The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[Justin Leego]

That would've worked well for a South Park Kart. Still gross though.

[SilentBtAmazing]

#WhoKarted?

#BeansBeansTheyreGoodForYourHeartTheMoreYouEatTheMoreYouKart

[Denial]

Meanwhile, Sony and Ubisoft announced their full year results this week. Ubisoft's has been noted mainly for the blindingly obvious announcement of Far Cry 4, but was also a miss on guidance, although most of that can probably be attributed to the Watch Dogs sized hole in their holiday schedule.

 

Sony's was good news for the Game division, which recorded a loss but saw strong sales of the PS4 offsetting a faster than expected drop in sales of the PS3, and some long-awaited traction for the Vita, I suspect driven by price drops, PS4 integration and Tearaway. The larger numbers, though, were kind of a car crash, with a billion-dollar loss, connected to a significant extent to various sinking anvils Sony is seeking to disconnect from its ankle, most obviously the PC business, which is proving expensive to run and expensive to sell, and the TV business, which is to be spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary, but which has now not turned a profit for ten years...

[shammack]

Nintendo is really on a roll with the slogans lately.

[Ucantalas]

While the slogan is ridiculous, I loved the Adventures of Lolo games. So this is good news to me.

[tegan]

[Denial]

This feels like... by no means the biggest thing Nintendo is having to deal with right now.

[Bjorn]

I kind of like it, it's like your dad trying to make a hip joke and failing, but in a charmingly embarrasing way.  Which is kind of fitting for Nintendo.

[Spenny]

No love for Dadtendo.

[Henroid]

Hot on the heels of no-Kinect XB1 by the way is the NPD sales data. XB1 sales dropped 50% over the last month. I wonder if the no-Kinect option will help uplift that.

 

Titanfall continues to sell very well though.

[Justin Leego]

Ach well i thought #LOLO was genuinely hilarious. Maybe that's a problem for the Life thread...

[miffy495]

I am 100% down with Nintendo's marketing becoming a run of dad jokes.

[Zeusthecat]

I honestly have no idea what this #LOLO thing is. I'm the ultimate dad.

[Denial]

"Well, Grace, I'm Nintendo, and I'll be your wait-ee this evening."

 

Yeah, I can get on board with Dadtendo.

[Twig]

Ach well i thought #LOLO was genuinely hilarious. Maybe that's a problem for the Life thread...

I just laughed out loud when I finally saw it, so I'm with you. Am I a dad? I'm single and 27. I guess I'm a dad.

[Winnipeg Fats]

Dadtendo and the name Dadtendo are both complete winners in my book.

[Golden Calf]

Has anyone seen any data on how early access games perform long-term? 

 

I have a sense, based on nothing but my own experience, that having a long early-access development cycle must hurt you in the long term. When a game is released early-access, this seems likely to cut down the number of people willing to buy it right away, because they can tell themselves that they should wait for the full version. Then, when the full version has come out, the press seems less interested in covering it - is it newsworthy when a game goes from version 0.9 to 1.0? Seems hard to justify from a press perspective. And then, even if you might have originally been interested, you will have told yourself several times during the early access cycle "not now," that by the time it has a full release, other games are out that you might be interested in, and it's that much easier to continue not buying the game.

 

This is basically what's happening with Planetary Annihilation for me. I loved Total Annihilation, but I didn't jump on the kickstarter because I had no idea how it would turn out. Now, they've released a major update that looks good, but I sort of can't get myself excited enough to buy it. Same more or less with Rust and Day Z.

 

Maybe the ongoing public development acts as an effective advertising campaign? Maybe the initial sales plus the sales jumps that happen after each update are enough to be more than if the game had had a regular release (hard to deal with that counterfactual). Maybe the early and continuing revenue stream ends up being worth it, even if it's less than a theoretical maximum, for devs without a publishing deal. I really have no idea, so I'd love to hear from someone who has better info on this.

[JonCole]

I haven't seen any data. My intuition is that there's a niche in the middle of that interest spectrum where Early Access rules. Too little interest, Early Access saps all the attention before real release. Too much interest, Early Access can burn out people who really want the real game, get disappointed, and kill that word of mouth. In the middle, you can get people invested, give them some influence on the end product, and get them to fuel that word of mouth that can give you multiple waves of attention.

[Thermaldetonator]

I haven't seen numbers either. It will be interesting to see how it plays out though. Gamasutra recently pointed out that something like 1/3 of games that being released on Steam are now early access titles. 

[tegan]

Remember how Atlus' parent company was being investigated for shady business practices a while back, before they declared bankruptcy and sold Atlus to Sega Sammy? Weeelllllllll...

[SecretAsianMan]

This is an unexpected headline:  Halo, Destiny composer O'Donnell says he was fired 'without cause'

 

Marty O'Donnell wants his money.  He's suing Bungie for not paying him for "unused vacation, paid time off, abbatical time, and other benefits".  Bungie denies these accusations naturally.

[Dewar]

Man, that's sad.

[Zeusthecat]

So I guess some people aren't happy about Mojang's crackdown on pay to win Minecraft servers

 

I think it is utterly ridiculous that people are making such a big deal about it and I personally think it is a totally fair stance for Mojang to take.

 

Also, I think the exchange shown here between Polygon's Colin Campbell and Notch is a total load of shit. Those are some pretty loaded questions.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Of all the games to fight against pay to win... why Minecraft?

I mean, Mojang can do what they want realistically so I wouldn't blame them. I just wouldn't have thought this was a big deal to them but maybe someone who played Minecraft for more than a couple months in the earlier days could explain why it does matter?

 

That interview is definitely nonsense. It's clearly clickbait so even though I usually find Notch abrasive I like that he's taken away the clicks in this instance.

[JonCole]

This is one of those controversies that happen completely out of my sphere of knowledge or interest, so it's really hard to get a grip on how I should feel. Ultimately, it's hard to feel sympathy for anyone who builds their business upon the back of another business's lax enforcement of EULA/TOS. I've seen this happen a handful of times in online MMO-type things, where out-of-game economies crop up for certain items and people complain when their accounts get disabled for buying items with real money or whatever the case may be. Even if the rules aren't being enforced well and even if you feel your actions may be moral, you're still breaking rules and morality has little place where clear lines of business are concerned.