well here is the truth http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=626655&postcount=71 where is dead space on the charts.. who long did it sell for the introduction price.. how often did it go on sale for 99 cents.. hardware power does not mean much.. the 3gs is a powerfull device and barely any title harness that.. the same goes for the iphone4 and continues with the 4s.. chruning out high quality titles with can compete with console titles needs alot of ressources which are in the current state wasted on the appstore.. if you have a team that can produce console quality titles, you can develope for console , why settle for mobile devices in a 99 cent market..? surely not because there is more money to be earned, which there is not.. most indies are on the platform because you can publish your small small budget games to a big audience.. not because your highly skilled tech team can produce the next god of wars and wants to earn measily compared to what you can do on consoles i did not play dead space on iOS so i can't judge about that games quality.. but i have yet to see a console quality game on ios.. we have a few games who are there from a graphical point.. thats definatly there.. but not content wise.. nor depth wise.. once an rich title rage, skyrim or something else arrives on the platform then , yes the platform achieved that.. but so faar nothing there yet.. take a look what uncharted looks like on the vita with similar hardware to the iphone 4gs / ipad 2 .. as for quare enix.. well their stuff are ports from other mobile games.. or from ancient consoles.. they charge "premium" (lol what a word for a few measy dollars) but their games are not for the casual mass market the appstore is. as for deep pockets.. alot of companies have tons of money.. but they do not invest that into products.. ea aquires companies who earn money via the appstore.. but so faar i havent seen and indication that they actualy use their deep pockets to push anything to a next dimension.. the companies under ea are doing business as usualy and ea cashes in the revenenue.. i doubt we will see a rush of console ports in quite some time even with the beefier hardware.. because the audience is different.. creating and porting core titles for the wii was a huge flop for alot of developers.. why was that? definatly not because there where not enough wiis out there but because the audience was a different one and did not really care for thoose.. well i would not be as bold to put shadow gun on the same level as infinity blade in fidelity.. its definatly by faar away from the epic/chair title.. but gfx are uninteresting.. no one cares about shiny gfx and dull gameplay.. especialy not core player.. yes it will get some wowsegfx press but epic showed that the hardware is capable of pushing goregous polygones around the barrier from a technical points surely drops with third party engines.. but the work loud is still enourmous to create a stunning world.. (which shadowgun does not provide imho, it looks bland and repetive and don't get me started on the level design.. snore fest) again gfx are one part content a hole other part.. i don't see it as a hardware issue.. nintendo never aimed for the best hardware with their consoles.. all of their handhelds and consoles where slower than their competitiors but still dominated sales wise.. the mass does not care about the hardware but about experience. of course you can but the same goes for any other platform.. its not like digital distributions is mobile only.. dlc is strong on consoles so the possibilities are similar.. however the entry is not.. getting into xbla or psn is definatly tons hardter than into the appstore that hasnt been true for years.. since when do you needed to upgrade your pc for a game on pc? most titles are cross platform and the leading dev platforms are usualy the consoles not the pc so even average joe 400-500$ gaming rigs can play actual games quite nice.. and especialy mmo are not targeted at hardcore audience but try to keep and low tech requirement as possible.. so i ca't agree here at all the question is rather if the big studios can earn money somewhere else fast are more reliable than on the very fast moving mobile market.. again examples like infinity blade are still wonky in retrospect if you see how much advertising apple themself did for this game.. tvs ads, big press on their keynotes (the same for ib2 etc.) so the income from that is still lousy to what thoose big companies earn on proper titles.. game budgets are higher than what the top titles on the appstore earn in revenue and then again who is epic and who is mad finger.. the first one could release a fart app and it would get press not matter what.. well one can only hope that studios like mad finger break even and make an nice income to push their next project up a notch.. i wish them best of luck and lots of success.. because they need it.. creating games for a core audience is something completly different than a casual game.. the crowd is alot tougher to please since then you compare to console games
To zero in on this point, PikPok as a label was formed within a console developer, Sidhe (www.sidhe.co.nz). We might be considered a "mid tier" console studio. The reason we moved to mobile after more than a decade of console development is the console market is getting harder and harder to make money in, and less and less projects are being greenlit. This is mainly being caused by the issues associated with retail distribution (limited shelf space, short product lifespans, used games, platform splintering etc) though the global financial crisis in 2008 didn't help matters. We saw the writing on the wall years ago, and moved into PSN and XBLA development, publishing titles like GripShift and Shatter. Digital distribution was a way to become the masters of our own fate again. Even then, development can be expensive and platforms like XBLA don't necessarily make it easy from a self publishing standpoint (in fact, you can't do it at all on XBLA any more). To complement the console label and our self publishing strategy, we created PikPok in order to make smaller per title investments which we could turn around and monetize quickly. While the technology and skillsets we bring to the table might be considered overkill for the mobile market coming from a console development background, I think it is fair to say we have leveraged that to position ourselves as being a developer of consistently high quality products. We have also been financially successful in that most of our products have been profitable, some wildly so like Flick Kick Football. The margins in comparison to what we make off most console developments are much higher on average. Going forward from here, we are being cautious about budgets and don't want to be too ambitious too quickly. We aren't making the same kind of investments in mobile that we might otherwise make for PSN/XBLA, and the market isn't quite there to go too crazy. But we are creeping up our ambitions in the mobile space over time, and people will be seeing "bigger" games from us for mobile/tablet in the future. In short, the console space is dying, and mobile is growing, so we are repositioning ourselves for the future.
thank for your point of view.. but looking at your guys former console portfolio i would not put you in a mid tier region but judge you to alot smaller studios.. can i assume you have less than 30 person in your dev team? so yes in such case for small studios the air gets thin on console because there as everywhere else the bar is raised constantly and smaller titles have a hard time.. so not the console market is dying but smaller stuidos can't compete with huge budgeted competition.. one of the reasons the mobile market is attractive because the entry barrier is lower than any other platform by faar.. and just to throw a little bit of fact into the round i just recently talked with some colleagues who relesead a few iphone titles and then ported them over to the nintendo DS online shop and made like alot more revenue on that market.. competition is alot lower in that area so as good and flexible the appstore is.. visibility and prices are still the most problematic points there are ... sidenote: i would like to have shatter for ipad 2 thnx..
school me as I know nothing about this - what is required to port to NDS online shop? Do you need to be a registered dev/company (you know, with an honest-to-goodness physical studio and all) or is it a bit more lenient? I'm finding much more happiness on other stores besides "just the appstore" and though I have nothing on order that could immediately be ported to that platform, a heads-up is always good..
Our studio is 100 people. "Mid tier" was a reference to the size, budget and quality of individual projects we undertook. We didn't do AAA console scale projects, and we didn't do bargin basement value projects (for the most part). The console market is dying. There are far fewer console products in development than previous years, at every level, and publishers continue to scale back. I agree it is hard to make money on the App Store if you aren't in the top 1% of developers. We are just making sure we stay in the top 1% of developers
well a hundred people is alot, interesting to see such numbers in correlation to the studios portfolio.. i assume since you moved onto mobile and with such an staff numbers you are working on alot of smaller projects now.. because from the numbers i would not assume you need that many for a few smaller xbla/psn games and expecialy not iOS.. but (assuming again) from my experience your studio does also alot of contract work to pay the bills next to developer your own ideas into products.. so there is probably a sound ballance between platforms, project and clients.. which i can only hope.. saw 2 big studios closing their down because of short term success and short sighted arogance which resulted in them not being there anymore.. anyway nice insight into your studio, thnx for the info again.. there are not much devs out there who share much infos.. well i always need to smile about the dying prognosis.. the consoles died a dozen times if one would believe even mayor devs out there.. not to mention the pc platform died a hundred times by now.. that fewer console games are currently in developement makes actualy alot of sense since we are at the end of the current consoles lifecylce.. i doubt many big publisher will greenlight big budget productions for games now that will needs 2-3 years of developement when the next generation is not faar.. the current generation will of course last longer then older ones will all the motion based casual games appearing and giving them a new push.. but none of the 3 big ones can watch and sit idly waiting for the competitor to start the next round without having something to counter them.. so looking at the current generation.. the games being released, big series like gears of war, assasins creed, mass effect & co being "wrapped up" i assume we don't need to wait another 5 years to see the next generation of consoles.. one will start the others will follow.. and product cycle and game developement will begin anew so i think it makes sense that especialy the big publsher scale back to a few high profile games who will definatly bring absurd amount of revenue in.. like the call of duty 23 etc. i doubt the console market will vanish , but it gets tougher for indie studios big or small ... most move to mobile or the rather "more securer" (crap) browser games but of course there is a huge difference between running a small studio or being responsible for a hundred peoples jobs with different sizes comes different possibilities.. well if you have found a golden rule to stay there i assume tons of members would like to know how to achieve that write a book charge 1k for it..
Yes, I think we are working across 15 different projects currently. Most of our core teams are about 4 to 8 people in size, supported by concept art, animation, and QA etc as necessary. Though we still shipped a large console project this year which had a team of 50 at peak, Rugby Challenge for PS3/360/PC/Vita. Yes, the transition has been tough, and we have had a few lean years as we have ploughed all our profits back into creating our own content. We continue to transition resources from work for hire, but building up the passive revenue streams is going well. Well, the "secret" from our perspective is a three pronged approach of high quality every time, every game needing a hook to hang the marketing/PR off, and having a portfolio of content that you can leverage for cross promotion. Exactly how you achieve that is the hard part, and that's why we are starting to work with smaller developers as a publisher where they can leverage both our development expertise/resources as well as our promotional capability and user network.
There's a lot of words in this thread... Here's my thoughts on what's happening in the iOS development world. Maybe this is why I don't like playing a lot of "social" games anymore... Read this, it's a great read: http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/ What do you guys think? I think that we may see a revolt against the Farmville styled games as the new gamers start to wisen up... then again... everybody likes baby dragons so maybe not...
Just as a counterpoint to Mr Ugly's posts... Rubicon are a small team of grey haired industry vets who have worked on teams making console games back to the famicom in some cases. We now focus on mobile games instead of console games, even though we could target console here. Well, XBLA and PSN certainly, we're too small for AAA and are all sick of that world anyway. Our current game is nudging just outside the top 200 now after having had a good run of sales over many months, and now it's out on Android we're getting some major money in again. Short version, we're making more money now than we ever did in the past working on console crap, and without all the bullshit producers and management getting in the way. We're also having more fun. And this is all off the back of one single game that didn't get anywhere near the top 10 for any length of time. There's plenty to had out of this market as long as you make a quality title - and that applies anywhere. You can't make much money out of shite. If you want money, don't make shite.
i don't see a counterpoint to anything actually since we are not debating weather or not , or why one joins the mobile indie train.. rather that i doubt big console productions and consoles themself will go anywhere anytime soon.. and that i doubt we will see a big uprise of console quality mobile games, simply due to the way the appstore evolves into.. the trend is definatly in free to play games and not 60$ god of war esque blockbusters.. and its great to hear that you guys went from barely breaking even to earning more money than ever before.. great news as for being indie overall.. well my grey hair can tell as much stories as yours.. and its surely not grey because working in the big industrie is a stressless always enjoyable endavour ;D working in the industrie is actualy hard labour and sometimes not much different from the bad stories you hear from foxconn & co in asia.. extensive work hours, bad payment, horrible magement.. up to toilet paper and soap rationing.. lol and thats no kidding.. so yeah there are reasons why alot of senior devs are going indie.. but that still means nothing much in the way that big studios will still be there and fresh blood will pour in with pink glasses on working their ass off to be part of the next big thing.. saving the world with their workforce ..lol.. my heroes. so again this is not a pro or contra about being an indie dev or not.. its actualy about a single guy being dissapointed by the product offerings of the appstore..
