• ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Even if every $200M game was good, you’re still competing against the other $200M games out there, and that’s very risky.

    • Gamoc@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I suspect there wouldn’t be as many releases if they were only releasing good ones.

      • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        True. There would also be even more layoffs in this industry if they threw out years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars at the finish line because they decided not to release a game that didn’t turn out to be as good as they’d hoped.

        • Gamoc@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          That’s just another symptom of chasing perceived profits. If they were dedicated to releasing good products they’d understand retaining good talent that has experience working together is an important part of it.

          Obviously that’s a pipe dream because they’re all vultures circling over a games publisher, picking off what they can until they can feast on its corpse, but still.

          • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I was being facetious. If your development timeline is 7 years, you have no idea how it’s going to turn out at the end, but they all set out to make a good product, especially when it takes that much time and money to make. Guardians of the Galaxy was supposedly a very good game that bombed horribly, for instance. There’s a lot of risk when your game is that expensive to make, because there are only so many customers out there, and they’re already playing other big expensive games. Even Sony is finding that their marquis titles aren’t bringing in as many customers as they expected anymore, so they can’t keep spending more on games and expect them to be profitable.

            • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              That’s also partly because Microsoft is buying customers with gamepass, it’s unprofitable in the long run, but they just need to do it long enough to kill off competitors. Exactly what Netflix did basically.

              Youve been able to start to see the ripples forming a few years ago. Devs aren’t making as much from the deal of being on it vs private sales as well.

              • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                What do you mean? It’s already profitable for them. I’m far more concerned with Nintendo’s online subscription than Microsoft’s. Nintendo’s already crossed the line, and Microsoft still stands to make more money by offering games for sale on Steam than to make them only available via a subscription that isn’t doing well with regards to acquiring more customers.

                • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  It’s not profitable. They say they spend over 1billion dollars a year, but you read some of the deals and they are $200 million for one game… they also say they make $230 million a month. So if they only make 2.7 billion and spend more than a billion a year with some games costing $200 million….

                  How is it profitable? It’s being supported by Microsoft itself so they can bleed money to crush competition. They are being intentionally vague and not releasing intimation as it would show they are doing very illegal things.

                  Lots of this stuff came to light during the merger and is available online to view now.

                  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    So if they only make 2.7 billion and spend more than a billion a year with some games costing $200 million….

                    How is it profitable?

                    $2,700,000,000 -$1,000,000,000 = $1,700,000,000

                    If the rest of their expenditures are less than $1.7B, then it’s profitable for the year. Since we’ve already accounted for the line item where they’re licensing products for their service that they don’t own, I’d be surprised if they had $1.7B worth of other operating expenses left to pay for, unless you can share a source stating otherwise. But what I see is this stating that it is profitable.

                    They are being intentionally vague and not releasing intimation as it would show they are doing very illegal things.

                    The burden of proof is on you if you think they’re doing something illegal. It’s not difficult at all to believe that they’re doing everything by the book, have a profitable service, and also found a plateau in how many customers are interested in using such a subscription.