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[LectureMaster]

You can’t make AAA games for just one platform anymore

Nintendo is the exception, as usual... but for how long?

www.polygon.com

The prevailing wisdom in the video game industry used to be that exclusive games were the pillar that could prop up a whole platform. Must-have games that couldn’t be played anywhere else were the reason to choose one console over another, or to buy one in the first place. The games drove the console sales, the console audience drove the game sales, and the whole system raked in money from third-party publishers eager to be part of a healthy platform.

To put it simply: Games have gotten too expensive to make. To put it only slightly less simply: Game budgets are growing much faster than the audience is. In fact, at the moment, the audience for AAA games barely seems to be growing at all.

So how do publishers address the fact that the cost of making games is growing, but the audience for them isn’t? The most straightforward answer is to raise prices, and Navok predicts this change is coming, possibly with Grand Theft Auto 6.

Failing that, a quick fix is to increase the potential audience size of your AAA production by simply putting it on another platform. A PC version, at least, is clearly considered a necessity by both PlayStation and Xbox now. It seems the need for these games to make a decent profit has exceeded their value to the platform holder as incentives to buy into a console ecosystem

 

[Represent.]

Yes you can.

Make them shorter, release them more frequently, and stop spending 500 million dollars to make them.

This (release on 1 platform) formula has worked for decades, it doesn't just stop working overnight - These publishers are just being greedy. Making billions isnt enough, making the same amount of money they made last year isnt enough - They have to make WAY MORE money than last year, or its a failure.

 

[Dacvak]

Solution: reduce scope in areas like hyper-realistic graphical assets and instead focus on polished gameplay. Utilize smaller teams and invest in the individual developer’s career and skill set, and strive for long term employee retention. Keep games shorter and more focused.

For the cost of one Concord, Sony could have thrown 200 Balatros at the wall. Or 50 Hades. Or 20 Hi-Fi Rushes. Embrace the creativity of the individuals in your arsenal, create small and passionate teams, and let them fucking cook. This is why indies are eating AAA’s lunch.

And I’ll add on to this. Executives and publishers need to STOP making decisions on what games developers should make. That’s a guaranteed way to ensure your game ends up passionless and homogenized, and it almost never works out. If you want real quality and innovated, let your developers decide what games they want to create.

Do you guys remember Marvel’s Midnight Suns? That’s a Firaxis game. Firaxis consistently made absolute quality titles that sold insanely well over the last few decades. They almost never missed, both in terms of critical reception and sales figures. Games Civilization and XCOM were built out of passion and love, whereas Midnight Suns was thrust upon that same team by 2K to try and capitalize on the Marvel IP. And look what happened. Layoffs. (I only bring up this example because I have friends on that dev team, so I’ve heard first-hand about it.)

It’s depressing and annoying. Board members and executives almost never know better than the people actually doing the work (and that’s true for almost every industry, by the way), and game developers will continue to fail under their guidance and dictation. It’s a foundational problem, and it’s so frustrating.

 

[proandrad]

If you are making a 200million dollar game, exclusivity is stupid. Imagine infinity war being an AMC exclusive movie.

 

[feynoob]

Yes you can.

Make them shorter, release them more frequently, and stop spending 500 million dollars to make them.

That is not possible. The only reason nintendo is getting away with it is that their prices never drops. So 10m is 600m-700m revenue. While Sony 10m isnt close to 700m Its more like 500+m revenue due to price drop.

Nintendo 20m can bring 1.4b, while Sony only gets close to a billion.

 

[Madflavor]

What happens when the day finally comes when even going multiplat isn't enough to cover the insane cost and development time for a game?

 

[Dacvak]

Sorry, that was a lot of words before. Lemme try again.

REDUCE SCOPE. MAXIMIZE GAMEPLAY.

 

[Fake]

Is funny to have a 'unless Nintendo' to prove an argument.

 

[PixelatedBeast]

Oh, if Polygon said it, then it must be true....

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Only a moron can defend a product with "costs growing more than its audience". The core premise is flawed. You don't make unsustainable products, that's it.

And no, "selling to everyone" is not a safe option, as thousands of layoffs in western studios are proving.

 

[ReBurn]

Sorry, that was a lot of words before. Lemme try again.

REDUCE SCOPE. MAXIMIZE GAMEPLAY.

 

[ChiefDada]

Sales-Age - Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sales top 11 million (six million copies sold in the last six months)

Total worldwide sales for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 have surpassed 11 million units as of April 20, 2024, publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Insomniac Games announced. As previously announced, over 2.5 million copies were sold in the first 24 hours of release, and over five...

www.neogaf.com

 

[Ozzie666]

This seems like a behind the scenes campaign from Microsoft being feed to their zealots. Exclusives are suddenly bad and not profitable. Nintendo and Sony prove otherwise.
Yes it's not ideal for third-party or Gaas games. but for successful Platform owners, it's still important.

 

[Self_Destructive]

You can.... but it just doesn't make sense to limit yourself to just one platform. You might as well release everywhere and make all the money you can.

 

[Unknown?]

How much did Microsoft pay for this article?

 

[Kilau]

*Western* AAA

 

[drganon]

Polygon article...

 

[GHound]

This is what is commonly referred to as a skill issue.

 

[Saber]

What about making AA or A games instead of burning money with pixel fidelity and motion capture just to show the quality of hair from a model ass?

 

[Punished Miku]

Contrary to popular wisdom, Nintendo could very easily make this pivot at some point. They already dont rely on tons of 3rd party revenue on par with Sony. They lost all the biggest series decades ago. They have their budgets under control. And they have universal appeal. If they ever think that's their future they could pivot fast and sell crazy numbers. They pivoted on Wii, mobile, movies. One bad sales console and they could always do it again. Who knows.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Microsoft doesn't have exclusives and its consoles lost competitiveness , suddenly these ridiculous articles started to appear basically to deconstruct the winning model based on dedicated hardware and exclusivity. But I wasn't born yesterday the narrative now is that the apocalypse reaches the world of games, that's silly.

The Playstation and Switch are doing fucking well. Friends, never allow narratives like this to corrode our beloved world of consoles.

Microsoft, bring us the new Xbox.

 

[onQ123]

Yes you can as long as it's not EXbox

 

[DavidGzz]

You know what to do, Hermen.

 

[ZehDon]

Microsoft's been burning cash for a while - 343i bungling Halo alone literally burned hundreds of millions of dollars - but that's largely due to their inability to land home runs to drive their platform. However, Sony has all the success in the world... but they're now eyeing USD$300m+ for their latest crop. Add marketing spend, and they'll need 10m sales on every title just to keep the lights on. EA, Ubisoft, Take2 - they'll all be in the boat soon enough. Anything less than record breaking success every quarter will bring the whole house cards down. And when that bubble bursts, things will get messy.

 

[tr1p1ex]

they will race each other right over the cliff.

 

[balls of snow]

What happens when the day finally comes when even going multiplat isn't enough to cover the insane cost and development time for a game?

Only then do the c suites say "Ok maybe we need to reign in the scope of these games".

 

[RCU005]

I wondered about Square Enix decision for going multi-platform, because they said it at a time when many games like FF16 and FF7 Rebirth are probably not able to run on a Nintendo console (they might want to release it as cloud, but that's not ideal), and Xbox is practically dying when it comes to consoles sales (and therefore software sales).

The only option is PC, but I thought they already make their games for PC. So are they talking just about just releasing them simultaneously?

Somehow, a lot of people want games to be multi-platform, but it doesn't really apply to Nintendo in most cases. It's like people is OK for Nintendo to have exclusive games.

This generation has been shit for Sony and worse for Xbox first party. Third party on the other hand has been very strong. In this case, I would say I'm all for all games to be Multiplatform.

 

[FoxMcChief]

I just got off the phone with Nintendo. They just told me that Polygon can go fuck themselves.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Nintendo does it all the time.

 

[Robb]

Sorry, that was a lot of words before. Lemme try again.

REDUCE SCOPE. MAXIMIZE GAMEPLAY.

 

[Vroadstar]

Oh, Polygon article...ok

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Oh, if Polygon said it, then it must be true....

Polygon be like:

 

[Madflavor]

This is one reason why gaming was better in the 90s and 2000s. Video Games didn't have absurd fucking budgets. They didn't have massive sized teams like we see today, and god knows how many millions of dollars pumped into marketing. As such they weren't pressured by focus groups, corporate meddling, and DEI, to try to appeal to as much of that masses as possible in order to cover cost. And they worked with technology that was a lot more primitive than what we see today, and limitation breeds creativity.

If we're getting to the point where most AAA gaming studios can no longer afford to go exclusive, that needs to be a wake up call to the industry that this bullshit isn't sustainable. They can sweep it under the rug by going multiplat, but even that someday won't be enough to cover cost.

 

[diffusionx]

People say this shit in a world where Nintendo exists.

 

[diffusionx]

Contrary to popular wisdom, Nintendo could very easily make this pivot at some point. They already dont rely on tons of 3rd party revenue on par with Sony. They lost all the biggest series decades ago. They have their budgets under control. And they have universal appeal. If they ever think that's their future they could pivot fast and sell crazy numbers. They pivoted on Wii, mobile, movies. One bad sales console and they could always do it again. Who knows.

Sorry, no. Nintendo has the most valuable thing in the world, the thing that every tech company spends gazillions of dollars on. A platform. You don't throw it away for some short term profits, which is why what Microsoft and now Sony did is ultimately self-defeating.

The Wii U paradoxically showed the value of having that platform. Even though the system stunk and failed, they sold a lot of games on it. Like 8 million copies of Mario Kart 8. They were able to maintain customer loyalty even through that bad platform.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

This is one reason why gaming was better in the 90s and 2000s. Video Games didn't have absurd fucking budgets. They didn't have massive sized teams like we see today, and god knows how many millions of dollars pumped into marketing. As such they weren't pressured by focus groups, corporate meddling, and DEI, to try to appeal to as much of that masses as possible in order to cover cost. And they worked with technology that was a lot more primitive than what we see today, and limitation breeds creativity.

If we're getting to the point where most AAA gaming studios can no longer afford to go exclusive, that needs to be a wake up call to the industry that this bullshit isn't sustainable. They can sweep it under the rug by going multiplat, but even that someday won't be enough to cover cost.

Have you played FF7, Shenmue and GT4?

 

[diffusionx]

Have you played FF7, Shenmue and GT4?

Game budgets did ramp up massively between 1995 and 2000, and I do remember reading articles about that. IIRC, the cost of a game went from like $300K on 16-bit to $1 million on 32-bit pretty quickly. And MGS2 cost $10 million. But the market was growing so fast, and a fair amount of risk was removed with the move to CD, that it didn't really matter too much in the end.

 

[nial]

Yes you can.

Make them shorter, release them more frequently, and stop spending 500 million dollars to make them.

You heard it, Sony, bring more Astro Bots!

 

[realcool]

"Budgets are getting out of hand."

"Development time is increasing."

"Platform exclusivity is no longer profitable."

They're attempting to groom you.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

Sales-Age - Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sales top 11 million (six million copies sold in the last six months)

Total worldwide sales for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 have surpassed 11 million units as of April 20, 2024, publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Insomniac Games announced. As previously announced, over 2.5 million copies were sold in the first 24 hours of release, and over five...

www.neogaf.com

This cost a ton to make and will be on PC eventually, so it isn’t made for one platform.

MS and Sony are adopting this strategy. Nintendo is the only outlier because their games never go down in price.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

"Budgets are getting out of hand."

"Development time is increasing."

"Platform exclusivity is no longer profitable."

They're attempting to groom you.

I go further, they are trying to build an environment where Sony takes the bait.
Like Catholicism where the world completely modernized around it, taking away its ground.

 

[Jesb]

So don’t make expensive videogames.

 

[tmlDan]

As Sony stated, outsourcing and AI will make it possible forever, tech will get more advanced and games will be made with less resources required.

They're more able than ever to reduce costs.

 

[Varteras]

"It's not possible. Unless you're Nintendo. And no one else can do what they do. It's a secret formula of responsible budgets, high quality control, and price confidence. Literally impossible to figure out. I'm the only one who understands how they do it".

 

[AmuroChan]

1. Stop building studios in places like California which has absurdly high cost of living/taxes and therefore you have to pay top dollars in salaries and office space. Note how a studio like Remedy can make AAA games for under $100m.
2. Stop wasting money on consultants to come in and tell you if your game is appropriate for "modern" audiences. Games didn't need that 20 years ago. They don't need them now. It's ok if your game offends some people.
3. Focus on gameplay instead of chasing graphics. I appreciate good looking games, but it's really not necessary to waste your artists' time drawing the most realistic trees.
4. Minimize bloat in games and just make a really good core experience. Games don't need to have 1000 side quests just so you can artificially lengthen the game to justify the $70 price tag.

 

[Madflavor]

Have you played FF7, Shenmue and GT4?

In general you didn't have absurd budgets, that doesn't mean there weren't some exceptions, and that should go without saying. FFVII's development and marketing cost was absolutely insane for that time and nowhere close to the norm. FFX cost less to make, and if we're talking similar release windows, Ocarina of Time cost way less to make, and with more staff.

 

[twilo99]

The "industry" will simply die without PLAYSTATION exclusives

 

[Kamina]

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Everyone here needs to watch psychodeyssey before commenting on how developers should operate.

 

[Pasta la Vista]

If you are making a 200million dollar game, exclusivity is stupid. Imagine infinity war being an AMC exclusive movie.

Terrible analogy. AMC has no part in the creation of the film.