And you missed the point...DarkSaber said:In all fairness, Valve have ONLY done L4D 1 and 1.5 since the orange box. But that's getting off topic.
Answer that question with another question, would the "look" and profit directly correlate with time and money invested?Frank_Sinatra_ said:But how would the final product of the game look?If the company were able to compress the development cycles for its triple-A titles in financial year 2010, we believe that its development costs during the fiscal year could have been at least $60 million lower.
The company could go bankrupt, and you'd have no game at all. Is that the end result you'd rather have?SnootyEnglishman said:I'd rather wait a good long time and have a game that is well thought out and put together rather than having a game that's pushed out the door so quick that it's infested with bugs and other nit-picky glitches and breaks.
Touché, good sir, touché.DarkSaber said:In all fairness, Valve have ONLY done L4D 1 and 1.5 since the orange box. But that's getting off topic.coldalarm said:@DarkSaber - Valve is one company though. Take-Two is a publisher and owns/publishes a bunch of studios so they need to take a lot more money to be profitable. Don't forget that Valve also did Left 4 Dead 1 + 2 since the Orange Box.
@Story - That's a fair enough set of points, to be honest. It's been a long time since Max Payne 2 came out, and I would suspect a lot of interest has been lost in MP3. They need to really just look at themselves and their studios to see where it's going wrong.
I do believe I've already addressed that issue. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.178825-Analysts-Say-Take-Two-Takes-Too-Long-to-Make-Games#5195944]hansari said:Answer that question with another question, would the "look" and profit directly correlate with time and money invested?Frank_Sinatra_ said:But how would the final product of the game look?If the company were able to compress the development cycles for its triple-A titles in financial year 2010, we believe that its development costs during the fiscal year could have been at least $60 million lower.
The article says 6 years for Max Payne 3. Knowing the franchise, I can tell you thats just dumb and an obvious loss.
Gaming is a hobby, making games is a business. You wanna go on the quest for the best game of all time, you'll end up like Duke Nukem....
AHEMDarkSaber said:What? Compared to Valve they release them weekly!
While the public profiles of highly rated games has risen considerably in recent years, you can't automatically assume that highly rated games are going to sell well. Just look at games like Psychonauts. Psychonauts got high ratings across the board, and even won a bunch of awards [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychonauts#Awards], but by the end of the first year that it was released, it had only sold about 100,000 copies. You can't just assume that good reviews means people are going to be climbing over themselves to buy a game.Frank_Sinatra_ said:Okay my animation professor just got out of the games industry to teach so I'll tell you what he told us.Pingieking said:The problem is that as long as the game turns out "Good", there is some evidence suggesting that taking the time and effort to tweak the little things and make it "Amazing" might not make economic sense.
There seems to be a bigger correlation between marketing spending and sales than review scores. As long as the core idea of the game is executed well, the polish might not be necessary to reach sales numbers in the same region as the game would have if it was delayed for a year.
"In the industry right now it's all about looks and substance. If you can nail those two, the reviews by the idiots who don't know what they're talking about will go up. If you can get the reviews up the sales will go up. When sales are up, friends tell friends, who tell friends. More profits, publisher is happy, your boss is happy. Take your time to make it look good, and make sure the game has substance."
(Not an exact quote, but it's the gist)
People like polish as much as they like the substance, so if you can nail both on the head you're going to (probably) make some massive sales.
Sure with economies in the shitter right now this may not be the best time to do this, and I'm not asking for an immediate change.
All I'm asking is us gamers be more patient with developers, and that if we allow them to make fabulous games we should be willing to pay a heftier price for them.
I'm also not asking for the death of the 2 year dev titles. Those have their place as a drug to get us through the longer waits for very good games.
If I get called a fanboy for saying you're wrong, so be it.Frank_Sinatra_ said:Valve doesn't have the spotlight like Take Two does, so I don't predict a analyst caring about them right now. (You know I'm right Valve fanboys)DarkSaber said:What? Compared to Valve they release them weekly!
YES.Doc Cannon said:Now I'm not a fancy big city lawyer, but I don't think you need an analyst to tell you they take too long.
Which they do, 6 years sounds like a lot of money down the drain.