Super Smash Bros Brawl. It was written for a console who's hardware was mass produced in 2001 (Wii is a GameCube with a little extra kick). It was written using the Super Smash Bros Melee engine, modified for new characters and abilities. It cost Nintendo maybe $10 million to make. When it's all said and done, SSBB (using Melee as the example) will probably sell 8-10 million copies. If each copy gave Nintendo only $2, that would give them a pretty significant profit. But we all know that they make at least 10x that much per copy sold. A guestimate on the return on investment is 1600%. No, that's not a typo; that's sixteen hundred percent.

Halo 3. It was built on the bones of Halo 2. It probably cost $30-40 million to make. When it's all said and done, it will probably have sold 12+ million copies. Once again, you're looking at a good $25+ for Microsoft's take per copy sold. A guesstimate on the return on investment is 1000% Also not a typo.

Is there any chance that Crysis will provide that kind of return on investment? At best, Crysis may provide a 400% ROI. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if GalCiv2's return on investment was better than Crysis's when all the expansions and such are counted.

read this:
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10254&Itemid=2

Your point being?

First, they refuse to actually release internal numbers as to how much the game is being pirated, so their commentary about it is suspect.

Second, particularly for this game, a pirated copy is not necessarily a lost sale. If I were less scrupulous, I might pirate the game just to see if it can run on my hardware. God knows I don't want to spend $50 on something that might not even function.

Third, if they want people to buy their game, make it something that people can actually rely on to function.

Do you really need to ask what my point it? I thought you'd have been intelligent enough to see that I was basically posting that in support of your argument that Crysis isn't doing as well as the people on this board are exclaiming.

I posted the link to show that Crytek is complaining about their sales. Yes, they're blaming piracy, and to be honest, they're probably partially correct. However, the main conclusion that you can draw from that article is that Crytek is saying "We didn't make the amount of money we thought we'd make"

Also, a bit besides the point, I'd venture a guess that they monitor the various p2p sites and see how many people are sharing their files. If Crysis is on the top 10 or even no.1 on p2p sites, that would indicate a problem. (that was an example, by the way. I'm not saying this is how it is).

The problem with many PC games/devs these days, at least the games/devs that are jumping the PC-ship, is that there's little incentive to purchase the game. They create really robust engines but offer little reason to go online. Stardock gets around this by updating the game with patches that can only be obtained through buying the game. As well, they have games now that offer compelling online.

At this point, piracy is something devs just have to accept. So then, the question become not "how do we stop it", but "how do we encourage people to buy the game".

Crysis is only pirated because anyone who bought a computer to run it was inable to buy it itself. (Joke).

That's one of the problems with PC gaming, and it's one of the reasons that developers choose consoles. The only real way to stop it is through a long, lengthy series of checks that disqualify some hardware and systems.

Yes. The article basically talked about piracy being the death of PC games. And it was not just Crytek was saying that.



Wait, what? The incentive in purchasing the game is that you get to play it! You don't buy the game, you don't get to play it. You should not have to provide more incentive than that to get people to pay for your game.

The very fact that people think that you have to do more than provide your game for sale in order to get people to buy it says that there is something very wrong with the way some people are thinking.



Having played the initial release of GC2, I could just as easily say that StarDock got around this by releasing a beta product that was clearly not finished, thus thwarting pirates with an inferior product, while using the money gained from early sales to continue to develop the game into a mature, finished release.



You have to accept some piracy. It's going to happen. What you don't have to accept is that everyone will pirate your game unless you provide some value-added proposition for those who don't.

Any number of games make money alongside pirated copies of them. Without value-added propositions. You don't need to do that sort of thing as long as you provide an entertaining product at a fair price.

See, the problem is that you're suggesting that Crysys is selling poorly because of piracy. That is, if there were some value-added proposition, it would sell better. That's nonsense.

Crysis sold poorly because it was a poorly made game that is, ultimately, no more fun than the much more accessible HL2. Only a paltry few percent of people could even consider running the game, thus cutting their playerbase to almost nothing. That it sold 1 million copies at all is a feat.

I don't think piracy is a major factor in the downturn in the PC market. Note: it is not a good thing. But it isn't what is running PC developers out of this market. What's doing that is their unflinching unwillingness to make their games cheaper by not spending so much on development.

The most successful PC developers are the ones who make games that lots of people who would be interested in playing them would actually play. Not necessarily unpretty, but they don't rely on the latest technology for you to have a good experience with their games. Blizzard and Valve are the current practitioners of this technique, and both have reaped the rewards. Contrast to Id software, who basically just make engines now. Niether Blizzard nor Valve is particularly concerned about piracy, because it doesn't hurt them that much.

Let's say the average rate of piracy for a game is 10%. That's a high estimate, but so be it. And lets (falsely) assume that each pirated copy is a lost sale. So, if your game can only ever work on 1 million computers, watching 100,000 sales go away is really bad for you. But if your userbase is 10 million computers, you won't be so put out by 1 million sales going away, because you still have 9 million others.

I've actually been suprised at the number of games comming out that don't need uber machines actually. The obvious one that springs to mind is Sins of a Solar Empire, a perfect example of how a game can be beatiful, fun and run on low machines .

I can sorta see where your comming from, but only because these games are being developed by bad developers in my opinion. The top developers know that the higher the spec, the less people they can sell their game too.

Piracy is holding the industry back from reaching its full potential, but PC gaming is certainly not dying. Developers are not so much concerned about the theives that have been shoplifting their whole lives - they don't respect the system, and likely never will. We are very concerned about the large number of people on the fence that could go one way or the other.

Sins is one example, as is Mount and Blade (though it won't run on my PC smoothly all the time), of games that don't require super powerful machines, but even a cheap computer is $400 if you wanna game with it, so you can afford a game easily. It adds up, sure, but why would you buy a computer just to pirate games? I believe that DRM is not the answer. Returning prices to sane levels ($60 is not sane, nor is $90, EA), removing ads (or having them pay for some of the game, if not all), and other small things would put sales up without requiring any DRM, and justify a purchasing decision for those on the fence (I wouldn't pirate it, but I wouldn't buy it).

Another problem lies more with the publishers being too draconian. People will cheat, copy, and do everything to your game, but the more you do about it, the more the innocent pay.

There's this concept that you should be aware of called inflation. It causes the price of things to rise over time. For a good 10 years, videogame prices were fixed at $50, yet the cost of development has quadrupled (at a minimum).

That you only have to pay $60 for a high-quality game is a steal, as that would be the inflation-adjusted price of $50 from 10 years ago. By all rights, $70-$80 should be the standard price for a game that costs $30 million to make.

In short, high-end videogames are cheaper than they ought to be, and you should be grateful for that.

No, the real problem is that game prices are fixed to a single price. One of the reasons for the success of GC2 and SoaSE is that they're sold for less than the standard price. They can do this because they cost less to make. Blockbuster movies on DVD tend to cost more than, say, romantic comedies. There's no reason why the game industry should balk at that.

More game developers should stop trying to make $30 million games. Sure, you're always have your StarCraft II's and your HL3's and your Doom IV's. But they'll be like summer blockbusters in terms of content and comparative rarity.

Yeah, Black Isle, Looking Glass Studio, Troika Games...

No, sixty dollars is way too much. A game costs $2 to put on a disk. Use an existing engine, and if you sell 20 million like most high-end games do, you should have no problem charging $20. Plus, if you've ever played freeware or open source equivalents, you will realize that $60 really is a rip-off. Plus, shall I point out that the greedy publishers almost always get the majority of the money, so the developers really don't make that much in all cases..

That post is so full of ignorance I don't know if I should even try and explain......

Bah here goes......

Nowdays developing games take a lot of money. From paying all the developers to licensing or builging a game engine and game content. Thats not counting the initial cost of actually renting office space for the years it take to make the game, plus the cost of the equipment they use, utility bills, wages, marketing, etc.

Don't think the game is done by a couple of guys working in the garage with their PC like many of those freeware crap (many of those games are of poor quality). Think a big corporation, with a big office in the downtown area, with secretaries and everything one can expect from a respectable company. Now think that the publisher (publisher =! developer) is also a company with costs and bills to pay, and shareholders who want their investment in the company to turn a profit.

You want to keep whining because of the sixty dollar price tag? Fine, do it. the world won't end because you keep whining like a spoiled child.

Ah, but you're talking from the publisher's point.

The developers are the guys who make or decide upon the engine (don't whine about costs, the Q3 engine is perfectly good, Torgue costs little, and there's thousands of open source entities), equipment should be relatively cheap, utility bills should be cheap also, wages should be not that cheap but not near $1M, marketing could be expensive, but there's always Indie style word of mouth.

Freeware games may be of poor quality, but there are many examples of professional quality freeware games. A big corporation with a big office in the downtown area, with secretaries, is wasting money. The publisher seems to be your standpoint, but you forget that Doom was shareware and grossed how much? And it grew into a huge franchise, shall I point out. Shareholders should not be allowed in a game company, only community, as shareholders ruin business.

I will whine about a sixty dollar price tag, because I pay that much only for a rare piece of art, not every game that feels entitled to its huge price tag simply because it's on the PS3 or Xbox 360.

Well yes, I was speaking from a publisher point of view, since you said "if you sell 20 million like most high-end games do". Freeware/indie games are not high end.



Yep, wasting money, but thats how it is. Doom was 15 years years ago, things have changed. Shareholders have the Word when it to comes to what a company does. Remember, its all about the money. Making a game?? Only purpose is to make money. Even the developers are in it for the money, not for the sake of gamers. There are exceptions of course, but again, you said "high-end games".



LOL you are cheap.