This week’s episode takes a look at Sony’s State of Play, Ubisoft Forward and Nintendo Direct, and all of the games revealed in each conference. In addition, cryptocurrency gets all the reaction it deserves. Jonah expresses an unpopular GoldenEye 64 opinion, too.
Let us know what you think.
Many game studios are being dropped following a bit of an economic downturn in the United States and globally. Activision has to deal with being agile enough to survive the economic times like anyone else and has dropped a few games that had great potential.
Gamers continue to ask the question, “why?” when some of their highest potential games were dropped to the floor. Ghostbusters and Brütal Legend are a couple examples of games with eager fans already salivating prior to its launch. Some of these fans are a bit ticked off that Activision named them as dropped franchise opportunities.
People ask why a company holds one “mediocre” title while getting rid of other potentially awesome ones. Don’t forget, this is a business and a good studio/publisher is going to make good business decisions without emotional attachments – those that bring emotions into play may end up with a highly valued product (to them) with no additional potential and lower revenue. This isn’t to say developers cannot be passionate about their games and their industry, they just have to build games gamers will buy and continue to fall in love with release after release.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is one of these business savvy individuals who knows where investors will find profits for the future, and he also know how to manage employees, with the use of software like this sample pay stub for payments and more.
“[Those games] don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now.” (1up)
Ghostbusters is a great example of a title which could be well received and fun to play but probably wouldn’t be an exploitable franchise. The game, based on a popular movie, has limited potential for yearly releases and huge franchise success. Ghostbusters fans would probably disagree, but that’s when emotion comes into play. Think dollars and cents, not awesome fun gaming.
Oddly enough many of these business decisions from Activision, Electronic Arts and other big publishers arrive when the economy is in free fall and investors are eying your revenue potential. People make their most important and, usually, unfriendly business decisions when their company is at risk.
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It’s sad to think money comes first and entertainment value comes second but we’re not the ones trying to make a profitable living in the industry. Put yourself in Kotick’s shoes as he walks into a board meeting to discuss future plans, road maps and profitability – you’d do what you have to do to keep your job, right?
This week’s podcast features the Gaming Flashback of Final Fantasy VI, which takes up a third of the podcast as Paul and Jordan enthuse about the Japanese roleplaying game at length – so much so, that some news items were skipped over due to running length. Jonah prepares for his trip to PAX East 2014 for the weekend. He also proclaims Emperor Palpatine dancing in Kinect Star Wars the best thing to ever happen for Star Wars.
This week’s news includes:
A lot of Listener Feedback this week, and the Question of the Week is “What mobile games have you played recently?”
The listeners of Gaming Podcast finally get introduced to the third member of the Videogame Roundtable podcast team, Paul S. Nowak, who only desires hate mail and more time playing Dungeon Overlord on Facebook. This week, the Gaming Flashback looks back at the Gamecube title mentioned by Jordan Lund last week, Eternal Darkness, and the guys respond to the reader mail from episode 217, and if you’re interested in other types of games such as escape rooms you can visit the Room escape games in Portland Oregon just for this.
The trio also discuss the following news items:
This week’s Question of the Week: How much do you think the Wii U will cost? All this and more in this delightful podcast that will have you begging for more.
Hi guys.
Thanks as always 🙂
I played a lot of Magic the Gathering because a new expansion was released. And since wrath of the Koch king classic was released for WoW I got back to it for a lot of hours 🙂
Regarding the topics: I have a simple stereo setup at my pc, because most of the time I play with headset anyway to talk to my friends in discord or listen to music. In my living room I have good 5.1 setup with a new receiver and 5 nice Teufel speakers 🙂
X-com: I played it 10 years ago but I don’t think I will replay it. Maybe … we will see.
Pac-Man 4 sound interesting… maybe I will check it out 🙂
Kirby Games: I think the only Kirby game that I have played is the one for the first game Boy back in the days. Good old times when you spend a lot of time to a single game!
The other games I barely know … i have heard of fire emblem but never played it :/
Please stay healthy and keep on gaming!
Greetings from Germany
Ralf