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[Kittonwy]

Brutal Legend? http://www.gametrailers.com/player/26524.html. In a weird way it's like PS360 Zelda.

I doubt it's going to be as huge and expansive as a Zelda, actually we don't even know if it's even an action-adventure game to begin with, it might just be an action game.

 

[ram]

They already tried and sales weren't anything special. Unfortunately, the audience for these games is small regardless of the platform.

and thats why the developers need to expand their audiance. and the expanse shouldnt be on DS or WII in the first place-> it should be on PS3 and Xbox360. because core gamers buy more games and especially niche ones.

and btw, i agree with thebishop, fahrenheit was the evolution of traditional adventures, but was flawed in many other things. but at least, it showed what the future holds up.

 

[stotch]

I doubt it's going to be as huge and expansive as a Zelda, actually we don't even know if it's even an action-adventure game to begin with, it might just be an action game.

I'm going by Schafer's previous games and the rumours that it might be compatible with Guitar Hero Guitars, and all the character and creativity that seems to be going on, but yeah, it's a trailer right now.

 

[M°°nblade]

Yep, platforming is basically just a mechanics and any action game can include it to mix things up, just a form of traversal, and way better than not having a jump button and going to the edge of a platform and wait for a prompt or just having the game jump for you and take away well little control the player does have.

RPGs are basically going the way of the do-do, a lot of people who grew up gaming just don't have the time to invest in something as long and arduous as a RPG anymore, a company like Bioware was smart to include shooting as part of the gameplay mechanics because just going around talking to people and selecting menus for random battles just isn't the way to go anymore. JRPG developers are scared to death of moving to current-gen platforms without someone else funding their ventures, where everything costs twice as much to make and Japan seems to be indifferent about anything outside of handheld and wii games.

And a platformgame developing company like Naughty dog was smart enough to do the same with uncharted.

And I think devs like sega are experimenting with valkyrie chronicles as well.

 

[Kittonwy]

That's no guarantee it will succeed. The media was also on board for Loco Roco, last I remember.

Loco Roco never got as much buzz, it was unique but LBP clearly has way more buzz and general appeal, and it isn't like the game needs to sell 5 million to break even, they're likely not operating on HALO/GTA-esque budget here, it's something unique that can diversify the library.

Unfortunately, the problem with Okami was that it was doomed to fail. It didn't have the appeal to take off.

Not enough market research done to find out if the premise itself will have appeal even to the Japanese, let alone the western market, the same reason why I'm not sure why Ubisoft wants to make another BG&E, frankly I never cared for the first game, they're relying hugely on that small hardcore fanbase to spread the gospel, and for the media to hype it to 11.

I think when they need to make a zelda-esque game, they really need to make a ZELDA-esque game, not something that is off-the-wall, but something that really encompass that lovable hero with sword in hand fighting against bosses and wizards, a combination of platforming, puzzles, accessible combat and boss fights. There's a reason why Zelda is so successful, people like that stuff, they like the same stuff, even if most of it is very similar.

 

[RurouniZel]

IIRC, I believe this was the primary reason Nintendo opted to forgo creating a "next-gen" system with the Wii? To help reduce these costs so that certain types of games and styles don't necessarily go the way of the dodo?

For all of the hardcore gamers demanding that everything be the latest and greatest it can be, they all too often forget that this shit is costing more money than ever before, and we as hardcore gamers simply don't have enough money to fund all of this stuff ourselves. Where is this money going to magically come from? I seriously hope that Sony and Microsoft do nothing to increase their tech next generation so that genres or smaller developers won't die out as quickly. Gaming technology grew way too fast for its own good, and fans of specific genres are starting to pay the price.

+1 Nintendo.

Having said that, I think J-RPGs are going to need to scale back if they want to survive. This is already happening though 'cause they're going onto the DS.

 

[diffusionx]

IIRC, I believe this was the primary reason Nintendo opted to forgo creating a "next-gen" system with the Wii? To help reduce these costs so that certain types of games and styles don't necessarily go the way of the dodo?

Do you believe it, or are you asking it?

Nintendo created the Wii because they felt they couldn't keep up with the tech curve. They didn't do it as a humanitarian game genre preservation gesture. I mean, its not like any of the genres mentioned in this thread are flourishing on the Wii.

I think the problem isn't so much cost as it is installed base. Obviously, to make a somewhat nichier game on the PS3 or 360 requires a nice installed base so you can be reasonably sure some of that niche is captured in that installed base. But neither of the systems have, quite frankly, sold that great. If the PS3 has sold as many units as the Wii has in Japan you'd see the JRPGs and such on the platform, companies would make the investment. But since it hasn't, they have put the games on the DS instead.

 

[Kunan]

Do you believe it, or are you asking it?

Nintendo created the Wii because they felt they couldn't keep up with the tech curve. They didn't do it as a humanitarian game genre preservation gesture. I mean, its not like any of the genres mentioned in this thread are flourishing on the Wii.

I think the problem isn't so much cost as it is installed base. Obviously, to make a somewhat nichier game on the PS3 or 360 requires a nice installed base so you can be reasonably sure some of that niche is captured in that installed base. But neither of the systems have, quite frankly, sold that great. If the PS3 has sold as many units as the Wii has in Japan you'd see the JRPGs and such on the platform, companies would make the investment. But since it hasn't, they have put the games on the DS instead.

It isn't hard to keep up with the tech curve. That hardly is the reason they decided against high tech. It's not out of any company's reach to just make a sleek case and stick in a nice assortment of powerful hardware and spend a couple years re-tooling it for profitability, especially for a highly profitable company. They had different plans for their console, and time and time again stated the power of the console was to make it an easier purchase so it could get into more homes, especially since it had an unproven interface. They also stated time and time again that the Wii was designed to ease the burden of burdgeoning development costs.

 

[PantherLotus]

While this certainly has merit, isn't this entire discussion based the false assumption that dev costs will continue to rise over time? Even producing something as detailed as Crysis and turning it into a platformer for the PS4 will eventually become cheap.

I would also point to the age of each genre in question in the first place. 2D-sidescrollers didn't stop being made (for the most part) because of development costs, but because 3D was a new possibility. SRPGs haven't graphically stagnated because of development costs, but because they have hit a creative wall.

Yes, development costs do effect which genres will survive and which genres will pass, but these are not the sole determining factor that magically becomes relevant because it costs a lot to make higher-end 3D models. The fact is that the genres themselves are creatively bankrupt, and most of the ones mentioned in the OP and in later discussion have hit a wall.

We will be seeing newer genres born out of this generation of hardware/input capability, just as we will see some recede forever into lower-graphical-tier, handheld territory. Some of that does have to do with development costs, but not much. Instead, I think it has more to do with the inability to create a truly new experience by putting a better polish on the same games.

The main genre I expect to recede from this point on would be turn-based RPGs -- too many great examples of non-turn-based RPGs using the formula in creative ways to tackle the same genre. I do not expect RPGs to fade, ever, but I do expect them to adopt more and more from other genres; i.e. would anybody be shocked to have a significant driving (inspired by GT or something) section in FFXIII?

I don't expect these genres to fade: Driving/Racing, FPS, Sports. I expect other genres that were previously held back by hardware (RPG, Strategy/RTS, etc) to either find a way to adapt and reach a new audience with amazing graphics or they will recede. I also expect that previously immense genres to find their way into permanent nichedom.

 

[Kittonwy]

While this certainly has merit, isn't this entire discussion based the false assumption that dev costs will continue to rise over time? Even producing something as detailed as Crysis and turning it into a platformer for the PS4 will eventually become cheap.

I would also point to the age of each genre in question in the first place. 2D-sidescrollers didn't stop being made (for the most part) because of development costs, but because 3D was a new possibility. SRPGs haven't graphically stagnated because of development costs, but because they have hit a creative wall.

Yes, development costs do effect which genres will survive and which genres will pass, but these are not the sole determining factor that magically becomes relevant because it costs a lot to make higher-end 3D models. The fact is that the genres themselves are creatively bankrupt, and most of the ones mentioned in the OP and in later discussion have hit a wall.

We will be seeing newer genres born out of this generation of hardware/input capability, just as we will see some recede forever into lower-graphical-tier, handheld territory. Some of that does have to do with development costs, but not much. Instead, I think it has more to do with the inability to create a truly new experience by putting a better polish on the same games.

The main genre I expect to recede from this point on would be turn-based RPGs -- too many great examples of non-turn-based RPGs using the formula in creative ways to tackle the same genre. I do not expect RPGs to fade, ever, but I do expect them to adopt more and more from other genres; i.e. would anybody be shocked to have a significant driving (inspired by GT or something) section in FFXIII?

I don't expect these genres to fade: Driving/Racing, FPS, Sports. I expect other genres that were previously held back by hardware (RPG, Strategy/RTS, etc) to either find a way to adapt and reach a new audience with amazing graphics or they will recede. I also expect that previously immense genres to find their way into permanent nichedom.

I expect RPGs to slowly evolve into more of an action-adventure genre, with the player taking more active control over the action and navigation while some element of character growth and story telling still remain. The market for tradition JRPGs is shrinking, because people are tired of them, at 10-20 million a pop, a lot of the genres that could have squeezed out some profits last gen just aren't viable on current gen platforms, retreating back to the PS2 or the wii isn't necessary the answer, because they're still making the same games as they have been for the past 5-6 years and people have already played them to death.

I think right now the big publishers just don't know what they want, they see Nintendo making mad money on the wii by making games for cheap but selling huge, and they simply don't know why, they don't know how to achieve the same success Nintendo is having on the wii but playing safe isn't really playing it safe when a big production value game costs so much, even if they cap development costs at 20 mil it's still a big gamble, games need to get cheaper to make, but they can't drop down to the PS2-level production value because we've already been there, that stuff has already been milked for the last 5-6 years. There's really no easy solution at this point.

 

[Opiate]

While this certainly has merit, isn't this entire discussion based the false assumption that dev costs will continue to rise over time? Even producing something as detailed as Crysis and turning it into a platformer for the PS4 will eventually become cheap.

Excellent point. However, the key word in that last sentence is "eventually." The savings in development costs accrue at an extremely slow rate: whatever savings are being realized are being profoundly outstripped by the increasing costs of development. For example, we can assume that EA was realizing cost savings throughout the PS2 generation, but despite that, their development costs increased 75% from the beginning of the generation to the end of it, without producing many more games (which is to say that the average late-PS2 EA game cost 50-75% more than early-PS2 EA games).

So yes, the technology does continue to evolve for these genres, but it is profoundly slower than what we are accustomed to. If I was to simply ballpark/shoot from the hip, I'd say these stagnant genres are increasing their production quality at perhaps 15% of the speed a more freely growing genre is.

I don't expect these genres to fade: Driving/Racing, FPS, Sports. I expect other genres that were previously held back by hardware (RPG, Strategy/RTS, etc) to either find a way to adapt and reach a new audience with amazing graphics or they will recede. I also expect that previously immense genres to find their way into permanent nichedom.

All of these genres will unquestionably and inevitably reach a ceiling. Consider Sports as a premier example. As EA is the undisputed sports franchise leader, looking again at the EA information I gave is enlightening (specifically, look at page 100). Here are EA's R&D costs and profit, respectively, over the last 5 years.

FY04: $511 million R&D costs, $577 million total profit
FY05: $633m R&D, $504m profit
FY06: $758m R&D, $236m profit
FY07: $1041m R&D, $76m profit
FY08: $1238m R&D, $487m loss

(Clarification: I added FY08, as that information wasn't available in the given report). It's possible that EA is simply losing more and more and more money on everything they do except Sports games, but more likely, it seems clear that even these are reaching their upper limit in production values. And again, look at those development costs increase over time, and look at those profits gradually shrink. Production costs are a steep hill, and there's no reason to believe that we'll stop climbing it.

 

[Deku]

The problem with this gen is that the costs have largely been pushed to a level based on a push by Microsoft and Sony to deliver a very specific kind of gaming. The jump could have been more modest had market forces actually been allowed to work.

If we want to talk about cost ceiling, we can't ignore that a lot of those costs have been unnecessary. Development tools simply haven't kept up with what people have been promised and most development jobs can't be farmed out to China or India, yet so those HQ floor textures don't come cheap.

 

[brain_stew]

the problem with point & click adventures is - there are many newer ones aviable in europe - the companys behind them dont expand into console territory. and without reaching new audiences, there wont be a mainstream comeback. to bad, that the big western pubs dont give a shit about these genres.

With the Wii and DS, there's at least some sort of movement in that area, be it however small.

 

[Stealth]

I expect RPGs to slowly evolve into more of an action-adventure genre, with the player taking more active control over the action and navigation while some element of character growth and story telling still remain. The market for tradition JRPGs is shrinking, because people are tired of them, at 10-20 million a pop, a lot of the genres that could have squeezed out some profits last gen just aren't viable on current gen platforms, retreating back to the PS2 or the wii isn't necessary the answer, because they're still making the same games as they have been for the past 5-6 years and people have already played them to death.

I think right now the big publishers just don't know what they want, they see Nintendo making mad money on the wii by making games for cheap but selling huge, and they simply don't know why, they don't know how to achieve the same success Nintendo is having on the wii but playing safe isn't really playing it safe when a big production value game costs so much, even if they cap development costs at 20 mil it's still a big gamble, games need to get cheaper to make, but they can't drop down to the PS2-level production value because we've already been there, that stuff has already been milked for the last 5-6 years. There's really no easy solution at this point.

I'm in total agreement with you here. It's not that the cost of development has become the greatest hurdle for developers, it's that the ROI is not increasing in proportion to those dev costs. More and more games are finding new ways to put a spin on the old mechanics. Ratchet did it with platforming on PS2, Gears of War has made the third-person shooter completely viable once more, and FFXII, Blue Dragon, and Valkyria are all advancing the RPG in entirely different ways.

The problem is twofold, and neither is really a result of development costs. The costs are just the scapegoat. First, the game industry is inherently dependent on sequels, and as a result we have the big publishers churning out yearly updates of franchises and effectively watering down their genres before fans might normally lose interest in them. Shit on the N64 all you want, but being strung along from game to game like that meant you were buying the big titles when they hit.

The second problem tends to be that with each new release in a series, it is more and more likely that the title may not find any larger of an audience. Sequels within the same generation mean that the technology can be shared between titles, but sometimes people just don't bite. The cluster of releases we get now, especially during the holidays, only serves to be a detriment to most titles that release in that period. Gamers can set their sights on 3-4 games in a given period on average, but once November hits we become flooded with new games and many of them are usually worth more time than we might give them. This is the unfortunately flawed logic developers are forced to work under thanks to the old E3/TGS milestone format, and should be abolished. If titles in the same genre, or perhaps even in general, were given more time apart, they wouldn't feel as rehashed or so "me-too" to consumers and might very well sell more.

Changing release schedules will likely never occur for major titles, though, and for that we do have to blame dev costs a bit. When so much money is riding on the success of one game for a studio or publisher, it corrupts the creative process. Downloadable/episodic games are making strides to relieve this tension and make development more fun for the developer, but I don't think the next Madden or Assassin's Creed is going to be given more dev time just so the studio can achieve its creative vision. And that's really what this topic is trying to discuss. Why the hell must games be so grandiose that it actually becomes a serious risk to the studio/publisher if the title flops? And, quite frankly, there's no explanation that will ever be able to justify it. It's like an arms race that no one ever called for.

 

[Deku]

The problem is twofold, and neither is really a result of development costs.

Are we living in a parallel universe ? cost not a factor?