Homefront

Here is my initial impression of Homefront based on playing about half an hour of the SP campaign. Making games is hard and I hate to be too critical of Kaos and THQ for their efforts but Homefront has problems. The recent Medal of Honor game also had problems, but I actually enjoyed that. I'm afraid I'm not enjoying this game as much as that which is sad because I like the premise.  Still, I do think I may end up liking better than my initial first impression because I've heard it gets better later.  So in other words I'm willing to give it a chance. That said, let's get into this game...

1) The intro movie is basically what we saw at around E3 last year. Good premise. It's basically recycled Red Dawn with a modern spin of North Korea instead of USSR being the invaders. On this I'm sold and since E3 I have been quietly excited about Homefront. Then I played the game...

2) The first thing I notice is that the graphics and art design feel dated. The lighting at night feels...like a late era Xbox or early Xbox 360 game. Someone of more technical knowledge can confirm or refute this. Maybe my cataracts and eyeball arthritis are acting up again or my kid slipped the cat's ear medicine into my coffee this morning. I'm playing the 360 version. No clue of the PS3 version is any better or worse in the graphics department.  Interestingly, I've been reading actual reviews from real games journalists such as in the current issue of OXM saying "the visuals are laudable" which I am not sure how to interpret.  Put it this way, IGN got it right imo when its review read "Homefront isn’t ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but it looks rather bad if you place it next to the likes of graphics-pushing titles such as Killzone 3 or Crysis 2."  I would definitely agree, but it's also not  quite on par with Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops.  Still, this doesn't kill the game by any means but it just kind of stands out since shooters are known to be pushers of high end technical graphical achievement.  I've received some emails about this regarding Borderlands and how Gearbox copped out by changing that game to cell shaded art style.  But the art in that game worked very well and complimented the thin story's humorous tone which worked well.  In Homefront the graphics don't stand out but they're not so terrible as to ruin the experience.  There. I've said it 3 different ways about the adequateness of the graphics.


[spoiler alert]
3) The initial tone is heavy handed. I give Kaos points for making it consistent at least. There is no stupid attempt at inappropriate humor (more on that later) in the middle of a sequence where a 4 or 5 year old crying and screaming boy watches the NK army execute his parents...and then he goes to grab their bodies to see if they are alive. It's supposed to be heartbreaking and make you angry, which I guess it does... But the problem is that even moments like this somehow feel recycled. It's like they want to force you to feel a certain way. I know it's just a game, but something about the opening just doesn't work. This is a vague criticism and I will say no more other than it made me angry at Kaos and the writer for putting in there in the first place. Sorry for the vagueness but if you play it you will probably understand...or completely disagree. Yoo make the call.

4) Too often control is taken away from the player or movement is artificially restricted so a "story" moment of dialog can be done. I admit that many, many games do this including some great games but the use of it here just did not work. Why? It's because the writing and voice acting were disappointing. The story concept is fine...no problems there...but the actual dialog such as "I'm getting too old for this shit" and other cliches stuck out too much. (Was that supposed to be a funny line? Cause I laughed at how cliched it felt.) Again, this would not be the first game to have bad or less than good writing and not all good story based SP games have good writing. I liked the first Far Cry but hated the writing and dialog. But in this game the combination of weak acting and weak writing with taking control away from the player at times to deliver it all was not fun. I wanted to skip through any dialog moment as fast as possible. Conversely, a game like Uncharted 2 is much better in this department, or a game like Borderlands which has barely any story has much better "little" moments. (Ahem...Mikey where's my $2 royalty check for plugging your game?)

Very early on in the game there is a point where you walk through a "safe house" type area. I think this area was shown at E3 last year or around then. You can walk, but you can't run. It feels like you are moving in molasses as you walk around to generally lifeless characters who deliver more dialog moments. A Bioware game this is not, but this brief section was not enjoyable. It actually made me care less about the characters.

5) The actual character models, along with the art design, feel dated. The animations feel dated. Further there are many graphical bugs with character models and collision detection.Often characters will take cover against a wall and except the bounding box or something is off and the character is partly inside the wall. Or a dead enemy on top of a broken wall falls down through the wall in a Red Dead Redemption on PS3 buggy type of way. Again, this is not the first game to have such problems, but along with everything else it just sorta piled on to the mass of issues.

6) As for gameplay, it did not do anything really interesting. You can use a robotic car called "GOLIATH" that drives around on its own mowing down enemies. You have a the ability to target pre-assigned (read: scripted) enemy trucks and locations to blow up with the robot car's rockets. Except this seemed buggy in that I could not get it to fire when I wanted once I thought something was targeted. It did not make me feel powerful or a badass. I suppose this was my fault for not knowing how to do it, but seriously if I have to think that hard for a weapon like this then it's a problem. I don't recall being confused in Halo or Call of Duty games about how to use something. It might have been because I was too lazy to figure it out.  But the reason I was lazy was because I had a hard time holding my interest because of issues #1 thru #5 on my little list so far.

But the big problem with the SP campaign is that it feels like a corridor shooter with semi-big chambers where you kill continually spawning enemies until either you destroy XYZ objective or a certain amount of time goes by. That's not all bad but so far it seems like it is all there is. I really should play the whole campaign before I pass too much judgement on the game. As I said I hear there is a cool sequence in the second half...

7) Bottom line...it's the combination of dated gameplay, dated graphics and weak writing/voice acting that made me not care and not get into the game as much as I wanted to.  And I'm saying this after playing the first 30 to 45 minutes of the game. They want you to feel like you are a ragtag group of rebels taking on a superior invading force and through sacrifice and pure will of effort you will overcome the bad guys in that true American can-do spirit! But it just doesn't come together...at least not yet. Honestly, it feels like they wanted to make an updated Red Dawn type movie more than a game.


However...


I'm still willing to give this game a chance because my gut is telling me I may actually get used to it and enjoy it.  More to come on this one...

GDC 2011

I will be moderating a panel at GDC again, and again the event will be hosted by LiveGamer. You can read about it at the Live Gamer blog. According to the image below from LG's site the event is called "Beyond Credit: Localized Payment Strategies for Global Business."

Details from LG's site as well:

Europe is a key market for game developers. However, due to the difficulties in reaching the many individual markets, European customers have been largely underserved. One major challenge is understanding the diverse payment options for digital content and how these options vary by country. The content providers that understand and tackle payment issues country-by-country are the ones likely to be most successful in Europe.

Live Gamer GDC Session: Beyond Credit: Localized payment strategies for a global business

During this session, key findings will be shared that highlight which payment methods drive the most revenue in Europe for online game publishers. Best practices, success and failures and how to best set up a global-local payments strategy will be discussed.

When: Thursday March 3rd
Where: Moscone Center 1:30pm PT (RM 309)
Presented by David Cole, DFC Intelligence, Analyst
Moderator: Jeremy Miller, DFC Intelligence, Analyst
Panelists:
- Nima Pourshasb, Live Gamer, VP Corporate Development
- Carsten van Husen, Gameforge 4D, CEO
- Ralf Wenzel, Skrill Holdings, COO
- Linus Menden, Big Point, Head of Finance

Sony's NGP

Official site as of now: http://us.playstation.com/ngp/

Some coverage at IG: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/john-carmack-says-ngp-is-a-generation-beyond-smartphones/

Basic info courtesy IG at http://www.industrygamers.com/news/sony-reveals-its-next-generation-portable/:

External Dimensions: 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth) (still tentative)

CPU: ARM Cortex-A9 Quad-Core

GPU: SGX543MP4+

Screen: 5 inch front OLED multi-touch screen (16:9), 960 x 544, 16 million colors, OLED

Controls: Rear touch pad. Directional Pad, Dual analog sticks, two shoulder buttons, four face buttons, Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope & three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass.

Cameras: Front camera, Rear camera

Sound: Built-in stereo speakers & microphone

Connectivity: 3G, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1

Games will come on a brand-new Flash-based storage medium, with UMD being sidelined for this generation. No price or specific release date for the system was given, though Sony expects the system to be out in Japan this holiday season.

My take is that this could potentially be the portable hi-def gaming system I've been waiting for due to the processing power and the dual analog sticks that makes console style action and shooter games realistically playable. I never liked SOCOM etc on the original PSP, and the virtual shooter controls on iPhones is totally meh. The price may be an issue since many are speculating that it will be at least $299 which is a lot for a handheld...but imagine being able to play games like Uncharted wherever you want? Definitely something to think about despite that this system is unproven as of yet. And there are other issues around software cost for portable games, actual battery life, how rugged/durable it will actually be, will the optional 3G be worth it or even effective and etc.

Call of Duty: Modern Price Warfare

In the last days before Christmas I spent a lot of time checking out retail stores just to see how the feeding frenzy was going. By the activity at the stores I visited, I'm willing to bet December sales will be very strong in the US, not to mention the online data I'm seeing. One particular thing I noticed, first at Best Buy, was that Black Ops was on special for $49.99 while last year's Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 2, was still selling for $59.99. Normally when a big annualized sequel release the prior year's game drops in price if it hasn't already. The Black Ops discount was only a temporary price break, and it's not exactly like the game wasn't selling so it needed the drop to induce purchase. In fact, Black Ops is actually on pace to outsell Modern Warfare 2 (mainly due to the immense brand equity Black Ops inherited, but also due to the marketing and the game itself...it's really good) so lagging sales was not the reason for this discount.

And of course I checked out my local Target later that day because in the past it often has the same discounts going as that its Minnesota neighbor does.

To my surprise Black Ops there was not selling on the cheap. So much for my theory that what Best Buy does Target does the same. Perhaps the retail planners fell asleep at Target, or else Activision boondoggled Best Buy into the discount and shnerfluggined Target.

Whatever the back story, if you are any kind of core console gamer who doesn't already have Black Ops, seeing it for $10 off at Best Buy is a fairly compelling snicker snack O_0! My prediction is that Black Ops will crush again in December.

Call of Duty: [Insert movie tribute here]

Like roughly 15 million other people this year, I got a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops. As I was hopping for the game is great. It is certainly the best Treyarch made Call of Duty game its developers deserve kudos for their efforts. Recently there has been a lot in the news about Activision, EA, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, mostly around Activision filing a large lawsuit against the former heads of IW and adding EA itself to the lawsuit earlier this month. But I'm not going to touch that.

Spoilers Ahead

Instead I'd rather point out a few small details I noticed from the single player campaign in Black Ops. But first let us just acknowledge that many games take inspiration from film. After all, film (and television) are much older entertainment mediums and I have yet to meet a game designer, programmer, artist or producer type who doesn't watch TV or go to the movies. Back in my design days I thought a lot about modern WWII media, mainly Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, and wondered what locations and settings from those works I might somehow include ina level I was designing that hadn't already been done in a previous WWII game. The beach scene in SPR, along with the entire film, was a huge inspiration in Medal of Honor: Frontline. The same movie's climactic battle in "Ramelle" was inspiration for several Day of Defeat levels including the Merderet map, named for the Merderet river that the bridge in the Ramelle scene crosses.

But the key point here is that for gaming moments to resonate with moments from film or television, the details need to be fairly close. Recently in a discussion with a marketing person at a games publisher, I learning about his idea for where their game concept should go, and how it would really resonate with a recent popular movie.

"So in what ways would it resonate?" I asked. The answer I got back was, "Well they both have strong military themes." And that was it. That's like saying The Sims resonates with the TV show Friends because they both feature male and female characters. When I pushed him to be more specific, he hadn't thought it through. No kidding. So for him all I could offer was some remedial advice, and I used Call of Duty: Black Ops as an example.

Call of Duty: Fight Club

FYI, this is a spoiler if you haven't played the Black Ops singleplayer campaign all the way through. Don't say I didn't warn you. Anyway, in the game you play as Mason (voiced by Sam Worthington...say what you will about his American accent in the game...)

where most of the game is played in his flashbacks during his intense interrogation. In

his flashbacks he speaks of Reznov, a Russian he met in...Russia (it's a long story) but the point is that Reznov appears throughout the game. Near the game's climax in one such flashback Mason and Reznov are infiltrating some secret base to find a holder Nazi from WWII plotting some awful scheme (in now the 1960s) involving bio-chemical warfare and Reznov is about to kill the Nazi, even though the Americans need him alive. Well, let's just say that it gets revealed that Mason had actually been brainwashed long before to dream up this Reznov guy in his head. Reznov didn't exis

t even though Mason totally thought

he did, and during the game the player had no real reason to believe he did not exist until that moment. When it was revealed in the game, my first thought was that it was pretty much a rip-off of the movie Fight Club. I wasn't too bothered by this obvious not to one of my favorite movies, but it didn't really feel that fresh even though I thought it was an interesting move for a video game story to have a twist of this level. As I said, the idea itself isn't that original and how it landed in Black Ops didn't have the same punch as in Fight Club, probably because it is a video game and it's not as easy to get emotionally invested in the characters. Overall, I commend Treyarch for it.

Call of Duty: The Abyss

Remember, there are spoilers so if you one of the 17 people on earth who didn't buy Black Ops, I am about to spoil a small part of the game.

Near the end of the single player campaign you and yo' crew get in fancy wet suits and dive under water to some secret underwater base that, get this, is under water. The picture to the right shows a screencap from the trailer of the underwater base. It even has a moonpool inside where you enter that is right out of the James Cameron underwat

er film The Abyss. I can't find a good image of the set from the movie, but it's in there. Instead please enjoy this picture of a pretty good LEGO mock up I found. When in doubt, express your idea in LEGO to get people to say "wow that is cool."

Borderlands now on my top 10 all time games list

Last October when Gearbox's Borderlands game came out I of coursed added it to my Q4 list games to play. I know some people in the studio (even worked with them indirectly in years past) and have had a lot of respect for Randy's operation ever since Half-Life: Opposing Force, which today I think is the best expansion pack ever. I really liked Borderlands but I had so many games on my list to play over the holidays it fell off my radar after I got to about level 17 or 18. The single player campaign is definitely much longer than most FPS, and since this was a true FPS/RPG hybrid in an MMO style looting/XP points setting, there was all most too much gameplay.

So for almost a year I kept telling myself to go back and finish it. When the GOTY edition came out, I grabbed it since it at all 4 DLC packs included.

Today I just finished the game over lunch. While I never once played it in the much lauded coop mode (online or splitscreen) it has pretty much earned a spot in my top 10 games of all time. This is up there with Half-Life, Quake, Star Wars Tie Fighter, Mercenaries (the first one on Xbox/PS2), World of Warcraft, the first Call of Duty and I'm not sure what else. I'm pretty biased for shooter games....and my full top 10 list is not exactly clear to me.

Still, Borderlands' pseudo-cell shaded art style is just so refreshing, and combined with the huge number of weapons, excellent sound design, combat ballistics...it really is something unique. And let's not forget the humorous slant on all the writing. The story isn't the deepest thing in the world and I actually like it that way. The experience just felt so right. Anyone into shooters at all must play this game.

UPDATE:

As for the humorous slant, lots of video games try to work in comedic elements. The old LucasArts adventure games like Full Throttle and Escape From Monkey Island were masters of it. The new LEGO games, though kid focused, have humorous bits in them all over. Mercenaries was another game that I thought got the humor just right. Borderlands gets the humor, but it's not just in comedic lines or jokes. Here's what I mean: In the game I found the

claptraps a bit off at first, as I felt they were Gearbox's attempt at forcing me to laugh. But then something funny happened

after a few levels into the game. I actually laughed at a claptrap. I think it was the first time in Fyrestone I noticed the claptrap dancing. By then I was into the gameplay and art design enough such that everything about the game was growing on me. So what clicked?

What clicked was that even though neither the story nor the characters were particularly deep, the characters had attitude. Lots of attitude. This includes the claptrap. They were exceptionally voiced (for a video game anyway) and their writing was totally ace. For example, a downed claptrap that could offer you a side quest to fetch it a repair kit for a reward would whimper and say things like "I'm leaking oil" in a way that was simultaneously pathetic and endearing. I found my self wanting a plush claptrap toy for my daughter like the way my friend at EA has a plush weighted companion cube from Portal.

I have more to say about Borderlands, but Mikey at Gearbox just outed me for not ever having tried co-op, so now I have to try that. More to come on this...

Sep 2010 NPD wrapup

Once again I've been busy, so my monthly wrapup of NPD is late again. And like last month NPD is no longer releasing unit sales of the top 10 games, instead only the rank of the top 10 but now cross platform. Here is what NPD publicly released about Sep 2010:

1) Total industry (hardware, video games software, accessories and PC software) came in at $1.22 Billion, an 8% decline over Sep 2009. Here's how that broke down vs. Sep 2009:
2) Hardware dropped 19% to $383 million
3) Software dropped 6% to $614 million
4) Accessories grew 13% to $180 million thanks to the launch of the PlayStation Move

A few thoughts...

First, for months I have been talking about the top 10 concentration, i.e., the % of monthly sales the top 10 games represents...each month. In short, this percentage been increasing, meaning the top games are taking up a larger share of an overall contracting retail software business. Said another way, the top games are getting a larger share of a smaller retail pie. Because NPD is no longer reporting the top 10 unit sales, we can't discuss that here anymore. But given that some publishers like to boast what their initial sales are for big titles, we can get good

directional indicators of the monthly concentration ratio that we can discuss. For for Sep 2010, Halo Reach helped up the top 10 concentration ratio...big time. We know from Microsoft that Halo Reach sold over $200 million worldwide at retail in the first week of release. That implies over 3 million worldwide week one units. From past analysis of the Halo franchise, sales skew heavily to the US and UK where the 360 is strongest and shooters do very well compared to other countries with good per capita console penetration rates. Also, Halo Reach released on Sep 14, 2010, so if it did over $300 million in the first week, it for sure did more through the rest of the month. However, Halo is one of those games that core franchise fans usually run out and buy in the first week, so I'm willing to bet worldwide sales the rest of Sep were maybe another $100 million. Continuing my gorilla math, let's peg worldwide Sep Halo Reach sales around $400 million, with roughly have coming from the US. I'm willing to bet it's more like 55%. In any event, that puts US sales around $200 to $225 million for Sep. Let's call it $225M. Recall NPD reported video game software was $614M for the month. That means over 1/3 of industry sales in Sep were from Halo Reach.

Roughly 1/3 of US video game software retail sales in Sep 2010 were from Halo Reach.

Wow...Halo Reach is the September gorilla.

As for the rest of the year, you might think Call of Duty Black Ops will be the next big gorilla and take 50% of all Nov 2010 sales. It might, but there are a lot of good games coming up this holiday and since 50% of retail sales occur in Q4 typically, it's possible we might see a nice holiday season since consumer are hungry for good content this far into a console cycle without any new hardware.

Before you scream "Kinect" and "Move" at me, those aren't new platforms. They are sub-platforms akin to the Wii Fit. While Wii Fit was a blockbuster product for Nintendo, 3rd party publishers hardly saw any return from it. It did not become a new standard for 3rd party software in sports, fitness and...um...weightlifting (?) categories as some had predicted it would. Instead it became a big cash machine for Nintendo and another piranha in the tank for 3rd party to compete against. I view the Move and Kinect in this light, particularly the Kinect.

The issue with the Kinect is that it has no real killer app, nor is it easy to find good uses for it in core traditional games. It will be good for casual Wii type content and fitness / dance. Beyond that it is going to struggle. At least the Move can actually be adapted for shooters, action and even sports games, similarly to how Wii controls have been adapted. But the Kinect is going to struggle to be relevant to shooter gamers who like holding controllers. For example, can the Kinect distinguish between a 30 and 45 yard pass in a football game? If all you needed to do was make a throwing motion, would the Kinect auto detect where you want to throw to? If you were to play a football game on Kinect, wouldn't you want to get that level of simulation in the throwing game? Could you ever play a real game of Madden with Kinect?

What this means to me is that Kinect is an energizing new subplatform to the Xbox 360 that will generate a lot of initial excitement due to Microsoft's massive $500 trillion launch budget. (It's trillions right?...oh...divide by 1 million.) But beyond holiday 2010, the real challenge for Microsoft is to keep consumers buying software and encouraging 3rd party to develop games people actually want to play that make sense with the non-controller controller.

In the long run, Sony has a more favorable subplatform to develop traditional content for with the Move, but it still has a challenge to convince consumers that motion gaming on its new subplatform worth it when they've already done a lot of that business on the Wii. Is Wii type content in HD worth it? Certainly Sony's Kevin Butler adds are trying to position it as "it only does everything" along with their overarching campaign for the PS3. I have to give both Microsoft and Sony credit for their marketing efforts, as it seems both subplatforms will sell very well this holiday.

Finally, I'm now more optimistic about Nintendo that I have been in previous months. Without looking into 2011 and the 3DS, here's why I feel that way:

1) Mario 25th anniversary bundle at $199 that includes Wii Motion Plus, Wii Sports Resort and New Super Mario Bro Wii. This is a very compelling for consumers who have not yet bought a Wii who are thinking about it. The effective marginal cost the packaging on New Super Mario Bro Wii.

2) Donkey Kong Country Returns comes out in late November (US/EU...JP release is Dec or Jan). Personally I am more excited about this than Kirby's Epic Yarn simply because somehow I played a few of these DK games on my old GBA SP while I never once played a Kirby game. For the core Nintendo fan, DKCR is another great 1st party reason to play some Wii.

3) Next is Goldeneye 007 "reimagination" on Wii. I have the game. The graphics are crap compared to any PS3 or 360 game. The enemy AI is crap. The Wii-mote controls are fine I suppose, but still not as good as a standard PS3 or 360 game. But it has this retro appeal even though I never once played the original N64 Goldeneye game. I just wasn't into console games in the 90's. (Yes really.) But I get the appeal of the product. There are plenty of existing Wii gamers who also play shooters and other core games on their 360s/PS3s that should have room for some retro gaming in their budgets. Of course, Activision's big marketing efforts will help generate the necessary nostalgia for it. It's not going to outsell the best Wii 1st party games, but it should crush just about all other Wii 3rd party stuff, except perhaps #4 below.

4) Just Dance 2. Dance is hot. It's the new casual fad after fitness and of course guitar before that. The first Just Dance was a big seller with a big marketing campaign. Just Dance 2 could be bigger if Ubisoft markets it right.

So what am I getting at? First of all, for months I've been talking about the increasing monthly concentration ratio of the top 10 titles per month, underlined by Halo Reach in Sep 2010. This means the top titles are taking a bigger chunk of retail dollars and the smaller titles are getting squeezed out. In other words, consumers are going after the biggest / best / most well marketed / biggest brands they already now / etc. And they're flocking to those titles faster. Maybe consumers now have better information at their fingertips so they are more aware of what they'll like and what they won't. Or maybe the big dawgs simply know how to market better. What's clear is that you can still make money in the retail games business, but crapware simply won't cut it anymore. Yeah, we've known that for years, but do we need any more proof than now?

Aug 2010 NPD wrapup

If you recall last month I was a little late on my wrapup of the July data. It's been a busy September (now October) but I finally have a little time to get to it. One thing to note now, NPD will no longer be publicly releasing unit sales of the top 10 or even top 5 titles. That's kind of a bummer because it lets us do some interesting quantitative analysis. NPD will also no longer be publicly reporting monthly hardware sales. That's an even bigger bummer. That said, here is what they reported for Aug 2010 with some data that was released:

Top 20 titles ( with ~ units data that was revealed):

1. Madden NFL 11 Xbox 360 ~ 900k

2. Madden NFL 11 PS3 ~ 900k

3. Super Mario Galaxy 2 Wii ~ 124k

4. Mafia II Xbox 360

5. New Super Mario Bros. DS

6. New Super Mario Bros. Wii Wii

7. Mafia II PS3

8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360

9. NCAA Football 11 Xbox 360

10. Wii Fit Plus Wii

11. Just Dance Wii

12. Red Dead Redemption Xbox 360

13. Pokemon SoulSilver Version DS

14. Madden NFL 11 PS2

15. NCAA Football 11 PS3

16. Wipeout: The Game Wii

17. Mario Kart Wii w/Wheel Wii

18. Dragon Quest IX DS

19. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 PS3

20. Mario Kart DS DS

Industry Gamers had a nice quote from NPD analyst Anita Frazier:

"Last August, we didn't see as big of a sales gap between the first and second best-selling games," added Frazier. After Madden NFL '10 last year, we had both Wii Sports Resort, and Batman Arkham Asylum, which both sold over 500K units in August 2009. This year the top 10 games sold 3.3 million units as opposed to 4.1 million for the top 10 last year."

I guess that's true, but my assumption is she means the top 10 cross platform titles. Anyway, based on the May 2010 released Super Mario Galaxy 2 selling 124k units, I'm a little bummed Mafia II sold less than that on both the 360 and PS3 (based on the order of the list above). This basically means that for Mafia II in the US, it will likely sell less than 1.5 or 1.6 million units total across both platforms for its full life cycle. That's a little scary, as worldwide that means it might sell 2.7 million units when all is said and done? (More on that below.) It might even sell less. Let's assume 2.5 million units worldwide. Further, assume the weighted average wholesale cost is around $40 after taking into account eventual price drops discounting. Subtract out roughly $12 / unit in 1st party royalties. That leaves about $28 to Take 2. $28 x 2.5 million = $70 million.

On paper, $70 million in nominal net revenues after royalties over life of products sounds pretty good for a relatively small title. So how much did Mafia II cost to develop? It was first announced in Aug 2007 at Leipzeig GC and was developed by Illusion Softworks that became 2K Czech. So that puts the dev cycle at at least 3 years, but most titles aren't announced until they are at least 6 to 12 months into development. In that case, assume it took 3.5 years to develop the game, or 42 months of dev time.

So what was their burn rate per month? We'd need a lot of info on that, but we can guess at the average number of staff working on it over those 42 months and the average cost of each of those staff. So by that "gorilla math" I'm going to guess the burn rate on development was $500,000 when factoring in all the payroll, overhead, indirect labor and other associated costs. At 42 months that's $21 million in development costs. If the average burn rate is higher (yes, even accounting for ramp up and ramp down) and the length of development was actually more than 42 months, then this cost could easy go above $25 or $30 million. Or maybe it was lower.

But point is, the game still needs to sell through roughly 2.5 million worldwide units through its life to gross $70 million at retail. Can it really get there? While the revealed data above does not tell us Mafia II's exact month 1 unit sales, we can infer at most on the Xbox 360 that it was 124k units. Let's assume on the 360 it sold 120k units and on the PS3 it sold 110k. units. That's 230k unit in month 1 in the US. For a lot of core genres, including Action and Action/Driving-Hybrid, the US is typically 50% to 65% of the worldwide market for 360 and PS3 games. Let's assume it's only 50%. That would imply the worldwide month 1 sales of Mafia II were about 460k units (230k US + 230k International).

In the long run, must console games sell about 25% of their units in the first month. If this ends up holding true for Mafia II, then it's projected LTD sales would be 1.84 million units. Hmm...that's a lot less than 2.5 million. At 1.84 million the $70 million gross at retail becomes $51.5 million. Assume the game cost $25 million to make. That leaves $25 million for worldwide marketing and GS&A and all other publisher overhead. Doesn't leave much of a margin.

Of course all of the above is gorilla math, but you can see that indeed the rising cost of development one of the major issues of our industry. Even if my numbers for Mafia II are all way off and in actuality it was much cheaper to develop the game than my estimate indicates, there are still plenty of games where that kind of cost is not unrealistic that will the same mediocre sales. That's a major problem, as it essentially implies that the only viable game content in the industry now are the mega hits like Halo, GTA, Call of Duty and the likes one one end and cheap products on iPhone, Facebook and value games on video game consoles.

Doesn't that make you smile? :-)

More on Halo Reach...quote on Industrygamers.com

I'm still playing Halo Reach though I haven't had time to play the MP component yet. I'm sure I'll get trounced at first but then start holding my own after a while, at which point I'll likely move onto another MP game on console just because I have to keep playing lots of games. That said, Halo Reach is by far my favorite Halo game. Without spoiling it much, I liked the small nod to Battlestar Galactica in one sequence where you fly the fighter in near Reach orbit defending capital ships. The voice chatter over the comm is pretty cool and borrows somewhat from BSG. I suppose that's more military common speak, but I'm not a military guy and the feel of it was just right. Anyway, another small reason to play the game.

Meanwhile, I was quoted recently on Industrygamers.com about whether the Halo franchise has peaked. Essentially the question is if another developer an step in and make future Halo games for Microsoft that will be as good or sell as well as Bungie's Halo games. My essential answer is no. It's going to be tough to fill those shoes and even another good developer will not be able to reproduce the exact same magic that went into Bungie's efforts.

I made a reference to Treyarch making Call of Duty games (CoD 3 and CoD: WaW) that weren't as good as Infinity Ward's games. That doesn't mean Treyarch is not a good developer. I didn't like CoD3 that much, perhaps because I was sick of WWII in Europe / France games by that time and I felt the game was a little too intense, i.e., it didn't have the right pacing that an Infinity Ward game has. However, I really liked World at War, Treyarch's second CoD game. It's really hard for another developer to come into a brand with super high quality that it did not originate and make something better. WaW used the much improved tech from CoD4:MW and the multiplayer was great.

Anyway the real point is that I'm looking forward to Black Ops due out Nov 9. Yes it is set in the Vietnam era (right?) and despite few shooter games in that setting and none getting it right, not even BF:Vietnam (it was basically BF:1942), I think this game is going to be good. Will it score in the 90s? Don't know. Don't care. I just think the potential for something like this is high and it's not a crawl-in-the-mud type Vietnam shooter. It appears to have at least a taste of the magic IW created in MW1&2 judging by some of the sequences I've seen, so I've got high hopes. I know there was a ton of controversy this year over Activision's handling of IW, but as far as Black Ops goes, I still hope that stuff didn't distract Treyarch's dev cycle on the game and that it comes out well.

Halo Reach update

I forgot to post that a big part of why this game is selling well is

not just the fact that it's a Halo game, but Microsoft is promoting it heavily, such as running TV spots during NFL games in the US, one of the last bastions of where live TV gets TiVo'd at a lower % so that consumers have a higher probability of watching the commercials. I didn't even like the Halo Reach commercials that much from a creative standpoint, but for a game like this it is more about mass awareness among the near-core and non-core shooter player base on the 360 platform than it is winning a Cloe for creativity. It's 'bout reach people. Audience reach. Halo audience reach.

Meanwhile, that wasn't the only thing going on during Halo Reach's launch week. When I went to check out Target I found that the store was offering a $20 gift card purchase of Halo Reach, except they were sold out resulting in many sad pandas for sure. But that wasn't all. Target was giving away $20 gift cars for Halo Wars (the real time strategy game on Xbox 360), Halo 3 and the last Halo game, Halo 3: ODST. That's a lot of discounting on a lot of Halo.

But then I went to Best Buy. Sure enough, they had Halo Reach

0n hand. At first I was bummed Target didn't have it because who couldn't put a $20 gift card to Target to good use? Was I really going not get the $20 gift card and buy it? After reading how much people liked Reach over ODST I decided I should just get it. To my pleasant surprise Best Buy was offering the same deal: a $20 gift card with purchase. YES!!!! Later that night I saw a TV spot advertising as that fact. And on the Best Buy website they were making the same offer. Oops...I should have done my research first.

But thinking back to Target, I noticed that the retailer was offering $20 gift cards with purchase of Mafia II and Red Dead Redemption, both Take 2 Interactive games. Across two major retailers, who both happen to be HQ'd in Minneapolis, there is a very similar discounting strategy going. Best Buy probably planned it first since it national TV spots ready when Halo Reach launched. For Target to match that it wouldn't take much time or effort to print up placards for in-store display. The problem for them was that they didn't have the same quantities Best Buy had, and that's probably a lot of lost sales. I often hear that such discounting is really a bad strategy for retailers because they actually generate negative margins per sale with the gift card, but in reality the gift cards get the consumer back in the store and buying more. Further still, I'm also thinking that the retailers themselves, and not MSFT and TTWO, funded these discounts.