Big-budget blockbuster games are a massive risk these days. With development budgets soaring and expectations rising ever higher, it’s amazing that games like God of War and Horizon: Zero Dawn see the light of day at all. And as part of an interview with MCV, Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has revealed that there is a degree of trepidation each time a new project is started.
“In the AAA space, the scale and the tech of game development has grown so much that I feel like we are making a huge bet every time we start a new project,” he said. “The end results are, when successfully executed, an amazing fusion of art and tech, providing hours and hours of highly engaging interactive entertainment in a big, often open, world to explore with lifelike characters and imaginative creatures.”
He continued: “Because of the size of the investment, each title feels too big to fail. It creates an enormous pressure to manage these AAA projects. These games are the drivers of the industry to become more and more mainstream entertainment. We need to keep pushing the art of making AAA games.”
Because of the sheer risk involved, Yoshida noted that the number of AAA titles has decreased in recent years, but he feels that indie developers are picking up the slack. “I’m a huge fan of indie games as I always enjoy fresh game experiences and artistic expressions,” he beamed. “Indie titles drive innovation and experimentation in the industry and it’s important for the gaming landscape that we continue to support this flourishing market.”
[source mcvuk.com]
Comments 11
Keep rollin' those dice, Sony.
I'm now picturing them as some kind of suave, Bond-esque gentleman in a casino. Microsoft is the nervous-looking Silicon Valley nerd in an ill-fitting suit and thick-rimmed glasses, sitting across from them with a modest stack of chips that they've been hoarding all night, nervous to make any kind of substantial wager.
Nintendo have sent a clever Japanese robot which keeps making the same bet over and over again, but at least it can transform itself into a car and drive itself home later.
God, this writes itself...
I disagree in some of these points. AAA games may well be dropping in number - partly because they are taking a bit longer to develop but also because some companies - like EA and Activision have found other ways of making 'easy' money. Why spend £40m on developing a AAA game when they can make a £bn's on micro-transactions that cost very little (if anything) to produce. In a lot of cases, its simply changing the colour scheme. If these were 'banned' for example, those companies would have to make games to bring in profits. EA and Activision are releasing fewer games a year yet their profits are increasing. Its partly because they are not investing so much in 'new' game developments and preferring to milk franchises with micro-transactions instead. Like I said, if you can avoid spending £40m to get say £m's in profit when you can spend next to nothing and get pure profit - £bn's then why make games? EA and Activision could reinvest their 'quarterly' profit to make 10+ new AAA games - each with the potential to make them even more profit but they would rather take the easy route and milk titles.
Personally I think that is more of a Risk because if gamers get fed up with this and don't buy Fifa or CoD, then they have no market for micro-transactions and no 'games' in development to offset the losses.
Its clear that AAA games cost a lot to produce but it also takes 'relatively' few sales to break even. One of the biggest disappointments in recent years, Mass Effect: Andromeda - which had a £40m budget - was still profitable for EA despite under-selling according to expectations.
Sony's 'risk' is lower because they are also making profits from many other areas - like Hardware, PS+, PSNow, sales in their PSN store etc so they can take a 'risk' with a game like 'Dreams' for example because if it doesn't sell enough to be profitable, all their other methods of income can be used to offset any loss.
New IP's do generally cost more as well because you have to create a lot of the assets from scratch. If you look at H:ZD, the first robot, the Thunderjaw, took 18months to build. They also had to create all the characters and their outfits from scratch too. However they also managed to build the DLC with 5 new robots in 'months' including a completely new area too - mostly because a lot of the assets were already created.
Game engines are also making it a lot easier and quicker to build games with complex lighting, shadows etc as well. There is also a smaller '2nd hand' market because of an increase in digital sales meaning that they are losing less sales to 2nd hand users - maybe why games are 'profitable' much sooner.
Like I said, Sony's 'risk' is far less because of all the other methods of income they have. Of course they want their games to be successful but even if they only break even or worse, flop, its not a 'major' disaster because of all the other areas they can make money from. Its no different from Sony as a Brand where the gaming division was offsetting loses in the 'movie' (Sony Pictures' and Audio/Visual/Mobile sectors.
These brief articles and comments are interesting. Keep em coming.
They could just take some of the most boring, bland and sterile characters in gaming history such as Mario & Master Chief and make sequel after sequel based on a character with no real personality. And clearly that strategy makes money. But they continue to risk making brand new ips in exciting new universes. And I love that they continue to make that choice. Keep it fresh and interesting.
I like sequels of my favorites, but I like new IPs also. So glad that Sony takes a few chances. Every now and then one bombs like The Order 1886 (which I still really liked), but fortunately most are hitting and selling well.
That’s great to hear, I’m also really satisfied with their AAA games and can’t wait for the upcoming exclusives.
Can’t forget about the midtier games as well, I really hope they still keep making these games. Medievil and Concrete Genie are coming, we could also mention Dreams, but this game is more like an AAA title.
Anyway, can’t wait for all.
The risk is big but the reward is great, a brand new ip for this and future gen. I like sony small games on ps3, but I don't think making big AAA games is the right way for sony. Can't wait for spiderman, ghost of tsushima and tlou 2
@JoeBlogs 5yrs+ maybe from scratch and if you have to build an engine etc too but still very much dependent on the style of game. I bet the average though is around 3-4yrs but again there are too many factors, like size of Studio too and how many people they have working on it. If you are making a sequel, then a lot of that time can be cut down because you already have the engine and a lot of the assets already built.
According to Ubisoft, the upcoming Assassin's Creed Odyssey has taking 3yrs to make - a massive game like that. We know H:ZD took a LONG time but they didn't have the full crew working on that because they were working on Killzone and GG had to build all those assets/characters etc from Scratch. I don't know exactly when Insomniac started on Spider-Man but Sunset Overdrive was 4yrs ago and they also did Ratchet and Clank in 2016, as well as some smaller games like Song of the Deep, some mobile games and some Oculus Rift games as well since SO - so they must have built that in the last 2-3yrs and its built on the Sunset Overdrive engine.
I am not saying that the games are not made with dedication, hard work and passion but I doubt many games are made without that. I can understand that some 'publishers' will push to release games before they are actually ready or push to incorporate certain practices that the Devs may not agree with - even risk publishers cancelling projects for whatever reason - even if that reason is 'wrong' (like the market not wanting Single Player games).
Regardless of how long a game takes, its still either going to be profitable or not. It doesn't take 'many' sales to not be a financial flop either but whether its 'successful' enough is debatable. Again, I refer to ME:Andromeda which had a similar budget to H:ZD and was 'commercially' profitable but still a critical 'flop'. If CoD doesn't sell 25m+ its a 'disaster' and the 'end' of the franchise but for Activision is a MAJOR Financial success.
A risk is something that you can actually lose money on and few games are financial flops. Titanfall 2 - a game that took less than 2yrs to make btw - was regarded as 'disappointing' from a sales perspective and that its release window really hurt its sales BUT it was still not a financial flop - it was still profitable but when you are predicting 8-10m in sales and it struggles to 4m, then its very disappointing. If you are hoping to make £200m+ profit from your £40m investment and end up with only £50m profit, then its 'disappointing' BUT its still profitable.
Tomb Raider (2013) was a very expensive game to make and was a 'slow' seller too but was still profitable before it hit 3m in sales - of course it went on to sell a lot more when it got the 'remaster' on PS4/XB1 but a LOT of AAA games are profitable in the first week. It depends on whether you expect/want 'massive' profits or content with any profit as its still not losing money.
Anyway, my point still stands that Sony is in a very different position to the likes of EA, Activision etc. They are getting 'profit' from the sales of EA, Activision etc games on their platform - either from the use of trademark logo's on physical releases or from sales via their digital store - like any retailer. That also maximises their profits on their own games because they own those trademarks and not losing 'retailer' profits from selling their own games in store. They also have profits coming in from sales of hardware (not just console but controllers), merchandise, PS+/PSnow subscriptions, the aforementioned retailer profits from their store, use of trademarks etc so even if a 'game' doesn't sell at all, they can literally offset that with all their other financially successful areas. Of course they would prefer it to be successful and maybe won't take 'stupid' risks that are almost certain to fail but they are also in better position to greenlight more 'risky' games (games that EA or Activision wouldn't) because they are 'less' risk for them. There £40m investment in that game won't need to sell so many to be profitable and the benefits of making it, adding to their portfolio, maybe generating hardware sales, PS+ subscriptions (not necessarily for that game) etc make it much less of a risky option. The more successful their console, their other games, their subscription services etc the less risk to greenlighting 'new' games.
guerilla games comes to you and says, we want to make an open world game with robot dinosaurs - that's a risk. at €50m+ development costs, it would need to sell around 3m to be profitable, imo, which for a brand new ip available on only one platform is no easy task. naughty dog comes along and says we want to make uncharted 5 - that's not much of a risk when the previous games have sold 40m+ between them. same for the last of us 2. the previous game sold 17m copies. it seems unlikely that it won't sell several million.
dreams is undoutedly a risk, but either sony have faith in it, or have a bigger picture in mind, especially with VR. media molecule isn't a big studio though, so it may not have the same kind of development costs as horizon zero dawn for example.
Although I commend Sony in new IP (as in characters, worlds, etc), they are sort of playing it safe in the fact they make a lot of 3rd person open world/semi open world games with a lot of cg cutscenes. E3 highlighted the problem with 4 games that follow the template of that 3rd person open world. Dreams is the only thing in a while that doesn’t fit that formula (and I don’t think many people are aware of what that game is), and we get a few remasterers of stuff like Parappa and Medievil to mix it up- but they are not really risks being rereleases. For me personally I’m a little bored of the collectathon sandbox with 12 story chapters these days, and my PlayStation hasn’t been used to play games for a while.
The risk is not deviation, the risk is playing in the sandbox for too long.
Playstation games have inspired me to develop franchises in a word document, lol. So far, I have fully developed 4. Maybe one day I'll be able to sell my ideas or be involved in the development. I feel like, Playstation is the only place that can offer a wide space for cinematic experiences and truly memorable gameplay.
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