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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Hi guys!
Thanks for this episode! I really loved, that you talked so much about older games, so I could listen more carefully because I nearly knew all the games!
But some things to mention:
Open world Elden ring: I am completely on your side Jonah: I don’t have that much time to grind 10 hours to get to next point. I want games where I knew that they will end after 10 levels or when you solved 50 puzzles or something like that. Open world games don’t have that goal for me. I totally understand that people having fun with that, but not me 🙂
Street fighter 3: I was involved in the street fighter video game scene so I knew what you tried to analyze. In my opinion on 3rd strike came up when SF4 was released. Many old players didn’t like it and tried to show their disrespect by hyping 3rd strike again.
Hard mode / easy mode / achievements:
I think it’s hard for developers to find the best way between „not to easy but hard enough to not get bored“. Sometimes I like to change the difficulty but sometimes I feel like I don’t wanna have the choice because I want to play the game how it was intended by the developers.
Achievements: sometimes I try to get them, sometimes I don’t care. It depends on the game. It’s nice because you don’t need them, they don’t change the game itself but if you really want to can play the game a different way. So I think it’s a nice thing and it’s a nice addition.
Thanks again and please stay healthy and enjoy life!
Greetings,
Ralf