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274 - Industry in Transition 1

Posted: Mon May 25, 2015 11:18 am
by matt
The industry has been changing quite a bit with big publishers losing interest in AAA development. In this video I talk about that and why that might be happening. This was mostly inspired by Konami moving out of AAA games, but I think other publishers are as well.



PS. Sorry I've been way behind on this and forum things. We have a guest visiting, and I've also been swamped getting everything ready for our next game's announcement, demo, and kickstarter.

Re: 274 - Industry in Transition 1

Posted: Tue May 26, 2015 5:57 am
by evilkinggumby
first.. you now need a gravestone in the game for leroy the wombat. no if's ands or butt's...

second.. yeah youve been quiet but hey you got a lot on your plate in prep for the kickstarter and general game development so.. i think folk understand. Still, if you feel really guilty, you could offer us all free keys for witcher 3..muhahahaahah

I'm on the fence with how to feel about Konami. A bit of me wonders if shifting as they are is better, or worse, than selling the properties and company to merge with say, activision or EA like we have seen in the past. Sega and Atlus merged and they're doing ok, would be interesting to see Sega acquire Konami as well..lol. Especially since Sega, Atlus and Konami have a hefty stake in gambling revenue and their own foot in mobile gaming.

It would be interesting to see a slow transition where AAA gaming almost entirely goes away and smaller publishers and indies remain because of the risks and logistics. OR heck, I've seen a growing community of folk disenfranchised with AAA gaming due to a plethora of reasons so what if people generally just stop buying them? Or they choose to only buy them when they drop in price.

Mass Effect 4 hits stores shelves, no one buys it until it drops to 1/2 the asking price.

I realize a game's worth is not on just the length, but I am also seeing a lot of disgust at a really amazing looking game that is only 5 hours long and is fairly "corridor" like so replayability is not necessarily desirable.

I will say VGchartz is a site a lot of people go to but from what I saw on the Atlus USA boards, the staff at Atlus said unanimously that VGchartz was nowhere near accurate on ANY games they ever sold. They pretty much laughed at anyone who stood by the site and didn't consider it credible in any sense. So take that for what you will.

Re: 274 - Industry in Transition 1

Posted: Thu May 28, 2015 2:25 pm
by matt
I've heard that vgchartz is inaccurate, and even NPD data, which is super expensive to get, can STILL be quite a bit. There are no good ways to get the data (other than steamspy.com, which is PC only and can be misleading with bundles and whatnot), so that's all I can quote.

I think AAA will never go away - but the number of players will reduce until it's just like the summer blockbuster movie business - where only a few studios can make them and they take 0 risks. I think the main backlash for 5 hour pretty games (aka The Order: 1886) was mostly because it was no fun to play. For a AAA game, a 5 hour linear game (that was 33% cutscenes, and I don't think that's an exaggeration) with no multiplayer does seem like a poor comparison to something like Gears of War, which The Order was aping - apparently unsuccessfully.