Witnessing Nintendos effortless success with, and if we are going to be completely honest, revolutionary devices but a lot of somewhat simplistic games, and Microsoft and Sony having $20 million costing games to make impressive sales, there was an obvious easier way to make games that make money. But in the mean time the iterative cycle to make a profit would have to suffice. The point to remember is that core games are very, very expensive to make; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare around $20 million, Halo 3 $30 million and GTA IV approximately $100 million. To give a some weighted reference, Pirates the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl cost $140 million, more recently The Dark Knight cost $185 million, bearing in mind movies have a much wider audience on a one to many relation, its understandable why it might be much harder to make a profit when making a game. And the games I just mentioned, those were big sellers with a founded fanbase. Other games arent as lucky. Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning needed to sell 2.5 to 3 million copies to break even. It didnt, and so their cost was the entire company being let go. Risking that being a singular exception, another example; the racing game Blur, that game sold only 31,000 in its first five days. Games make the most of their sales in its early release so that. a long with a somewhat averagely received James Bond game, cost the closure of Bizarre Creations. The racing game Split/Second despite the games good reviews only sold 57,000 in its first week of sales, in result the creators Black Rock Studio closed down. So, essentially creating a new game with no or even little history is a very expensive and very risky business, therefore developers dont have a choice but to reiterate or copy in most development scenarios. Assassins Creed 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, and most probably Halo 4 and God of War Ascension, are in many ways nothing but a response to a successful formula, and so, quite rightfully, theyre playing on it. It starts to get excessive though when were on games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 or Assassins Creed 2 of 2 and were being reeled in with new campaigns, multiplayer modes and weapons, when really its pretty artificial and non worthy of a sequel.
So, how do we get an appeasing middle where the manufacturer can make a healthy sum, we can get a worthy bang for our buck and the developer receives some creative freedom?