Has any poster actually said The Order 'didn't cost a lot' to make, let alone swarms of them? Or have they been arguing claims of exactly how expensive it was to make? Because the latter was how it's been reading to me. I know that I've asked multiple people multiple times for some solid info on the game's budget with no real answer presenting itself so far :/
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NPD Sales Results for March 2015 [Up1: Nintendo numbers, PS4 placing]
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Has any poster actually said The Order 'didn't cost a lot' to make, let alone swarms of them? Or have they been arguing claims of exactly how expensive it was to make? Because the latter was how it's been reading to me. I know that I've asked multiple people multiple times for some solid info on the game's budget with no real answer presenting itself so far :/
Holy shit the NPD thread has lost its collective gawdammed mind.
Listen Nya, at some point, for your own sanity, you should just slowly back away. Because you've entered into a place where reason has been crumbled into a ball and burned.
Just remember this simple rule:
The discussion has come full circle. People are rehashing the same arguments they made last Thursday/Friday.
Agreed, I just see a lot of peolpe saying it took 5 years to make the order, and its so short etc, they totally forget to account time to for engine development. Obviously the studio must suck etc.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
You will never receive accurate budgetary information on AAA development costs because it is highly proprietary and confidential work product and hugely NDAed.
Even the few guesstimates that are publically released are mostly bullshit because AAA games is a cut-throat business, and nobody really wants anyone else to know how much budget it would take to steal your best teams / create a direct rival / outspend on advertising dollars / etc.
It is however safe to say that budgets are estimated to at least double with every new generation, and actual budgets usually come in higher than that.
Its a shame, because there is genuinely interesting conversation to be had about The Order and how its been received, and general expectations for modern AAA titles.
For example, The Order has been crucified on its length, but in many ways made a brave decision to focus on a single player experience and is generally bereft of much of the bullshit that gamers purport to hate - multiple day one DLCs, multiple different pre-order bonuses, tacked on multiplayer just for the sake of having a bullet point saying multiplayer, etc.
That conversation is sadly not "it probably wasn't that expensive to make".
The Order was in pre-production until around summer 2013.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
So an 18 month dev cycle?
I stand corrected on that point then; that seems to be "the new normal" for AAA dev.
biglittleps
Member
So it was in full production right after the PS4 announcement and E3, for me seems like they ran out of time even with delay for content considering its their first console game/New IP and they should have launched this game 2015 Holidays.
IMO, what The Order did is no more brave/interesting than what Titanfall did last year. One focused on SP and the other on MP. Both got a ton of flack for their decisions. Let's be frank here, no one would be discussing either game's performance ad nauseum if they weren't exclusives (See Evolve).
Man, i forgot that Evolve existed. How's the game performing/performed? Do we have some update numbers?
It's not really the new normal. It's just that development involves a lot of factors, and sometimes things aren't always in your favour. That can sometimes come down to issues out of your own hands. Different projects, different needs, different complications etc.
biglittleps
Member
But RAD was not making AAA games for consoles before and they were PSP only developer. They had big ambitions with Order but they could not achieve in time and budget. Hopefully they leaned from this first try and will have a second chance with 2+ years development cycle from Sony because they are talented studio and deserve it, so they can make the game with content that gamers expect today.
ManUtdRedDevils
Member
On the PC side, steam stats have users between 500-1000. Last month, users were around 2000-3500. The game is very buggy and the developers are slow to fix. The community is dying quickly.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
I think it was a brave decision.
Console AAA has always been very frontloaded on sales which is why you see inducements to stop people doing an immediate finish then trade in (as the Japanese market has always heavily suffered from) with things like season passes.
The risk in a multiplayer only title is that you don't achieve a critical mass of players quickly enough to stop the game being described as "dead online" (which is why so many online only multiplayer titles have similar grindy mechanics as MMOs used to use - to ensure there is a healthy active population for as long as possible).
The risk in a singleplayer only title - especially one that is linear and doesn't offer multiple completion incentives - is that sales dry up entirely as people use trade ins as a stealth rental system.
As to your second point that nobody would give a shit if it wasn't a high profile exclusive... yeah, I can't disagree with that.
serversurfer
Member
Yes, and that's probably why you've been unable to prove your assertion that development costs have doubled at minimum this generation. You posted a couple of links with devs talking in general terms about how much more work they do these days which, by your own admission, is likely to be "mostly bullshit" but it seems like what they were really wanting to talk about was how much more efficient their new engines and tools have made the entire process, with one developer saying work that took them an hour to accomplish with the last-gen tools can now be completed in ten minutes. So one-sixth the effort, rather than double or more.
Not really. The Shadow Fall team was only 150, up 20% from the 125 that worked on KZ3.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
From your own link
but hey guys, costs probably dropped, thats why all those AAA titles have been hit by delays. They had so much free time they all got addicted to DOTA2 and forgot they had deadlines.
From your own link:
PS1 (~1.25 million average) -> PS2 (~7.5 million average) -> PS3 (23.5 million average) -> PS4 (no evidence anything got more expensive except for those execs in charge of budgest saying they expected them to and those delays to titles that happened)
ZSaberLink
Media Create Maven
Vita was somewhere in the 2.X Million range for the US last I remembered. JP Vita sales = 3.877.295.
Perhaps I should clarify.
I'm expecting 6 million+ units to be sold in to the US market. Not necessarily all of them being sold through.
In regards to 2014 and 2015 I actually have 2015 up slightly (over 2014) worldwide and 2016 about the same as 2015.
The reason being that the Wii U isn't going to start selling anytime soon and whilst I expect PS4 sales to continue increasing I expect Xbox One sales to stay flat or decrease YOY for the next couple of years.
I could be wrong of course. A forecast is just a forecast.
It's somewhere below 60% but certainly over 50%.
Where as the PS4 is around 36% sales in USA and 64% worldwide.
Vita is over 2.2m in the USA sold through. 3.9m in Japan is sold through and over 10 million worldwide has been sold in. There is no official worldwide number for Vita, we just know it's somewhere north of 10m.
Theodore Pewd
Banned
Hey, I'm new here, finally joined after following the NPD threads for so long. it's almost lie Christmas. It's amazing how much Mario party 10 moved system wise and how good it's legs are. I totally did not expect that.
I am curious though, on Amazon Xbox One seems to be winning by hourly by quite a bit. Amazon weekly charts for last week had both Sku's above the PS4, and sof ar this week PS4 isn't even on the list indicating it's selling very low.
I think April charts will be interesting. Xbox One is also ahead in the Target, and Walmart charts as well. Of course we still have what? 11 days left of tracking, so we'll see how that goes.
I am curious though, on Amazon Xbox One seems to be winning by hourly by quite a bit. Amazon weekly charts for last week had both Sku's above the PS4, and sof ar this week PS4 isn't even on the list indicating it's selling very low.
I think April charts will be interesting. Xbox One is also ahead in the Target, and Walmart charts as well. Of course we still have what? 11 days left of tracking, so we'll see how that goes.
Theodore Pewd
Banned
Also this may be a good place to ask this question as well, but I noticed that there is a rumor that COD will be going to the PS4, is the source reputable? If so PS4 may not need any exclusives this holiday at all.
Theodore Pewd
Banned
Huh?
Thanks. I guess that really is shockingly low. No more Sony handhelds ever again.
Theodore Pewd
Banned
So more people in Europe are buying Vitas than Japan and NA?
serversurfer
Member
Now now. Let's not start that stuff already.
But that just talks about the average amount spent on developing a game, and doesn't really give any source for those estimates. If the average cost of developing a game has gone up, then I'd say that's indicative of the market's shift towards AAA-focused development, and largely abandoning the mid- and low-tier sub-markets. If GTA was the only game, then games would cost an "average" of $100M to develop. When everyone wants to be "the next GTA," then $100M will become the industry average. That doesn't mean that games are now harder to make than they used to be. It just means there's a trend towards providing tons of content. I also think the increase in multi-platform development last generation helped to increase "average" costs across all games fairly significantly.
If you really want to know how much additional work a generational leap entails, then it seems most reasonable to look at team moving from one generation to the next on a similar game, and the number of man-hours it takes to produce the new game. Guerrilla made Shadow Fall with 20% more people than it took to make Killzone 2. I don't play those games, but my understanding was that KZ:SF increased in scope fairly significantly from its predecessors as well. From the same article, Evolution said the 110 who worked on Driveclub "was a very small incremental increase" over the team that made the Motorstorm games.
So after eliminating as many variables as possible, it seems that the move from Gen7 to Gen8 does take some additional effort from the devs, but it seems like a fairly small increase. Certainly not the "double or more" that you've based your arguments on.
demigod
Member
Holyshit, ya'll still going at it with MrNyarlathotep since Monday without providing proof how much was spent in making The Order? While you're at it, can you tell us how much FF15 has cost so far to make since you know everything about development? Oh and how much did Remedy spend to make Alan Wake?
There are more regions other than just Europe outside of Japan/USA.
Europe, Asia, Middle East, Canada, Australia etc... will all account for the other sales. (Also I said "Over" 2.2m implying sales in the USA could be higher at this point)
Besides the numbers I quoted are sell through in USA/Japan but the 10m+ number is sold to retail by Sony based on their financial reports.
But as I said, very hard to put any sort of accurate number on worldwde sell in. Just that it's over 10m.
Thanks. I guess that really is shockingly low. No more Sony handhelds ever again.
It really is very bad. The PSP alone is over 80 million at this point.
Hourly Amazon charts are fairly useless for long-term projections.
Here's the monthly Amazon rankings for April:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/2015-04/videogames
Amazon appears to be sold out of that particular PS4 SKU, so that might explain why it's currently low on the hourly chart:
http://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-4-Console/dp/B00BGA9WK2/ref=zg_bs_videogames_51
theprodigy
Member
I think a lot of GAF doesn't actually understand this, hence all the "but the sales don't add up!" type comments.
Felessan
Member
Sorry if I'm being a bit offensive, I respect your work a lot, but it's actually just my job to look for a flaws/inconsistencies/lack of integrity in other people analysis/expectation/whatever (and outright exploit it, but this is another matter) so I used to question numbers in a very strict way.
I just want to discuss, investigate, clarify and get to some sort of mutual understanding.
We see from separate console US performance that most "popular/mainstream" consoles(PS2, GC, Wii) peak out on 3rd year and more "developing" consoles (PS1, OG Xbox) peak on 4th years. Gen7 is an exception though, but it peak much later than expected, not much earlier. The only ones that peak yearly are those that clearly lost competion and even though they do not start to visibly decline immediately, instead they struggle for some time.
Looking at current situation - we have roughly the same Q1 YoY and I expect some price drop for PS4 this year to keep momentum in-line with historical dynamics (either popular or developing). Xbox One will hold or at least will have small drop (which is what every struggling console do as they tend to resort to drastic measures). WiiU can't actually provide a feeding fodder as it's already has a very low baseline (and actually sale better than last year). It's not just clear what will cause sales to be roughly the same as last year. (you have 16.2 in projected shipments this year versus 15.5 sell through number last year, mere 4.5% increase)
And this is just US market - the most "developed" one and thus least dependent on price decrease. Overall situation should be even more favorable to later peak.Your current dynamics propose that console market will be saturated in developed countries on it's second year, which is quite abnormal from historical data.
Do you mean they provided separate shipping numbers? Or no shipping numbers at all?
Nothing at all.
And that means things are baaadddddd.
They only confirmed that it was less than last year which was 2m combined for X1 and 360.
My guess would be under 1.5m this quarter. (combined)
No at all, but was my mistake, just isn't on slides.
Shipments are 1.6m for jan-march quarter.
No numbers. Must be pretty bad. Yikes
ethomaz
Banned
Scientificreason
Banned
Lower this quarter then last year despite being quite cheaper? That doesn't sound good but I am not expert.
Probably overshipped for holidays.
And this is combined, so 360 shipments are expected to be lower than in 2014.
Theodore Pewd
Banned
The monthly rankings for April haven't updated since the PS4 started dropping and the BF pre-orders went up, otherwise the Xbox One battle front pre-order would have charted.
The PS4 would have had to fall pretty big to since last week the PS4 was behind both SKu's according to Amazon weekly charts.
It also recently got back ahead in the target charts. But like I said I think this monday we will see as that's when Amazon updates the monthly.
AnthonypUK
Member
so they shipped only 1.6m 360's and ones in the quarter(3months)? and the PS4 sold through 1.7m Jan to end of feb (2 months)
Specifically, they probably overshipped those AC Unity bundles, which still seem to be readily available although it's almost May.
Scientificreason
Banned
so they shipped only 1.6m 360's and ones in the quarter(3months)? and the PS4 sold through 1.7m Jan to end of feb (2 months)
Wow that really says it all. Imagine when ps4 hits 299.
No it's fine. I appreciate your posts actually as it's a good idea to question what I post here to see if i've missed anything within my methodology.
To keep it simple here, last generation saw 3 top selling consoles totalling 280 million units sold in when sales are combined. The generation before saw 200 million units combined with 1 console (PS2) leading the way with an abnormally high amount of units.
The Wii led last generation with a huge upsurge in sales from the hardcore, core, casual and super casual audience. This generation I believe the market as a whole has gotten smaller and there isn't going to be a large super casual audience buying these consoles (Unless VR takes off or something). I'm of the opinion that the majority of sales we've seen so far are from hardcore and core gamers (as with Wii U at the start) and casual gamers are also buying the systems but there is no audience for super casual.
Therefore with these systems I believe that 280m is an unachievable target. DFC Intelligence agree with this and said that whilst they originally believed 250m could be achieved the response to X1 has led them to cut their forecasts drastically. They now believe that PS4 could reach over 100m but X1 will not get near that or outsell the Xbox 360 which means the absolute maximum they believe this generation could sell in would be 200m.
My forecast was created before DFC even mentioned this but is based on the same premise and says that the console market has shrunk from last gen due to the loss of super casual + other external factors such as drop of HD gaming market worldwide generally. Also when compared to the PS2 gen the install base was only so much later on in the generation and not early on. Hence why my forecast is more in line with Gen 5 than the others.
In regards to years, my theory is that console sales have been very front loaded and so we won't see the same sort of trajectory that previous console gens saw. We'll still see peaks in 2015/2016 but whilst the PS4 will be the leader it won't match year 3 and year 4 of say PS2 sales or Wii sales. Whilst the Xbox One I'm expecting to sell the same as it did in 2014 or potentially less.
I typed this up in 5 mins btw so the english may not be great and it may not make perfect sense. Let me know if you want me to expand on a point.
Theodore Pewd
Banned
I doubt all those countries would make up 6_ million thought so It's probably that NA is higher than 2.2 if anything.
juicyfruitas
Member
Xbox revenue is also down -24% YOY
theprodigy
Member
I wanted to get 360 NPD sales for an idea of how much it dropped YoY
oh well lol
oh well lol
ethomaz
Banned
Live usage is increased 30% too.
It's on Segment Results.
You can't really make assumptions based on the results of the hourly charts.
As you suggested, waiting for the monthly charts to update is a wise idea.