I reckon it will.

Die-hard MGS poopy-heads have already bought a PS3 because of the promise of MGS4 coming out on that system exclusively. There are probably quite a few people who will be buying a PS3 when the game comes out. For those people, the game sells itself.

Core gamers make up a pretty tiny percentage of the market, though. To sell to everybody else they will need to advertise. In order to convince someone to drop the cash on a PS3, those ads will need to be really good. Impossibly good. An ad for a single game for a single system will probably only influence people who already have it, or were already on the fence about buying one.

Advertising campaigns are very expensive. We aren't just talking about putting ads in gaming mags here: you need to advertise on gaming websites, TV, before movies, and even pay game retailers to give the title premium shelf space (usually an endcap or a riser facing the front entrance). In fact the price is so high that a lot of the reason the game needs to sell so many copies at launch is to pay for all of this.

The problem with waiting until a Substance/Subsistence-type rerelease later on is that the prime advertising dollars have already been paid out. If you release on multiple systems at once you can market for those multiple systems at the same time. You just can't justify remarketing an old game as a new release.

Additionally, you miss out on the community aspect. Will a 360 owner buy MGS4 a year later, once all of his buddies have already played it to death? If nobody is talking about the game while it's out on 360, the significant part of the market that relies upon word-of-mouth will not purchase it. What happens if that 360 owner borrows a PS3 and complete the game in the meantime? He's probably not going to buy the re-release just so he can watch Snake grab more statue crotch.

You also miss out on launch pricing. People will pay $60 for MGS4 at launch, but will they buy MGS4:Substrata for $60 a year later? No. No they won't.


I'm not saying MGS4 won't be a profitable game, I'm just saying it will be very difficult as long as the game remains a PS3 exclusive. When it comes to ports and profitability it's pretty much now or never, too.

http://mp.i-revo.jp/user.php/kp-ryan/entry/152.html

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/show_msgs.php?board_id=314159282&topic_id=26098744

The first link refers to a podcast where Ryan Payton (he's like the assistant director of the game) states the one million sale thing being a mistranslation. The second link is a summary of the podcast.


A generic stealth/shooter contains an old man sneaking around, a vampire, ninjas, burping monkeys, and a guy with a possessed arm?


MGS uses real time graphics for its cutscenes most of the time. Though I do know the opening will be a FMV because it's being filmed in Hollywood. As for being one disc, I can see it being more since Kojima complained that even Blu-Ray was limiting.

MGS4's budget is in the area of $50 million. Production budget only, not including distribution costs and marketing.

If you are not comfortable believing that the statement was not mistranslated, I will therefore make the same claim in plain English. 70% of a game's sales are within a quarter of its release. If MGS4 does not sell a million copies in the first week it will probably not turn a profit.

Blu-Ray is 'limiting' because the PS3's seek times are abysmal. You essentially have to duplicate data many times throughout the disc so you can access content sequentially. Even Resistance used up 20 GB.

Why does production on these games cost so much? I'm not necessarily asking what goes into it, but what caused certain services to gain expense. Of course the more popular games got, the more valuable certain positions started becoming, but aren't a majority of the people that work on video game production severely underpaid?

Only really in EA. And they own half of it.

Production values go into coders, artists, research, voice actors (getting someone like David Hayter on for another sequel is big bucks now) paying for models for the motion-tracking stuff (a lot of the CQC), modellers...****, the list goes on and on and on.

Because detail increases usually come in powers of two and human production throughput suffers from diminishing returns.

This past generation the screen resolution went from 720x480 (NTSC) to 1280x720 or even, in rare cases, 1280x1080. Adjusted for the new aspect ratio, 720p has exactly 2x the pixel density that 480p did. This means that textures need to be twice as large and models need to be twice as detailed just to retain the previous generation's graphical quality.


[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Only really in EA. And they own half of it.[/QUOTE]

Game programmers are universally underpaid. Established game companies expect you to get 5 years of experience working on commercial software packages and then take a 50% pay cut to work 40 hours of unpaid overtime a week on middleware integration. :downs:

I don't know about technical positions, but marketing is hugely expensive.

Not really so much. EA employs most of the new upstarts, that's why you see a lot of underpaid programmers, and then they go out on their own or get in specialized branches, making more. In places like Bethesda and Blizzard you get quite a bit more than you would think.

I'm referring to the translation of "needing to sell 1 million copies in the first day" not in the first week. Though I won't argue with you that most sales are within a quarter of its release.

Oh and from what I heard, the Blu-Ray taking up space is due to uncompressed sound, but I don't know about the duplicating data trick. I heard about the "duplicating data many times" for certain PS3 games like Oblivion and Resistance. Some developers don't use that method to speed up load time. Take for example, Naughty Dog and Uncharted.

I still think that the game looks fun, its just not MGS...

Yes it is. I really don't understand how people can think otherwise. Did you watch the next three videos? The core gameplay is the same. Just because there'll be parts when Snake is kicking a bit of *** doesn't mean MGS4 is suddenly a generic third person shooter. Every MGS game to date (possibly excluding the GB Colour one, I haven't played that in years) has had an action scene in it. MGS1 - Comm Tower A - B. MGS2 - Arsenal, MGS3 - Sidecar chase. There's an obvious increase in cinematics as the series develops, this is just a continuation of that.

I'm kinda defensive about this series >.>

I want to hug you now for being the only person in this thread that talks sense.

I'm gonna hurt you.

No, the mechanic HAS changed. All 3 videos show snake using somewhat stupid tactics for a COD4 environment. Sneaking seems illogical in the setting, especially in the situations they've put him in. The first video doesn't even show him sneaking at all, and instead he's running and gunning as part of a unit. This might just be an action scene mid-game, but it really just looks like a passerby involvement in a firefight, and dropping off documents as some type of mission. That isn't anywhere in the MGS franchise, so how is it suddenly okay because there were action scenes in the other games?

And it's not even that I don't want MGS to evolve, this just doesn't look or feel like MGS anymore. It looks a whole lot like Grand Theft Auto, actually. 3rd person camera, rocketlaunchers from nowhere, missions where you bring packages to people and then shoot at an objective with them. I like both franchises, I just don't want them to intermingle too much.

If Bethesda or Blizzard will hire you, given the skill and experience you have, a conventional software company will pay you twice as much. 2x. I'm not kidding.

I can't say I'm really in the market at the moment, but I somehow don't think that's necessarily true, depending on what you're working on.

Regardless, game programming is 99/100 times a passion, not a job.

From everything I've seen, there IS sneaking, it's just a lot harder now. I would wait and give it a chance before making any off-the-cuff judgements.

Oh, I will be giving it a chance, if for nothing more than the story. I'm a die hard MGS fan, and I'm only stating my greatest fears.

How does that look like GTA.

What stupid tactics are these, exactly? Staying out of sight and engaging soldiers through non-lethal means only when necessary? If I were in a situation involving two armies fighting each other all around me, I'd be pretty certain to stay out of sight myself. And why do things need to be okay to be included in newer games? Jungle environments weren't in MGS1 or 2, but you didn't hear people saying "Hidden and Dangerous Gear 3: Snake Eater", did you? My point was that just because there was a scene showing Snake fighting people, that doesn't mean MGS4 has become a generic shooter

Third person camera was introduced with Subsistence, and to be fair, I don't think the original camera would work that well with MGS4. Rocket launchers from nowhere have *always* been in MGS, I'm pretty sure there's a subtle jab about it in the Twin Snakes remake of MGS1. Maybe I missed something, but the "packages" you're talking about seems to be Snake swapping rations for ammunition. Again, an evolution from the methods they introduced of getting them from enemy soldiers.

Overall, I think your fears are pretty unfounded. Just relax, it's going to be awesome

Bottom line, this game better kick my ***, cut off my head, and **** down my throat. Thats all im saying. I am still NOT going to get a PS3 tho, ill borrow someone elses or something, but **** that ****. What the **** do they want me to do with all 1000000 of the ps2 games I have. Other than that, and the price, and the lack of good games for the PS3, I dont have a problem with it. The one good thing that I will say is "FREE ONLINE!!"

Wow.


You have some seriously ****ed up pleasures.

It's been said before. Considering the backend you're getting with Xbox Live, 50 bucks for a year of service is REALLY not that outrageous. And as far as I'm aware, Sony has yet to even come close to Live in terms of what it offers and how good it is.

...who said anything about Xbox Live not being worth it?

He just said free. For once, the idiot has a point--free is free.