Titan Likely Cost Blizzard More Than $50 Million

Esmeralda Portillo

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Titan Likely Cost Blizzard More Than $50 Million



Analysts predict Titan cost Blizzard anywhere from $50 to $140 million.

After the news broke that Blizzard pulled the plug on Titan [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/137608-Blizzard-Cancels-Titan-MMO-After-Seven-Years], a project they've been working on for seven years, analysts took to estimating how much that cancellation actually cost.

Michael Pachter, research analyst for Wedbush Securities, believes the costs tied to Titan are very high, "My guess is 100-200 people at $100,000 per year, so $70-140 million sunk cost. It's pretty sad that it took so long to figure out how bad the game was. I expect them to go back to the drawing board."

Game industry analyst Billy Pidgeon believes the numbers are a bit less than that, but still high from a development standpoint, "Development costs for Titan may have amounted to tens of millions, perhaps $50 million or more." Pidgeon does make clear that this happens quite a bit, "Blizzard has cancelled several games in various stages of development in the past."

But despite the high costs associated with working on Titan, analysts predict the cost of shipping out a bad product was a bigger risk, both in terms of money and credibility. "Costs for unreleased games can be significant," states Pidgeon, "but launching substandard games can harm the reputation of a successful publisher such as Blizzard. Expenses for development can be considered R&D, and benefits can include invaluable training, IP and technology that can be applied to other games."

This coincides with Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime's public statement on the matter, "We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs. So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn't come together. We didn't find the fun. We didn't find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that's the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no."

DFC Intelligence's David Cole believes this will help the company revamp their business model, "For Blizzard, I am expecting to see them continue to focus on high quality products but also focus on products with shorter development cycles and less cost. The market is just not in a place where you can have games with 7+ year development. It is changing too fast."

As an aside, given the ambition and the MMO comparisons continuously being made on Destiny, [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/reviews/12236-Destiny-Review] it might not be farfetched to assume Bungie's game was also a factor in the decision-making.

Source: Gamesindustry.biz [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-09-23-titan-cancellation-cost-blizzard-usd50m-or-more-say-analysts]

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marioandsonic

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...So about 2 months worth of WoW subscription fees at most.

Oh dear. How will they ever recover?

EDIT: In all seriousness, it sucks when a game gets cancelled. But since they said it was because they "couldn't find the fun", that's probably a good reason to not have the game be finished.
 

Mezahmay

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Well that's a bit of a bummer. I was hoping that it would be a new Blizzard product other than the same old trio of Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo that I could get behind. Also, does the news post say it was posted December 31, 1969?
 

dragongit

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And yet Bungie still has yet to explain exactly where all 500 million of their development went into Destiny... I'd really like to know.
 

Leemaster777

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Blizzard: Smart enough to know that releasing a bad game is a bad idea. No matter HOW long you've been working on it, or HOW much it cost.

Probably should have taught that lesson to whoever decided to resurrect Duke Nukem Forever.
 

Jadak

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A bit unreasonable to guess "100-200 people at $100,000 per year", for the entire 7 years.

I mean, sure, Blizzard is large and that is entirely possible, but given the amount of content ever actually shown in regards to 'Titan', any number of those years could have been more or less nothing.
 

oldtaku

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Even if it's $140M they make more than that selling molten corgis and the like.
 

Baresark

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You have to give it to Blizzard for avoiding the sunk cost fallacy. I would have loved to see an MMO from them besides WoW, but that isn't gonna happen I guess.

On the other hand, this is why I can't stand that Blizzard announces products years in advance! Part of me is like, "they can play hide and go fuck themselves!"
 

theNater

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Baresark said:
You have to give it to Blizzard for avoiding the sunk cost fallacy. I would have loved to see an MMO from them besides WoW, but that isn't gonna happen I guess.

On the other hand, this is why I can't stand that Blizzard announces products years in advance! Part of me is like, "they can play hide and go fuck themselves!"
In fairness, they didn't announce Titan. Somebody got a hold of an internal document which mentioned Titan and made it public, and fans have asked about it relentlessly ever since.

I'm glad they were honest about it; telling us it was a real thing but they weren't ready to talk about it in detail, rather than lying and saying it didn't exist.
 

Baresark

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theNater said:
Baresark said:
You have to give it to Blizzard for avoiding the sunk cost fallacy. I would have loved to see an MMO from them besides WoW, but that isn't gonna happen I guess.

On the other hand, this is why I can't stand that Blizzard announces products years in advance! Part of me is like, "they can play hide and go fuck themselves!"
In fairness, they didn't announce Titan. Somebody got a hold of an internal document which mentioned Titan and made it public, and fans have asked about it relentlessly ever since.

I'm glad they were honest about it; telling us it was a real thing but they weren't ready to talk about it in detail, rather than lying and saying it didn't exist.
I stand corrected. I forgot about all that in all of the damn speculation articles that floated around about it for a solid year after that leak.
 

walrusaurus

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Jadak said:
A bit unreasonable to guess "100-200 people at $100,000 per year", for the entire 7 years.

I mean, sure, Blizzard is large and that is entirely possible, but given the amount of content ever actually shown in regards to 'Titan', several of those years could have been more or less nothing.
Its michael pachter logic. dont question it!

Of all the video game personalities i wish would just go away MIchael Pachter is top 3 on the list. He just spouts meaningless business speak and BS but because he can attach his name to some big name investment firm people report his drivle as news
 

Remus

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Their Titan office wasn't in Rhode Island by chance was it?
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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Well, sucks we'll never see it but I'm happy they decided it wasn't going to be worth the money they spent on it already. Blizzard, a company that can "waste" $50million on vaporware. At least a few devs got some steady employment out of it. Not even Blizz can kill WoW.
 

Tortilla the Hun

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Mezahmay said:
Also, does the news post say it was posted December 31, 1969?
With The Escapist's new time-travel technology, contributors can get the information out before they even have the technology to do so. It's all part of their strategy to be the first in breaking news.
 

Li Mu

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dragongit said:
And yet Bungie still has yet to explain exactly where all 500 million of their development went into Destiny... I'd really like to know.
Hookers and blow aren't cheap.
 

faefrost

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So maybe they will dust off the idea of Starcraft Ghost and think "you know, we could really do something amazing with this using todays tech!"

Who'm I kidding. Lost Vikings Online.
 

NortherWolf

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faefrost said:
So maybe they will dust off the idea of Starcraft Ghost and think "you know, we could really do something amazing with this using todays tech!"

Who'm I kidding. Lost Vikings Online.
I'd settle for Blackthorne Online ^^ One of the best platformers of the 16-Bit era and it gets way too little love.
 

AstaresPanda

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dragongit said:
And yet Bungie still has yet to explain exactly where all 500 million of their development went into Destiny... I'd really like to know.
Marketing. Not much of a game to justify 500 fucking mill. I would still like to know if SC:GHOST was ever going to see the light of day, i mean they had gameplay and trailers and then nothing. I think they just dont want to admit just how much of a fluke WoW was in some respects
 

Nuxxy

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50 million is peanuts for 7 years development. That's a win for Blizzard. There are many companies in many industries who would love to be able to write off a stagnant 7-year old project for just $50 million.
 

Silverbane7

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they just need to admit that these days, MMO's that cater to everyone are hard to make.
they would make a tone of cash (relatively speaking) if they made a starcraft based mmo. but it would be a niche tital, that would only appeal to fans of that game (likely, and to those who love scifi mmo's)
but because it wont make the megaton that wow has, they think its not worth it.

here's the secret tho.....

the only way past world of warcraft....is to make niche MMOs.
we've seen so many games these days, try to 'diversify their playerbase' themselves into oblivion.
resident evil, going from a well known and loved (by the now 'older gen' players) survival horror game going into a fps based not so horror action game.
and what do they do now? re-relase the original game as a hd remake. (and no, i am not grumbling about that. im GLAD they have a hd remake so that gamers who havent a clue what a gamecube is, can enjoy all the things about rez evil i loved on my gamecube)

these companies need to stop trying to make wow killers. wow will eventualy die off. ether entropy will eat it (along with player dissatisfaction or other issues) or they will eventualy finish it and move onto a remake at higher graphics (wow 2 as it were, in the same line as everquest 2)

someone needs to poke them and say 'you know what? there is nothing wrong with having a dedicated 1million subscribers to a niche game, especialy if you have 5 seperate niche games running at the same time. thats still 5 mill subs, just spread over 5 titals. nothing shamefull about that.'