The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[SecretAsianMan]

A bit of clarification for the Shovel Knight amiibo: it's not being made by Nintendo, it's being made and distributed by Yacht Club Games themselves.  They've basically licensed the right to make an amiibo from Nintendo.  So while it seems unlikely this is a sign of indie characters in Smash or anything like that, it does open the door for third parties to make their own amiibos.

[JonCole]

This is the dumbest, worst preorder scheme that has ever happened. The voiceover sounds so ridiculously corporate I can barely stand it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJkzcQDqbpE

[Vulpes Absurda]

OH MY GOD FOUR WHOLE DAYS EARLY AND A NOVELIZATION?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW LADY WHO I THINK MIGHT BE MICROSOFT SAM'S COUSIN!

[Gormongous]

"Embrace what you've become" is exactly the phrase I was thinking for you, Ubisoft.

[Professor Video Games]

How do you know when your preorder plans have gone too far? When you need a shitty video to explain your convoluted preorder scheme, that's when.

[BobbyBesar]

  On 8/18/2015 at 2:59 PM, SecretAsianMan said:

In order to invest, you have to be an Accredited Investor as well as investing a minimum of $1000.  I assume it's taxable, kind of like selling stock.  Don't know about other countries.

I don't know if anybody cares about this, but: (as per a securities lawyer I mentioned this to) the difference between an accredited investor and non-accredited investors mostly just has to do with disclosure agreements.

 

If you're an accredited investor, you can be solicited directly, and you're expected to do various investigations as to the worthiness of the company, etc yourself.

 

If you aren't an accredited investor, any kind of solicitation is legally required to be accompanied by various disclosures about the prospects and worth of the company.

 

So, that requirement makes some sense for Fig projects, if they don't want to require those disclosures from the projects they're working with.

[namman siggins]

That was a clusterfuck of a video and scheme. 

 

I also have a strong feeling that the game will mess up their "augument apartheid" theme they're going for. I just have no faith in most companies pulling off an issue that complex. *sigh* 

 

Indie games a bit more.

[Justin Leego]

  On 8/31/2015 at 12:55 PM, SecretAsianMan said:

A bit of clarification for the Shovel Knight amiibo: it's not being made by Nintendo, it's being made and distributed by Yacht Club Games themselves.  They've basically licensed the right to make an amiibo from Nintendo.  So while it seems unlikely this is a sign of indie characters in Smash or anything like that, it does open the door for third parties to make their own amiibos.

 

Interesting. Activision are already doing something like that for this year's Skylanders.

[Dewar]

  On 8/31/2015 at 12:55 PM, SecretAsianMan said:

A bit of clarification for the Shovel Knight amiibo: it's not being made by Nintendo, it's being made and distributed by Yacht Club Games themselves.  They've basically licensed the right to make an amiibo from Nintendo.  So while it seems unlikely this is a sign of indie characters in Smash or anything like that, it does open the door for third parties to make their own amiibos.

 

I saw it at PAX and it looked pretty slick. It was in a case, but there was no way I could have told it from a genuine Nintendo article.

[Mangela Lansbury]

  On 8/31/2015 at 4:01 PM, Vulpes Absurda said:

OH MY GOD FOUR WHOLE DAYS EARLY AND A NOVELIZATION?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW LADY WHO I THINK MIGHT BE MICROSOFT SAM'S COUSIN!

I was going to say that she had a name and her name was Microsoft Mary, but apparently they killed Microsoft Mary and replaced her with Microsoft Anna, then killed Microsoft Anna and replaced her with Microsoft Zira. I'm afraid for Microsoft Zira's life.

[Ninety-Three]

  On 8/31/2015 at 9:56 PM, Mangela Lansbury said:

I was going to say that she had a name and her name was Microsoft Mary, but apparently they killed Microsoft Mary and replaced her with Microsoft Anna, then killed Microsoft Anna and replaced her with Microsoft Zira. I'm afraid for Microsoft Zira's life.

I thought you were going to say that Microsoft Anna evolved into Microsoft Cortana. Surely that's replaced their old speech synth offering.

It still surprises me and weirds me out that the thing is actually called Cortana. How on Earth did the necessary procession of stodgy suited execs approve naming their Siri clone after a Halo character? Was it an "I hear this is what The Kids like these days" deal?

[Merus]

Honestly, it ticks the boxes:

• Sounds like a human name
• Is not actually a human name
• Microsoft can use it because no-one else is
• Sounds vaguely futuristicy

[SuperBiasedMan]

I can't wait til they make a shitty ARG centred around W10 Cortana to promote a Halo sequel.

[Mangela Lansbury]

For Windows 10 eBooks, when you tell Cortana to download a Halo novel about the Flood to the Library, a little flood Bonzi Buddy shows up on your desktop.

 

This is the sign that it's begun.

[Vulpes Absurda]

  On 8/31/2015 at 9:56 PM, Mangela Lansbury said:

I was going to say that she had a name and her name was Microsoft Mary, but apparently they killed Microsoft Mary and replaced her with Microsoft Anna, then killed Microsoft Anna and replaced her with Microsoft Zira. I'm afraid for Microsoft Zira's life.

I googled microsoft Zira and this is what I found:

 

 

I felt I should share.

[Henroid]

Overall the pre-order advertisement is a gross miscalculation by Square. I don't think they know who their audience is when it comes to the die-hards for Deus Ex. Which isn't to say they won't successfully sell something to just anyone who likes the game. But I mean, enthusiasts see that kind of advertisement and go, "Gross."

 

What I will give them though is that scheme is amazing. They basically took the DotA 2 prize pool tier thing and turned it into a pre-order arm-twisting scheme. Especially since that shit isn't specified at all; if those "tiers" of rewards don't even come close to expectations people are going to go nuts at Square. Which won't matter in this case since Square will have already gotten their money and publicity, but future attempts at the same scheme are going to be met with extreme scorn and probably won't work.

 

Then again if they do provide, then fuck everything because Square has introduced the next step of questionable business in the video game industry. I'm not terribly worried though. EA tried to monetize bullets and that shit didn't fly.

[Ninety-Three]

The trick with the Deus Ex pre-order is that (as far as I can tell), they're not publicly posting the pre-order numbers, just announcing when the unstated number of sales hits 25% of their unstated goal to unlock the next tier. If the whole thing falls flat and not a single person pre-orders, they can just lie, claim pre-orders are rolling in and push a button to unlock the next tier. Of course they will do that, because allowing the campaign to fall flat would look bad. Unless the public gets really, really unhappy about this, I imagine other companies are going to see it as a can't-lose scheme and copy it, at least for a game or two until they have their own sales figures that tell them it doesn't work very well (and we're just fucked if it turns out it actually works).

[pkirkner]

Hasn't Valve run almost the same tiered pre-order scheme on Steam before? I could have sworn that X-Com preorders unlocked tiers with stuff like TF2 hats and free copies of Civ V.

 

edit: Yeah, that definitely happened. They also did it with Bioshock: Infinite.

[Justin Leego]

Yeah, it's not exactly uncommon practice on Steam.

Company of Heroes 2 (SEGA) offered Dawn of War II: Retribution at the 2nd of 3 tiers. One of the incentives for collective pre-orders of Tomb Raider (Eidos / Square Enix) was Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Defiance (Trion Worlds) put Rift: Storm Legion in its second tier. Lost Planet 3 (Capcom) had Lost Planet: Extreme Condition AND Bionic Commando Rearmed. Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar / Take Two) had GTA: San Andreas as a tier 1 unlock. The tier 2 unlock for Grid 2 (Codemasters) was the first Grid.

Bandai Namco has Tales of Zestiria on pre-order right now, the tier 3 unlock is for Tales of Symphonia.

Compared to these other pre-order plans, which didn't suffer major backlash, one could argue that if DE:MD's third tier was for DE:HR and DE1 they would have been alright? Right?

[syntheticgerbil]

  On 9/2/2015 at 5:45 AM, Vulpes Absurda said:

I googled microsoft Zira and this is what I found:

 

 

I felt I should share.

Ahaha, I know almost everyone who worked on that horrible Moose at this local 3D company. It's the worst. They all hated it. The guy who is paying for it is psychotic and just wastes all this money on revamping the damn thing for like 7 years now. Since the 3D company is pretty podunk, they take what they can get.

[Henroid]

  On 9/2/2015 at 12:20 PM, Ninety-Three said:

The trick with the Deus Ex pre-order is that (as far as I can tell), they're not publicly posting the pre-order numbers, just announcing when the unstated number of sales hits 25% of their unstated goal to unlock the next tier. If the whole thing falls flat and not a single person pre-orders, they can just lie, claim pre-orders are rolling in and push a button to unlock the next tier. Of course they will do that, because allowing the campaign to fall flat would look bad. Unless the public gets really, really unhappy about this, I imagine other companies are going to see it as a can't-lose scheme and copy it, at least for a game or two until they have their own sales figures that tell them it doesn't work very well (and we're just fucked if it turns out it actually works).

By the way, Square has a history of unrealistic sales projections. Tomb Raider, for them, was a "failure" because it didn't crack 7 million sales in its opening month, which was inflated because Final Fantasy 13 failed to meet its projections. Square takes missed projections and adds them to the next game's so that they can "make up the loss." Except it widens a crazy-to-begin-with gap.

 

So who knows what their expectations for Mankind Divided are.

[syntheticgerbil]

Even back when it was just Eidos they were upset that Tomb Raider Underworld I think sold 1 million instead of 1.5 million during the initial release.

 

Also the funny thing is I read an article a while back that it took about a year for the new Tomb Raider to eventually make a profit. That seems about right to me, though. I'll never understand the need for initial sales to be so important in the digital download age.

[Henroid]

  On 9/3/2015 at 12:03 AM, syntheticgerbil said:

Even back when it was just Eidos they were upset that Tomb Raider Underworld I think sold 1 million instead of 1.5 million during the initial release.

 

Also the funny thing is I read an article a while back that it took about a year for the new Tomb Raider to eventually make a profit. That seems about right to me, though. I'll never understand the need for initial sales to be so important in the digital download age.

Physical initial sales is the more precise part of this. I think the NPD is maybe finally getting companies to get on board with including digital sales into numbers. For some reason it wasn't allowed by publishers.

[syntheticgerbil]

It's really obnoxious of Square to not even take that into account because they must know on some level they have a revenue stream coming from digital sales. Plus flash sales and such can help keep the game in people's minds.

 

It seemed really unfair to Crystal Dynamics for Square to announce sales were short considering they spent years of time and effort to carefully reboot one of the biggest video game franchises of all time.

[itsamoose]

I think the reason for the 3 month window is somewhat of a legacy thing (3 month retail shelf life) but also I think this pans out somewhat in the digital world.  Yes the game has a much longer tail, and each new sale will bring in some revenue, but you still end up making the largest chunk of predictable money in those first 3 months.