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?
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I’m rather puzzled by the hardware failures already at PS4/Xbone, seems like a lack of foresight to make sure their peripherals to work.
Jordan the Prince of Persia games are Platformers, not adventure.
QotW: My favorite Adventure game has to be Gabriel Knight, each game in the series was a dark thrilling mystery and the main characters were great to follow.
Speaking of which Activision is licensing out the GK IP to Jane Jensen for a remake. Thanks in part to the Kickstart project Moebius that Jane got funded. Along with other Adventure game projects inspired someone at Activision who had a passion for the GK series to convince the company to license out the series to Jane. What has me excited is seeing Adventure games get more notice as a viable product again by game companies, especially Activision.
@Xbox and PS headsets
Personally I don’t see this as a problem. As long as they provide a pack-in headset so that I can discuss my numerous relationships with my oponents mothers on Battlefield I will be fine. I can see how it is a problem for rich folk who blasted loads of cash on some shelled reptilian headset. But I am indifferent to the opinions if others. I fully support Democracy and believe that the opinions of few should be overlooked and they should all be quietly shot.
@Oh can you hear what the Rockstar is cooking?
As long as it’s not ONI 2 I will be glad to play anything Rockstar makes. To me they proved their development ability time and time again. I am curious what it will be. I am guessing it’s Bully 2 but it could be Red Dead as well. Redemption was voted as the best game of last decade so I would expect Rockstar to indulge us with as sequel.
@QOTW
Across my gaming life I played quite a few adventure games. But I don’t remember most of them. Broken Sword 3 was good. Recently I played Anna but had to quit because of lighting issues on my laptop. But my highlight was Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. I know that the prequel was better (never played it) but I quite enjoyed it. Another highlight was Beavis and Buthead game on Mega Drive. It was funny because the Beavis and Buthead IP was aimed at retarded adolescent teens but the game itself was hard as nails. It had puzzles so difficult that you would need a degree in critucal thinking to get to the end.