Some AAA games are massively profitable. If you want to see which ones weren't, look at the studios that got shut down or went through massive layoffs in the past few years. But if they're not selling that many copies at $60, the thought that seemingly never crosses their minds is to stop spending $200M on a single project that's make or break for the studio.

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 21 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Shit the hi fi rush team got laid off. Success doesn’t guarantee shit.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 0 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

It's true, there are outliers like that. But if you're looking at shutdown studios or massive layoffs at random, it's going to generally be because the game they made lost money. In Hi-Fi Rush's case, to the best anyone can tell, it's because Satya Nadella changed the direction of Microsoft at a time when Tango Gameworks was starting a new project, which means there's the least sunk costs on a project that was going to be several years away from returning a profit.

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Tango is not an outlier though. The rivals team was immediately laid off. Respawn suffered layoffs last month despite making one of the only successful live service games not Fortnite, 2 generally well received Star Wars titles, and just printing for EA for years. This shit happens over and over again. All three of those happened within the last what? 10 months? Not even a year.

Success guarantees nothing in the US video game industry. It’s why more and more veteran devs are leaving the industry altogether.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

A small portion of the Rivals team was laid off for similar reasons to Hi-Fi Rush in that the CEO changed the direction of the company. This would still be an outlier compared to the rest of the industry. Respawn got hit with layoffs because their live service isn't making anywhere near as much money as it used to, and live services need to keep making tons of money to justify new content for them; yes, this is wholly unsustainable. A live service team getting laid off has nothing to do with whether or not it was a hit and everything to do with whether or not it's still a hit.

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

this is not sustainable

Then why are you trying to disagree with me here? The entire point is that this entire system is broken and doesn’t work, that track records of success do not mean shit. These people are too subject to the whims of a company that doesn’t take into account the money they have historically made and will likely continue to make.

Video games are not a consistent, predictable revenue stream 99% of the time. They come in waves. You have an entire generation of c-suites who cannot comprehend this idea.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago

I'm disagreeing with the idea that Hi-Fi Rush and the one branch of the Marvel Rivals team being let go are a regular occurrence. In general, teams are being let go because their games aren't making money. Their games aren't making money because there are too many games out there that are also spending too much money on their production, and they're being subsidized by a consumer base that's stretched too thin to make it all work for everyone that was in the industry as little as 3 years ago.

[–] qarbone@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

They were probably on slightly profitable. Or, Money forbid, only breaking even.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Back of the napkin math on a number of them says that a number of them probably took a bath on what was put into them. I get the cynicism, and in many cases you're right, but it's been a bad time for video games lately. An industry-wide number of how many billions of dollars video games make is almost entirely coming from only a handful of games like Call of Duty and Fortnite. Games like Star Wars Outlaws and Forspoken probably did lose a ton of money. Games like Concord, Avengers, and Suicide Squad lost so much money that it was impossible to not notice it, and they were each to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. There are a lot of games out there, and the dollars tend to flow to very few of them, relatively speaking. But I'd still argue the solution is to cut costs, not increase prices.

[–] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

But I’d still argue the solution is to cut costs, not increase prices.

This is the solution moving forward and is probably what most studios are doing right now (see: publishers shelving low-profit studios, massive layoffs, etc.), but the issue is that the games launching right now with $70-100 price tags have been in development for years. Their budgets were written under contract during the boom a few years ago, they can't just "unspend" that money, but at the same time, they're probably seeing that gamers are being a lot tighter with their wallets these days.

I'm obviously never one to praise higher prices for the same thing, but I at least get why major releases are feeling justified to charge a higher door fee for the base game than to gamble on the freemium market (See: Concord).

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

That boom also just led to a market with way more games in it every year. With more supply and less demand, you can't spend as much making the game and expect to be a success unless you've got a sure thing. So the higher prices will only be afforded by the games that would have been a success charging less than $70.