Because people are giving logical answers and insight as opposed to crying and whining like a bunch of daycare rejects, the thread should be closed?
I thought this site was better than that.
At the end of the day, you have to realize why everything isn’t always about “me me me”. Contrary to what quite a few of y’all believe in here, companies aren’t run by smiles and cries.
They’re run by MONEY.
So you’ll have to excuse these companies whose games you buy and enjoy if they want MONEY so that they can KEEP making games people buy and enjoy.
Businesses/corporations are evil
Great works like Avatar have taught me this
Imo, we should all combine to make our own company Only to eliminate the misconception that we need money to run, we will take monopoly dollars as currency.
Those were -very- different times, and in particular, cheaper SD assets. I don’t know the development cost, but the high watermark for single game development that gen was $70 million. Now, that figure is a fraction of what GTA V cost. But everything is bloated these days with this pressure of triple-A or nothing.
When I say very different, think of Tetris. A cheap ass game with clever mechanics put Nintendo handhelds on the map. And Nintendo should thank the gods for that lighting in a bottle now that their consoles haven’t been doing so hot. But now those low risk/high reward opportunities -are gone.- Because the “console” ecosystem (which means console, traditional handheld, arcade) isn’t the only place to game anymore.
Remember “quirky” Japanese games? Throwing shit on the wall and not caring whether it sticks? That action is happening in the indie/mobile market now (not really Japanese games, and not really ground-breaking, but just huge money-makers for cheap, miniscule projects).
So back to Onimusha, whether it made all its money back or not, it didn’t break Capcom because they had all kinds of games making money on multiple platforms in the “ecosystem” to cover any losses. Analogy: When Sony was performing well with their TVs and lol Walkmans, they could afford to invest in a bunch of useless side projects like robot dogs and other wasteful shit. That was all slashed when PS3 initially underperformed, Korean and Chinese TVs cut into their business, Apple killed their portable music business, etc.
Now that Japanese games in general dropped off in popularity worldwide, home console software sales didn’t sell as well as the PS2 glory days and well below what’s required for profitable HD game development, and there’s a lot of other places to literally make BILLIONS of US dollars on gaming, and Capcom ISN’T really a part of that action, all the fat has been cut-- every game project from here on out is a Hail Mary pass, a Kobe Bryant back turned left handed buzzer beater. Until they start making money that bullcrap like Clash of Clans, Puzzle and Dragons, Candy Crush rakes in. Which means gambling on abominations like Breath of Fire on mobile unfortunately.
Capcom is still acting and sounding like pricks though, don’t get me wrong, the words coming out the mouths of Capcom and particularly the Tsujimoto family members piss off Japanese Capcom fans too.
PAY to unlock a game’s true ending (Asura’s Wrath). WTF?
“Pay to win” SFxT gems. Where you have a clear advantage over the “free” gems of the same type.
Capcom is stagnating hard.
RE is dying out, they can’t bank on SF nostaglia forever; they need to innovate and not come eup with new ways to piss off their customers. You don’t release MORE DLC when your customers are complaining about TOO MUCH DLC. Onimusha and Megaman could honestly work because they already have established fanbases; just don’t need to fuck up like they did with DmC and Dawn of Dreams.
Dawn of Dreams took the series away from its somewhat survival-horror roots and turned iit into some generic, retarded rpg shit complete with arcade effects. It’s literally not even the same game anymore.
DmC… well… when you have major backlash from the REVEAL trailer, all the way up to release (and past that), you know you’re doing something wrong. It’s hard to enjoy a game when the people hate the MC from the get-go.
you know nothing about modeling, or quality improvements, or the costs to model/animate. you don’t just take a ps2 character model and hit smooth and then move onto the next thing. less moves in sf games also mean less animation time, less rerigging time, which means less complicated rigs. tekken also has loose cloth, which involves having an actual physics engine on top (which was new to ttt2).
get the fuck out of here with your pretend insider analysis.
What I’m saying is that Namco ‘saves’ money by reusing as much as they can from a previous iteration. They pass the savings along. They do not ‘re-invent 50 characters from the ground up with all new everything’ for each game. Each game is an increment forward, there hasn’t been a real shift in the game since T4.
I’m also saying that its smart, its done well, and I have no issues. I’m NOT complaining about it.
But I’m comparing it to SFxT (simply because its the biggest black eye on Capcom atm) - and from a ‘ground up’ cost perspective - I’d wager that SFxT required more to make. People point at the reused SF4 models - which is partially legit - but they ignore the completely new Tekken characters who were done from the ground up brand new, not just the models, not just the mapping, not just the attacks, not just the balancing, everything was 100% brand new. Capcom could EASILY argue that the ‘Tekken’ portion of the cast is a $60 game unto itself, whether you’d want to play it not part of the financial equation. Then on top of that they throw in the reused SF4 models and do new models for other characters.
To me - its a matter of the expectation that a game shouldn’t cost more than $60 - no matter what it cost to make. If it’s a niche game - there is some expectation that the cost is going to be lower as its not a AAA title, when the reality of recouping cost means the fewer units they expect to sale, the more valuable they NEED each unit to be. Capcom could put together a ‘safe’ estimate to the units of the game sold, predicated on current market performance of their fighting game products, with a slight uptick from Tekken sales. If they are going to take a loss or barely break even because of cost/overhead - trying to keep the game @ $60, then DLC is the best answer - it isn’t required spending, and it will assist with keeping the project afloat. I mean lets keep it real, if Capcom needed the game to sell @ $80 to turn a profit with the expected numbers - who would have bought it for $80?
Did they handle it right, no. I’m not an apologist - they screwed the pooch. The gems were the big mistake, the ‘expansion’ should have been handled like Super SF4 as opposed to full on DLC - even though in practice they were identical.
But I’ve moved past your comment - sorry. No I’m not bad mouthing anything Namco. I’m praising it more than anything.
Have to disagree with this but then you go on to say the counter point, which ill make clearer. DLC are being used to ripoff/exploit the fan base. A way back in the old days when Scientology was a crazy cult and not a gateway into Hollywood, game companies would release, maybe every 6 months expansions for their popular games.
These would typically cost 50% less than the original product, introduce new game modes/ art/ characters, whatever, ultimately it would add something new to the game. Now perhaps due to the ease of modding games with steam/psn/xblive producers can easily and quickly make quick bucks firing out paltry updates on even the most mediocre of titles. This shouldn’t be a business model or a strategy to stay afloat, clearly a plan stated by Capcom. Whatever happened to developer goodwill I dont know and am not naive to say these guys couldnt use more cash, still it makes me wonder if these guys are nowadays 60% about getting a title out then 40% after market update, flogging a dead horse if you will, to keep the cash flowing in.
Nowadays we have DLC for like 3 bucks for a fucking costume on your favourite character, not a full wardrobe suite for the cast, 1 outfit. The worst DLC dont even add new content but fall under the ‘pay to win’ purvey, ie, faster powerups, new abilities, fucking new aestethics on old abilities. Fluff, bullshit.
Good DLCs like the stuff Rockstar put out for their games, GTA4 had the ballad of gay tony/ Lost of the damned, entire new advertures going on, they did the same thing other titles, such as L.A Noire.
Ill quickly jump back on point, SFxT came with DLC, on the fucking disc. People are used to a certain level of service and then get blatantly shafted up the ass with that kinda bullshit. Oh yea still need to pay for costumes woot. DLC isnt innovative at all, it is just a quick cash grab from fans in most of todays games. Capcom could have easily gave SF4 fans everything for gratis during AE, they didnt.
Perhaps in odd cases such DLC is okish, think about Namco and TekRev, they offer the same bullshit DLC upgrades but at the very least, they offered the game for nothing and its up to the player if they want to part with some bucks to mod it more to their liking, they didnt ask for 60 bucks now and then want to charge you for the stuff you would expect for nothing after paying full price later.
We got the shit people call dlc nowadays as a fan service for free, for years.
Companies like Blizzard used to support their games for a fucking decade, never asking for extra money and that’s also the reason why people up till today still buy Diablo 2, Starcraft and Warcraft 3 and their online communities are still active, although small.
The shit we get sold as DLC nowadays aren’t even extras that weren’t planned, the shit is on the fucking disc already.
Those people make a game, cut a fourth of it out of the game, sell you 3 quarters for full price and then shamelessly sell you the rest and you fucking think this is innovation?
At least a little bit of effort went into these games though and they don’t get sold for full price, so at least you can understand it.
What I don’t get is why we don’t get bugfix patches for SF4 ever.
Like why do we have to wait for ultra to get rid of unblockables and theres still so many weird bugs in the game that just get ignored…
Unblockables were a glitch so they were patched out of an arcade revision and the first few console ports of 3s. But unblockables made Urien viable, as well as SA2 Oro, and didn’t break the game. To this day no serious 3s tournies use ‘new type’, the version with unblockables patched out, and OE added them back in.
