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[megamerican]

If you sell 300k first month in just the US, and don't make a profit it's your budget. There's no reason this game couldn't have made money off those sales unless it had the most rancid word of mouth in the history of gaming. Which, given the good reviews from both critics, and users seems really unlikely.

Yeah, a new IP selling 300k first month is pretty good for this cycle. My guess is that it didn't have legs it needed due to not having traditional online. I'm not saying it needed that, I'm just guessing it fostered more trade-ins / used purchases.

 

[Stop It]

While I have to wonder about the budget this game had in order for the sales it gained to make this a failure, I am still saddened by the prospect of this harming People Can Fly.

Bulletstorm was actually a heck of a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I enjoyed it from start to finish and the image of it being "dudebro" only holds until you realise that the game is a pretty decent parody of that sort of style. I thought the characters were really good and the story pretty decent until the end (Because that end was not fantastic) and the gameplay mechanics were actually very fun.

I echo the sentiment that this game probably captured what Duke Nukem Forever should have been, and was a heck of a lot more cohesive package overall. That being said I hope both People Can Fly and Gearbox/Triptych manage to create follow ups because the potential is there for these developers to redeem themselves, both in sales and critical success.

 

[Lasthope106]

Put in on sale on Steam for $20 or less and you'll get a million sales before the end of the year.

 

[NBtoaster]

I think I'll buy this next week.

 

[Shiggy]

Put in on sale on Steam for $20 or less and you'll get a million sales before the end of the year.

I may bite for £3.

 

[paranoidfortean]

i'm happy about this.

 

[FLEABttn]

I went to Best Buy last night to pick up something and I saw that in the PS3 game section, they had 6 or 7 copies of Bulletstorm and every single one was the Epic Edition.

 

[Phat Michael]

was excited about it. played it once, never touched it again. the game had NOTHING to bring you back and the kills got so boring after a while.

 

[charlequin]

All game developers don't bet on the farm though.

Any shooter -- literally any -- released for consoles today is going to be aiming at a similar or higher sales target to Bulletstorm. Any open world game or big expansive Western RPG is going to be looking at a similar or higher target.

I don't care what shiny hyper-bro UE3 wrapper you serve it in, that concept just isn't enough to support a $60 game.

Yeah, this is why we should be moving down to a $40 or even $30 standard price instead of upwards.

Why are games still costing so much to develop when it is 5 and 6 years later? Aren't development costs supposed to go down some, especially once you get more familiar with the hardware?

Development costs have risen in huge leaps at each generational transition, and then continued to trickle upward over the course of each generation, for the entire history of the medium. Things like hardware familiarity, superior toolsets, engine reuse, etc. do save money (and those savings get larger over a generation) but that saved money just gets plowed right back into other expenditures instead of being used to bring down budgets overall.

Hard to believe Bulletstorm had a budget of $10 million+

$10m is a low budget for a high-profile game this generation. The vast majority of console shooters cost well more than this to make now. Gears 1 was widely reported as being near-miraculous for keeping its budget down to $10m, and that was in significant part only possible because Epic could write off the engine development costs.

If a developer seriously makes a demo that does not give the best possible impression about what awaits the gamer if he buys the full version, he is either dumb or ... no, there is no other explanation, he must be dumb.

Designing a good demo is hard. Most single-player games rely somewhat on easing you into their mechanics and complexity so that by the time you're engaged with the full complement it feels natural, but demos have to show off the way everything works in a short window.

I mean, I'm not saying people shouldn't make better demos, but it IS tricky! Probably the solution, based on demos that people have really liked (Bioshock, Darksiders) is to just make sure the first two hours of your game do a really good job making people want to keep playing, and then lop those off and use them as the demo.

 

[StealthGoblin]

Never really saw how they could succeed commercially. The projects always looked like something a few freaks inside the companies designed, nothing you can get much money with. And then they completely ignored Nintendo which didn't help much either.

Putting BulletStorm on Wii wouldn't have helped. It was targeted at the right platforms.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

Yeah, this is why we should be moving down to a $40 or even $30 standard price instead of upwards.

You know, fans discuss this frequently but I always wondered if this is actually a realistic thing to hope for. There are so many games released that could fit the 40-30 tag but I just don't see us ever going there. Maybe if the videogame industry is on the brink of collapse they'll let go of greed as a last ditch effort.

Or maybe they genuinely can't do it, I'm not educated enough on the subject to say for sure. Just thinking out loud.

 

[Mupod]

I got Bulletstorm on PC the day it came out and regretted it at first, because it ran like total ass and GFWL is a pain. Didn't even get very far before I gave up.

Then they patched it, turns out the game didn't like 1680x1050. Ran flawlessly after that, and after giving it another chance I realized how much better it gets when you have a larger selection of weapons and abilities. Echoes mode is great fun, forces you to constantly juggle weapons and be creative with every single kill if you want to max out your score.

Vanquish really could have used something like that, and while I'm on the subject of Platinum games, IMO Bulletstorm did a much better job of the 'kill people in wacky and interesting ways' than Madworld. Also I just realized Steve Blum is in all those games. Guy gets around.

But yeah, Bulletstorm is awesome, I'm glad I gave it another try. Oddly enough I managed to appreciate the story, setting and characters as well, despite the ridiculousness of it all. I just hope the crappy sales don't prevent them from releasing a sequel, the ending definitely alludes to one.

 

[charlequin]

You know, fans discuss this frequently but I always wondered if this is actually a realistic thing to hope for.

Well, it's not "realistic" in the sense that the existing business model is too ingrained and the industry has spent too long doubling down on dedicated customers at the expense of its broader audience, and in the sense that the first-one-into-the-pool problem makes it hard to coordinate such a shift. I think it's fair to call it realistic in the sense that the market as a whole would benefit significantly from such a move if it could be implemented.

 

[FLEABttn]

I'd argue they're generally reluctant to go below the established $60 price point because it may infer the product is of lower quality compared to something at $60.

That said, a lower price may increase sales but not enough to offset the amount of money lost by going with a lower MSRP. It's hard to say for certain though, I'd love to see their spreadsheets.