This week’s episode was delayed in publication thanks to real life intruding on the videogame podcast.
The week’s news items include:
All that and listener feedback.
Gigaom had a great writeup about how Grand Theft Auto IV marks the end of “next generation” as we know it, stating, in more words or less, the game is a failure. GTA: San Andreas sold 21.5 million copies during its time on the shelf while GTA IV has sold roughly 9 million copies as of June 7th.
Granted, the game is still on the shelves and will still get sales, but the mass of “hardcore gamers” have had their fill and either purchased it or will not. The end result? A huge tapering of sales numbers for the graphically impressive game. Take-Two spent USD $100 million to develop the game which had great opening sales records but has gone down drastically since.
Imagine the title gains them USD $30.00 per sale in profit (considering distributors get the game for roughly USD $45 to $48.00 USD), taking into account shipping of the product, marketing and all the materials that go into producing a copy, they’d have to sell a large quanity of game titles to break even, which I think they have done.
Nobody is in this industry to break even. A block buster title should make block buster profits, right? Else, why bother to spend the 100-million when a Wii title can double or triple the profits with six months of development?
Formerly Green Monster Games, 38 Studios is growing a large pool of talented folks for their MMO endeavor. First, we heard R.A. Salvatore (writer of the Dark Elf series) was heading over to work on a story, art direction by Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn) and now Irena Pereira from Blizzard and a sound designer, Aubrey Hodges.
Hodges has done sound for games like Kings Quest, Quake and even Madden NFL. Pereira was a World of Warcraft interface designer which allows us to invision a bit about what 38 Studio’s MMO may look like from a user interaction perspective.
The MMO, currently titled Copernicus has a tentative launch date of 2010, which seems short for a full MMO design but they’ve been hard at work for roughly two years. Not too shabby a team for a privately held company founded by baseball star Curt Shilling.
It’s important to note Shilling is an avid gamer and loves massive multiplayer online games. What else does a man with a lot of money do as a side project? Fund a company based on the hobby he loves! If anyone knows the best directions and qualities of an MMO it should be an experienced team guided by someone with a passion for the game genre.
We’ll have to wait and see!
Read on for the full press release
This week, Jonah Falcon rants about the bosses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution while Jordan Lund expresses a desire for cold, rainy weather. This week’s Gaming Flashback is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, with the following news items:
The guys also read more reader mail, and pose this week’s Question of the Week: What was the worst game mechanic you ever dealt with in a game you liked?
