of RAM and CPU.)

[=sw=warlord]

Heh, 720p and 1080p mean nothing when the hardware can't handle it. Halo 3 has a frame height of only 640; MW2 only 600. I'd LOVE to see a graphically-heavy, system resource-hogging game that can natively run at 1080p.
We'll probably find crytek is working on that.

[legionaire45]

Most of the people who are say that gaming on the PC is dying don't take online distribution into account.

What's dying is retail sales for PC games, not sales of PC games overall.

Development costs are getting higher but so are the costs of the games themselves - in 2002 you could buy a new game for $50 or less.


What you say makes sense to a point, but I thought that MS lost money on every console they made? Still, even after that, I'd imagine that they'd get a profit.

Well, I don't know anybody at IW, but if they still had that much money leftover I'd guess they're employees would get bonuses. The real question I would want to ask is what does the 6 mill factor in? Because if it factors in everything from labor, to pictures taken for texture work, to 3rd parties contracted to do specific tasks.. for such a large game doesn't make sense to me. Average pay for an experienced artist (from what I've read) is roughly 60,000 a year[Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_artist)]. So, 100 artists alone would take up the 6 mill this article talks about. Thought I'm pretty sure there are more artists than that considering the amount of content in the game, as well as managers, PR people, and everybody else; and those people get paid 100,000 or more.

That being said, I don't think the game industry is losing money; with all that is being bought from it at such a high rate, I doubt it.

Interesting. Even if Activision is taking a hit with this, they always have millions of dollars of WoW money to fall back on.