Brink dev: games market is top heavy

By Fred Dutton Published 13 May, 2011

"1% of games make 99% of the profit."

A top heavy games industry in which a tiny number of titles claim the vast majority of the spoils is stifling innovation, so says the developer behind multiplayer FPS Brink.

When asked during an MTV interview to pinpoint the biggest problem currently facing the industry, Splash Damage's creative director Richard Ham replied:

"One per cent of the games make 99 per cent of the profit, leaving everything else to wither on the vine. This can be bad for innovation.

"We've got to find ways to get people interested in some of the other stuff out there, because a lot of it is REALLY good and deserves to succeed, otherwise risk-taking will become rarer and rarer."

Whether Brink - available for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 today - will manage to widen the playing field remains to be seen, but it certainly deserves to find an audience.

"Brink is an exceptional team shooter, smart, supremely well balanced and with a unique, exciting art style," surmised Eurogamer's Simon Parkin in his 8/10 review.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (68) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Nukemasta #1 1 year ago

    Maybe its because some new IPs get overhyped before they are released and fail to deliver on the promises, which is funny as Brink is a perfect example of this. Gamers want and expect consistency and they buy sequels because they are happy to play more of the same type of game.
    Edited by Nukemasta at 13/05/11 @ 21:58

  • The-Jack-Burton #2 1 year ago

    Brink devs should focus on not making a shitty game, before they start talking profit margins

  • timewarp87 #3 1 year ago

    Yeah Brink is like the operations part of Killzone 3.

    The funniest part of the game is the names for the control layouts

  • CrispyXUK64 #4 1 year ago

    sadly its all about marketing

  • God_Octo #5 1 year ago

    I think the problem is that at times, 98% of games are shovelware. And the other 1% get ignored due to the idea that anything beneath 80% reviews isn't worth playing. Basically, a new business model is needed- games shouldn't automatically retail at £40 if they aren't worth it. I picked up The Saboteur, Wet and The Sly Collection new because the were sensibly priced (£25-30) and they were worth every penny. They ain't perfect, but I can't complain at that price point. That's what needs to be done, instead of sending every game out at full price to be brutally murdered by its identically priced competitors.

    EDIT: Just noticed, Brink is advertised for £50 quid at the top of the article. This is exactly why its in a sticky situation...
    Edited by God_Octo at 13/05/11 @ 22:10

  • Tryhard #6 1 year ago

    Wow they keep telling us they gave Brink 8/10.

    You'd think they'd be embarrassed about it?

  • MojoDex #7 1 year ago

    8/10 is kind of stupid. It's really not very good at all!

  • metalangel #8 1 year ago

    This is pretty much what I said a few days ago, that people play CoD and NOTHING ELSE.

  • PinktotheLast #9 1 year ago

    What game recently has done really badly, yet was actually really good?

    Clearly from what people are saying Brink isnt good. People go on about Enslaved but that just wasn't that fun.

    Serious question. What got stellar reviews but absolutely bombed?

  • Rirekon #10 1 year ago

    Only 1% of games are any good?

    I kid, but seriously you've got to question the market you're entering and the competition you're facing. An innovative game which is focusing on an untapped market is going to have more room to be profitable than one entering an over saturated market.

  • rotsujin #11 1 year ago

    This just in: Maker of under-realized game preemptively blames the market for poor performance. More at 11.

  • PinktotheLast #12 1 year ago

    To answer my own question there have been quite a few racing games that have done really badly recently, but that whole genre is creativly stuck at the moment.

  • Red930 #13 1 year ago

    I dunno what you are all moaning about, Brink is proper good MP online, proper good - at leats the PC version is, dunno about the rest.

    I can see it may be a marmite game, but give it 20 mins online and then form an opinion.

    The mistake Splash Damage made was sending out review copies that did not represent the game.

    Seriously, Brink is awesome.

  • Geordiemp #14 1 year ago

    Its a saturated shooter market.

    COD does twich fast 60 fps frenetic gameplay well, and is pretty deep with perks, gun recoil stats, and prestiging levelling..

    BF has a great engine, 30 FPS but diversity and destrible environment and is strategic.

    Players still play these games for years after release, they are tuned to perfect what they do.

    We see others try for the crown, like crysis, with an impressive engine and huge areas. Brink brinks parkour, 4 team play and I cannot see what else ?

    Too many devs want the money, but probably put in 5 % of the effort that the succesful games and engines deliver in their own way.

  • HyperTails #15 1 year ago

    The amount of people i've seen (mostly Americans) saying how Brink is terrible, etc is worrying. It was one of those titles that was unique and stood out, so if it sucks then it really was a case of the developers believing their own hype.

    I'm yet to play it though. However, good, unique games need to start doing better. Enslaved was brilliant, yet didn't hit even 1 million. Yet 'generic military FPS game no 37' hits millions of sales and makes millions in profit. Its wrong.

  • Phantom_Dynamite #16 1 year ago

    I don't get what Splash Damage was up too, even after the 6 month delay this game had it still seems unfinished.

    Isn't releasing broken games also bad for innovation.

  • Ahskay #17 1 year ago

    I like Brink and i am looking forward to playing the game online vs real people. Everybody saying it's shit clearly have some issues because the game is really not that bad and that 8/10 is well deserved. Brink is what operations in KZ3 should've been.

  • Ziggy_badMonkey #18 1 year ago

    Weird thing is Brink is not broken ! The negative reviews came from reviewing of non final release code from what I've heard from the forum postings.
    I've played it a fair bit and its really bloody good, yeah the SP is not the usual SP but Splash Damage never promised anything other than "mingleplayer"
    The single player trains you to play multiplayer so that when you venture online your ready to play.
    I much prefer this to the usual process of jumping online in say MOH and spending the first 1 week getting sniped from the other side of the map on spawn.
    I tried going back to BLOPS yesterday and it felt slow and clunky without the ability to jump and vault !

  • dean0null #19 1 year ago

    Enslaved was clunky. It had technical and design issues. Pop-in, shiny poles to guide you, poor combat. I enjoyed it, but to say that it was brilliant is over doing it.

  • Collymilad #20 1 year ago

    I do agree partly with the idea that some IP's fail because they are overhyped.

    There's the other side of the story though. Devs continue to tell people their game will be made by god himself and people continue to believe it despite the fact it's NEVER true. If you set yourself up like this everything is going to be a disappointment.

    So stop doing it :p

  • LazyNinjaUk #21 1 year ago

    Before playing Brink I would have sided with Splash Damage 100%, after playing Brink - a game I have looking forward too for more than a year, now I couldn't care less what they say.

    Apart from the brilliant art style and customisation, Brink is easily one of the most frustrating, unfinished and unblanced pieces of shit I have ever played. I've never been a big fan of the Portal games but I am now going to trade Brink in for what I know IS a good game.

    I will not miss the fuckwit stupid AI or horrendously bad and repetetive gameplay one iota.
    Edited by LazyNinjaUk at 13/05/11 @ 22:47

  • Softie2k #22 1 year ago

    I am not sure why, but compared to the rest of the British games suck. They're graphically poor, too quirky to be a world wide success, AI is generally non-existent and they are always over sold because we can't bear to admit we're crap at everything but ideas.

    The only decent thing we do is racing/driving games.

    The move to 3D killed the UK as a games programming nation.

  • bad09 #23 1 year ago

    What bollocks.

    One per cent of the games make obscene amounts of money the other 99% THINK they deserve the same. All this shit started when the likes of COD and GTA made huge piles of cash never seen before and now everyone thinks their game should bring that in.

    Maybe 99% of the industry should realistic about what they will make, and maybe, just maybe devs should think twice about making yet another fucking boring multiplayer FPS. Honestly Mr Ham in an already far too over-saturated genre your game is utterly uninteresting (and pretty average to from what gamers and press are saying).

  • Redflooch #24 1 year ago

    I just bought brink on the ps3. I've been playing the single player which is waaaaay too short but it's good for the small time you have it. I can just tell that when psn comes back up that the multiplayer will be awesome.

  • Lexmeister #25 1 year ago

    I can't ignore the issue of genre here. I will probably get Enslaved at some point if the price is right, because it sounds interesting.

    I just don't feel the need for another shooter in my life. So no thanks Bulletstorm, Crysis 2 or Brink. Too late to the party.

    Maybe that's also why i found last year's Expo a tad stale.

  • DaemonSpawn #26 1 year ago

    Maybe some devs should make cheaper (i mean budget, not price) games crafted for smaller audience instead of trying to release yet another Call of Duty-like shooter or Oblivion-like action-rpg?

    I'd be glad to buy and play a real role-playing game with lots of choices, interactions and good plot, even if it had isometric Fallout 1/2-like view - and I guess it's much cheaper to develop without all of the shiny content, mo-cap, super-detailed models, animations and voice-overs (I can get by without actors reading dialogue lines for me, thanks). And developers could make much more complex quests without the need to animate every npc movement, operate camera angles etc.

    Maybe there won't be millions of copies sold (like Mass Effect or Fallout 3), but most of developers out there aren't exactly Bioware or Bethesda - a hundred thousand copies can make a decent budget for a low-tech isometric rpg.

    I will pay my 50-60 bucks for a game made for me (and not for generic 5-10 million male audience of 8-25 years old with short attention span and little desire to learn anything more complex than point-and-shoot) - look at Stardock with their Galactic Civilizations, look at Bohemia Interactive with ARMA 1/2, remember Minecraft, Witcher, Hearts Of Iron, Mount and Blade - these are all games made with relatively small audience in mind, and they are all quite profitable without tens of millions of copies sold.

  • Murton #27 1 year ago

    "One per cent of the games make 99 per cent of the profit, leaving everything else to wither on the vine. This can be bad for innovation."

    Why do so many innovators say this? It's only bad for innovation if people like you cease to innovate in order to chase profit. I also think you're selling yourself a little short, you've basically complained about being crushed by Call of Duty on your release day and months before the new CoD is even released, if you had managed to create an even slightly aggressive AI that would fight for mission objectives Brink would be a much better game than people are giving it credit for, but the AI is poor and as a result the game can only really be enjoyed in full multiplayer, and even that is questionable if people are going to try to play deathmatch in an objective driven game.

    Only played about an hour if that, Brink certainly has potential, but an 8/10 it is not. I'm leaning towards a 6-7, I'd be willing to upgrade it to an 8 if and when we see an AI improvement and some extra maps (for free, not paid DLC) 8 maps isn't enough for an MP shooter by any stretch.

    "Serious question. What got stellar reviews but absolutely bombed?"
    Vanquish is probably the best example you'll find from recent history. Reviewers were pretty unanimous in their praise but it just didn't seem to sell.

  • funkateer #28 1 year ago

    I've played Brink a while yesterday and I think it might be flawed in some ways, but it's also pretty engaging and fresh and original. I agree to Eurogamer's 8/10, and that's without having played it online. Give it a try!

  • NewbieZilla #29 1 year ago

    Worse than the apparent failings of Brink, I can't throw lol in its name and make it sound funny. Now that I can't abide.

  • Mister-Wario #30 1 year ago

    It's tricky. On one hand you can make a generic game or a sequel, and sell a decent amount of copies because it's a tried-and-tested formula people are familiar with. On the other, if you make something truly original it can often come across as too quirky and different for people to give it a go. Other factors like marketing come into it, but at the end of the day I really do feel that you have to change people's interests to get them to buy your games, and how do you accomplish that?

  • PinktotheLast #31 1 year ago

    @murton

    You're right Vanquish was ace. So there we go, Splash damage must be right.

  • aphex187 #32 1 year ago

    Come on guys how long have you actually played BRINK for? 1 hr? Once you get used to it, it becomes a fun and highly addictive team based shooter. I'm currently playing it on the PC and after 2days update it's running smooth as butter on my ageing rig.

    I'm also seeing a lot of people moaning about the game yet they don't even bloody own it!

  • HEAVYface #33 1 year ago

    i've seen the brink advert at least 6 times this week.

    people have been slating the game (is he saying brink is innovative? or is the guy commenting on other devs innovative games stalling?)

    i saw the OFP 3 advert once.

    people have been slating the game.

    brink will sell more than flashpoint without doubt, even though they're equally average squad based shooters. marketing wins, gamers lose.

    as mentioned, games need to be cheaper. i've taken a punt on loads of games because they are £10 or less and i'm rarely dissapointed, my expectations are lowered because of the entrance fee.

  • MiY4MOTO #34 1 year ago

    @SoftieUK

    "I am not sure why, but compared to the rest of the British games suck."

    I'm assuming that this non-sensical sentence is meant to say that Britain produces shit videogames?

    Some of my favourite games this generation were from good ol' Blighty!

    Batman: Arkham Asylum, Fable 2, Crackdown, Grand Theft Auto 4, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, Geometry Wars 2 etc.

    Also, for the record I quite like Brink. It's different approach to online multiplayer makes it feel odd. I suspect people will bitch about this in much the same way people did about Mirror's Edge or Shadowrun.

    Someone dares to make an FPS that's not CoD / Halo / BF and most people won't give it a chance.

    I'm enjoying Brink, it's more complicated and not as open as I'd thought it would be, but will it keep me off Battlefield? Probably not.

    For now it's an interesting diversion, but since most of my mates are playing Battlefield, I guess I won't be playing it for too long.

  • Mr.DNA #35 1 year ago

    @LazyNinjaUk: "I've never been a big fan of the Portal games"

    What, all three hours of the one game you've played?

  • TheRealBadabing #36 1 year ago

    Brink would have been a good XBLA game but I don't think it could have been released there in it's current state. The amount of bugs would probably have stopped it being published on the indie section too.

    Shambles of a release and no amount of whining will excuse shipping a full price game that is borderline broken. Very pissed off that I spent £40 on this today.

  • Oskool #37 1 year ago

    He's right about the game market being top heavy, but wrong about the reason why. The reason it's top heavy is because new games for consoles cost over $60. Then costs are further increased on consumers with DLC content, which is essentially some of the game cut out and resold to consumers.

    It's not that consumers don't want to buy all these games, it's that they can't afford to. Game prices are now starting to fall drastically after a few months. I picked up Borderlands Game of the Year edition with all 4 DLC add-on packs for $24 out the door.

    New games aren't selling good until the prices come down. One way or the other. I'm willing to wait for a lower price. It appears I'm not the only one.

  • Breach #38 1 year ago

    Only 1% are getting the profits because of the amount of games released now.
    10 years ago when the market was not as saturated, it was easier to sell games.

    If you can't stand the heat ...
    Edited by Breach at 14/05/11 @ 01:13

  • mickey2002 #39 1 year ago

    Play SP on HARD and watch yourself scream at the friendly bots doing nothing. Like if I'#m hacking then least be a dam human shield and stand infront of me to take bullets or you could just fire at the guy (that be too easy thou wouldn't it

  • Laminator #40 1 year ago

    Gaming press is as much to blame as anything. Corrupt review scores abound and too many people use these scores as their basis for whether a game is worth buying or not. It's been this way for several years now at least. If you look here (PC example) http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/r... then if you average the critic and user scores you usually get a roughly accurate review score of what the game should have had.

  • Red930 #41 1 year ago

    PC gamers can pick his up for just over 20 quid if you google it. It seems the Pc version is the better option at the moment, with steamworks, server browsers etc. Unfortunately for the consoles you are left with hideous bugs (XBOX) inability to play online (PS3) and this is at its bare-bones a PC game. It works well on pc, full AA, dedicated servers. It looks great and plays well, mine is running at 100FPS at the moment - steady as a rock, and thats with the GTX275 which is not a young card that you can pick up for 120 quid nowadays. If you play with a mouse and keys, buy it. Its great.

  • CaptainKid #42 1 year ago

    @LazyNinjaUk
    I was wondering if I should buy Brink or at least investigate the game any further.
    (Does it have dedicated servers and a server browser, how is XP handled, mod editor, etc.)

    Your comment was the final straw to make me ignore the game.
    To bad, I was looking forward to a modern and even better version of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territoy. :(

    Guess I'm going to retire regarding online FPS.

  • woodnotes #43 1 year ago

    Isn't is 20% of games make 80% of the profit? Pareto's Law and all that.

  • coolbritannia #44 1 year ago

    I doubt anyone calling Brink shit in here has actually played it. Mentality of sheep, fucking pathetic.

  • phil_75 #45 1 year ago

    ^They sound like a PC gamer in geek paradise sad RPG coz got no life games, is that why?^

    Eerrrm.......MAKE DECENT ONLINE GAMES THEN

    How stupid are they

    COD might not have great single player (apart from COD 4) but online is addictive!
    GT5 might not have great single player but online is addictive!
    BFBC2 might .............
    FIFA might ..........

    Getting the picture?
    Edited by phil_75 at 14/05/11 @ 05:39

  • Ryze #46 1 year ago

    Games are too HUGE!

    In modern - CAREER - life, I could buy ONE big game like Assassin's Creed or Red Dead, and it could last me ALL YEAR at least.

    That one game is usually a prominent, unmissable one. So you have to make your title a must have, then keep drip feeding the marketing for it over a longer time.

    The tiny window in which a game is launched is often not enough time for me to decide to begin another game with 20-500 hours of potential gaming time on the disc, and to pay another £30-40 to purchase.

    I have a queue in my head, but forget about certain games. Unfortunately, the ones that aren't well esablished like Vanquish and Brink can be the easiest to forget 6-12 months down the line.

    The industry REALLY needs to deal with this by allowing DOWNLOAD RENTALS of full titles, where I can pay according to the time I spend playing. Hopefully I'd be able to start playing as soon as the first level downloads, and then the rest can be pulled down in the background as required.

    ALSO - WE NEED a serious critic's show - that's decent for adults to watch, rather than dumb geek kids making shit jokes. Something that NORMAL people can tolerate without demanding something else be played instead. These shows need to be accessible from the consoles, in order that we can choose our games.

    It wouldn't hurt if they were on national TV as well, so that the mainstream who rarely touch the online services can also see the best games out, and be encouraged to buy.

    I'm not surprised at all that very few games sell. The industry does a VERY BAD job at promoting MOST of its games to MOST people.

  • whoyouknow #47 1 year ago

    "Risk taking will become rarer and rarer."

    Valve was a business built on risks. They still take risks. The difference is they think long and hard about them and often bail on bad ideas when they're months deep into them. From what I've heard, Brink is full of bugs and doesn't play too well anyway.

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the only devs that complain about profit margins/the second hand market/the game-buying public are the devs that aren't making anybody's favourite game. I've never heard anyone from Rockstar say anything along these lines. And speaking of Rockstar, I bet L.A. Noire will sell dam busters, and they seem to have innovated their dicks off with that one.

  • Inmediasress #48 1 year ago

    Seems like Brink is done for I didn't play it but seeing as it missed out on steam on release day for some error in the Uk and psn problems and then comes the ton of negative reviews so for those people that hope that it wont sink I think it already did.
    Edited by Inmediasress at 14/05/11 @ 07:21

  • sabbede #49 1 year ago

    That is off the usual 80/20 mark.
    That is, 80% of profits from 20% of market participants.

    I blame the market structure. EA and Activision screwing the pooch and dumping absurd amounts of cash into marketing the same old thing.

  • ulikmegee #50 1 year ago

    Brink is shit/

  • Demiath #51 1 year ago

    Extremely ironic to hear the developer of a multiplayer-oriented first person modern military shooter talk about the value of "risk-taking"...

  • Bigmac1910 #52 1 year ago

    Im sorry, but not all games are worth £40, I would have picked it up if it was £20, maybe they need to think volume, instead of few but expensive copies. As it stands, I doubt I'll ever pick up brink now, cause buy the time it will be £20 no will play it anymore.
    Edited by Bigmac1910 at 14/05/11 @ 08:17

  • Murton #53 1 year ago

    "Im sorry, but not all games are worth £40, I would have picked it up if it was £20, maybe they need to think volume, instead of few but expensive copies."

    If publishers sold directly to us then this argument would make sense, but with a retailer model it just doesn't work. For the sake of easy maths we'll say that Game X cost 20 million to make and market and that the publisher is wholesaling at £20 and have global orders for launch stock totally 1 million copies with an RRP of £40. Retailers follow this making it a 50/50 split in terms of profits and everybody wins on launch day.

    Meanwhile Game Y cost the same amount, has the same number of orders and is wholesaling at the same price, but the publisher wants to outsell X and so sets their RRP at £30. Do you really expect retailers to hold two products which are essentially the same and cost the same at different prices and mess up their margins based on the publishers say so?

    Games cost £40 and that's it unfortunately. The only way we'll see cheaper games is if publishers reduce their wholesale costs to better reflect the budget spend, lower wholesale means retailers can afford to pass on reduced RRP, which means cheaper games for us, but if any link in that chain is missing, then it's going to be £40 because that's the norm.

  • jumpdeveraux #54 1 year ago

    With the plethora of games on offer these days it's easy for a gamer to get out of sync from buying new releases Day 1. I wanted a PS3 but had a wealth of games on my PC I was playing and still had to even play once. Ended up buying the PS3 Slim when it launched which meant I could pick up lots of great titles that were now discounted to 15 quid (and they'd been patched up etc.). It's rare I buy a game day one these days as I'm happy to wait for reviews etc as I simply have tons of other games to play (especially post Steam sales).

    (With the economic environment I think gamers are perhaps more cautious - sometimes games can fall in price very rapidly post launch so it can pay to wait).

    I was sitting on the fence with Brink but I might pick it up in a while when it's say 15-20 quid for a laugh - gives me time to see how well it gets patched and whether Splash Damage will deliver more maps free of charge rather than try and milk more dollars from their userbase.

  • suicida #55 1 year ago

    A multiplayer only shooter with 8 maps for £40? No chance. Halo Reach had a big SP campaign, co-op, Firefight, AND multiplayer (with more than 8 maps) for the same price at launch, much less now.

    As others have said, if Brink was £20-£30 then it might have found an audience. It's like Shadowrun all over again.

  • asphaltcowboy #56 1 year ago

    Brink is really good actually... sounds like most people here are basing their opinions on a couple of overly negative US reviews. The top heavy nature of the games industry is an issue, but I don't know that you can fix it really. It's true that it can greatly impact creativity and innovation.

  • evilrobot #57 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 22:12:53 08-05-2012

  • thedriffter50 #58 1 year ago

    Whats wrong with games today is its online/graphics over gameplay.

    Make a good game and people will buy it. Why should I spend £40 on a game that won't even last me a week when games such as FIFA/CoD/GTA will last me months and cost less as well ?

  • metalangel #59 1 year ago

    @redbarony:
     
    To be fair to those titles, they're all PC games (not 100% sure about Shattered Origins but the others definitely are) and also extremely niche to begin with.
     
    Hardcore flight sims used to be THE genre on PC, but the love has dwindled away somewhat in the last decade. Trainz, meanwhile, is largely the same game I bought back in 2001 (many of the assets are still the same) and even the fanatic community is beginning to tire of having to build the fun for themselves from the largely inconsistent and badly-organized database of usermade content. Magicka is at least intriguing, I was given an invitation by a friend who I think was testing it, we never got around to actually firing it up to try it.
     
    Go over to the consoles and you finally find a genuinely hardcore game like Section 8: Prejudice has been released and people seem to like it. Except... the hardcore play the game demands isn't always there. I've never heard anyone using voice comms, so in a game where teamwork is all but essential most of the time you're reduced to either ramboing around or spotting someone else doing something and trying to keep up as they solo off oblivious to your presence. While I love the game I find myself swearing under my breath as simple base captures or objectives are thwarted because I have no backup and the enemy manages to get the first shots in and so kills me.
     
    This could be why stuff like CoD and Left4Dead thrive on consoles... CoD because you can just run off on your own and stand a chance, while Left4Dead all but forces you to work together. Brink, meanwhile, doesn't seem to contain enough content or complexity to warrant a full pricetag.
    Edited by metalangel at 14/05/11 @ 12:18

  • dingo75 #60 1 year ago

    Shattered Origins - Guardians of Unity : A space flight/combat game. Small developer, small budget, good game that people like, but probably on about 12 people in the world even bought it.

    Interesting thanks.
    I googled it, checked its website and saw it's on Gamersgate for 14 EUR.
    Now guess what I did: Put in on my Wishlist there because I KNOW it will be 50% or even 70% off in the next 6 months.
    I did the same with "Xenus 2" and "Precursors" when they finally came to Gamersgate (Russian games).
    Boom after 4 months they went to 50% off and I bought both for the price of one of them full price!

    Same with Brink:
    This game smells of a 50% off in Steam Weekend deal (actually given the recent problems I assume it will be a free Weekend offer soon). So why should I pay more for a game that might not run decently on my ATI HD4870 (a graphics card that is not brand new and pretty popular so your game should run on it since back in alpha stage for all I know)?

    This is part of the problem: Sane consumers that don't need the newest toy when it comes out shop smartly.
    How can you adapt as developer / publisher? I don't know to be honest.

    For me it's:
    Full price for a Collector's Edition of a game I want
    22 EUR for a game I want to have boxed max (offers on zavvi.com etc. incl. shipping to Europe)
    Max 10 EUR for an indie game on Steam or any game on Gamersgate, Direct2Drive
    $5.99 for a game on GoG
    Max 3 EUR for a game in the Apple iTunes Store

    Otherwise I won't buy your game and wait for a price drop although I earn enough to buy any game I want full price.
    The numbers above are set by me by observing the market for several years now and acting in it.

    Only company that this doesn't work: Nintendo with 1st Party Titles!
    I had to buy "Super Mario Galaxy" for the Wii full price and I will have to buy "Donkey Kong" and "Super Mario Gallaxy 2" full price as well as they never go on sale! Sure they might be included in this "Classic" line announced last week but I don't know that and if they aren't eBay prices might be higher due to their rarity later.

    Make what you want out of this.
    Edited by dingo75 at 14/05/11 @ 14:29

  • Ryboy #61 1 year ago

    I'm just going to check the MTV website from now on for my gaming news.

  • Collymilad #62 1 year ago

    @Softie2k

    GTA says Hi.

    And no, it wasn't developed in America like so many people seem to think. All the good ones are made by Rockstar North based in Scotland, UK.

  • jonharrispro #63 1 year ago

    Im pretty sure the key here is make an awesome game and people will buy it. Some developers will have to play the long game as initially they dont have the marketing budget. If the game is good the word will spread, a sequel will be made and then the people who didnt buy the original will go back and make the purchase. If you want to have a slice of the pie it has to be accesable to as many markets as possible.

    Its a tough market i know but as a developer you need to decide whether you want the mass market or niche'.

  • DRUNK3N-_-DRAGON #64 1 year ago

    no wonder with the amount of shite that gets pumped out these days!

  • LazyNinjaUk #65 1 year ago

    @Mr D.N.A

    I don't know what you mean, I've never played any Portal games as they haven't appealed to me. All I know is what I've seen from gameplay videos.

  • TexMurphy01 #66 1 year ago

    Let me sum it all up gentlemen: BAWWWWWW.

  • actionfitz #67 1 year ago

    Well with games like brink retailing for £40-£50... launching with 8 maps, terrible AI, and 'multiplayer with bots' as a knock-off attempt at an offline mode...
    Are thet really surprised people buy these games second hand or wait 3 months for a proper price before getting their feet wet?
    I hate Blops. I consider it's original RRP of £55 a fucking rip off...
    But look at what people got for that and look what I got for my £40 with brink.
    A tasty art style and a lotbof unfulfilled potential.
    I do in fact like Brink. I'm just annoyed by guys complaining about people not buying their games out of ignorance, when fact it's indifference and word of mouth about the perceived value of the game in question

  • Kerome #68 1 year ago

    Its less true than you may think... most titles that sell over 500k copies make a profit, though perhaps not one on paper as far as the developer is concerned. But if you add up all the costs, that's roughly how it works out.

    Of course it depends on spending the money well, and not spending $50m on a project which doesnt have a hope in hell of selling more than 100k copies. Good early scope control is key.