Just goes to show that apps now rule the world thanks to Apple.
So what is the most profitable title yet for Epic Games? Surprisingly it's not anything in the Gears of War franchise. It's not even one of the many Unreal titles offered on multiple platforms. Don't even think about Bulletstorm. In fact, Epic's most profitable game is...
Infinity Blade on iOS, co-developed by Chair Entertainment.
Of course, that's based on man hours versus revenue. Still, it shows that the mobile platform -- whether it's iOS or Android -- is highly profitable. But now the studio is starting to agree with Crytek in that the future of gaming will be fueled by the free-to-play microtransaction structure. That means future titles could be free to download, install and play, but premium content will be offered for a price.
"I agree that this is going to be the way that almost all games will be distributed worldwide," said Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, during GDC Taipei's second keynote. "All these western developers spending 30 million to develop these games for dedicated consoles - all of these companies are going to be invading the Asian markets within the next five years or so and they'll be free to play, worldwide, global products. ... The only way to survive is to go global."
However he also admitted his surprise in seeing how fast smartphones and tablets are improving. Agreeing again with Crytek, Sweeney expects to see tablets approaching the performance level of current generation consoles in the near future.
"We expect DirectX technology to be widely available on these mobile devices in the next few years," he said. "We're also seeing an interesting thing happen in terms of the overall development pattern globally."
Naturally Sweeney talked up Unreal Engine 4, saying that Epic had a whole new set of goals when developing the engine. For Unreal Engine 3, the company spent 4 years building Gears of War and the technology at same time -- it was developed primarily for consoles. But with the new engine, Epic wanted to increase the level of visual quality, yet also increase the performance and efficiency, thus reducing development costs.
"The tools investment is paying off. Artists are able to build content more productively than before," he said. "And with the Unreal Engine as a whole, we found it's much easier to scale down from high end to low end devices than in this generation. We expect to be able to build games that can scale from a smartphone to a high end PC. ... We expect an unprecedented amount of content portability for the future."
This is where the free-to-play aspect comes in: develop a AAA game with very little overhead, and then offer it for free. Thus, players will come in and spend money on content, fueling not only additional development, put paying for the studio's original investment. Providing a streamlined engine not only saves money in the long run, but pushes the game out a lot faster.
It might be more profitable, but all those games pretty much suck, and they don't last more than two weeks.
Amazing how some writer here tries to market his favorite brand at any cost, poor journalism included!
Shocking!
/end sarcasm.
Shocking!
/end sarcasm.
It might be more profitable, but all those games pretty much suck, and they don't last more than two weeks.
Amazing how some writer here tries to market his favorite brand at any cost, poor journalism included!
How about lowering the price to $20 - $30 rance for PC and consoles...
Rantoc this is Tom's, not a news site. That said 99% of print, radio, tv and internet news people wouldn't know basic journalism if a 1st year textbook fell on their heads. They've gone infotainment and opinion commentary. It's a shame fact finding and unbiased information is all but dead.
Anything to get developers away from "console = good, everything else = port" mindset is a good thing. I'm not sold on the free to play model, but at least you can legally try a game before you set down cash.
I also appreciate the development time vs revenue but I would so wish they would change it to quality / game play time vs revenue. I just dislike playing a pretty game that I know after I finish I will never even look at it again.
Agreed, I purchase 1-2 good games a year, and they are normally a few years old, and include all of the expansion packs. For this I am willing to pay $20-30 per title. On a slightly chilly day in hell I will spend $40 on a game that I absolutely know that I am going to love (like Dragon Age Orgins+Awakening+expansions), but that is extremely rare. I have the money for games. But the idea of spending so much money on titles that are just knockoffs and rehashes is just dumb.
Oh, and one other thing: I love classic games! And do you know what I love best about classic games? I can pick them up and play them 10-20 years later on an emulator. Today's games will be tied to DRM that will either be so changed, or DRM management software that goes bankrupt and folds up, or tied to hardware that is impossible to come by, so that you can never play the game again... unless you purchase the new $20 remake of the game that has been upscaled/color enhanced/3dified for whatever the newest and latest platform is... but it simply will not be the same as what it was, even if the remake is somehow better, better is simply not the point.
BF3 is my most expensive game. @ $45 I wont repeat my same mistakes again. This time I am going to pay $20 at most.
If you EVER decide to try for UT4... include at least 100~125 different maps. Game styles:
DM, CTF (of course)
ONS (Because renaming it WAR was kind of dumb and added a bit of complexity that was never needed)
ASSAULT - because some of us WANT battles like that.
it depends. some dlc is a complete ripoff, while some other dlc is basically an expansion pack.
this is how i draw the line with this kind of deal.
5$ = 2 hours of entertainment.
if the game can give me that, i don't feel screwed. and looking at some games, where i have spent 60$ for a 6 hour game, and others where i spent 3$ (later on almost 50$) for a game that gave me over 270 hours of fun (60 before i went into dlc) its hard to complain about dlc allot now. generally they get it and how it should be.
A game that took 0.000000001% effort to make is even more popular than that: Angry Birds.
na the power consumption in smart phones will hinder true power. But before windows and sony puts out the next gen it will be close, altho i really dont care im a pc only guy got nokia n8 for photos so all my gaming is in pc.