Viewing Thread:
"What's going on!?"

Why're companies making games which sell bucketloads getting into financial diffculties?

Acclaim must have made a lot of cash off of the Burnout and Legends of Wrestling games, now admittedly they've had quite a few dodgy releases recently but you'd think the profit off their good games'd be more than enough to sustain them.

Vivendi are supposed to be in trouble even though they were responsible for publishing Half-life and have Half-life 2 just round the corner.

SCI have just had to purchase Pivotal and pay off the company's debts. Pivotal are responsible for producing the popular Conflict Desert Storm games - you'd think their cut of the profits would also be able to sustain them (if they did indeed get a cut and not just a set amount for making the game).

So what the hell is going on!?

Tiltawhirl wrote:
> Since when has Legends of Wrestling ever been classed as a good game?

Yeah that should have gone in a seperate sentence about "games which create a lot of cash but are infact very poor".

The point I was making is that the licence, among others, appears to bring in a lot of money for Acclaim so it seemed odd that they were struggling. Although I han't really thought of the possibility of piracy.

Tiltawhirl wrote:
> Since when has Legends of Wrestling ever been classed as a good game?

good point.

Since when has Legends of Wrestling ever been classed as a good game?

back to the point, I and you all need to think of the big picture. we don't manage the companies, so who knows what goes on and who owns what to whom, and who is tied by a contract to whoever...

Hedfix wrote:
> Vivendi are supposed to be in trouble even though they were
> responsible for publishing Half-life and have Half-life 2 just round
> the corner.

and ALSO, they were part of the producing of Homeworld 2! i mean, anyone with sense would realise that this is a game that really is a landmark, and should by all means be as recognised as Half-Life 2, seeing as Homeworld 1 was one of the strongholds of all 3D RTS, and if i'm right, it WAS the first 3D RTS - and what a corker it was!!!

JimTopBloke wrote:
> Maybe the should all hand in their company cars, their FAT paychecks,
> the options schemes...
> Good Games Dont take MASSIVE BUDGETS to make, just a touch of Genius,
> TETRIS is still being sold today... Dont think the ruski made much
> out of that though...

Excellent point, but apparently according to most publisher bosses, the most easy way to guarantee a set amount of sales (ie. the "ooh, that looks cool" audience) is to creat wonderful, glorious graphics and FMV which - for developers, is one of the most costly parts of the production process.

Also, games now are getting more complex to make - the public in general are demanding more, and usually people will not buy games if progress hasn't been made, for example in the AI.

*Who were illegally producing

JimTopBloke wrote:

> TETRIS is still being sold today... Dont think the ruski made much
> out of that though...

Good point.

The USSR took the cash after Nintendo got hold of Tetris even though Robert Maxwell thought he had the rights to it. Nintendo also got the best of one of their competitors, illegally producing Tetris without the agreement of the USSR, who had previously 'backwards engineered' the NES architecure by illegally obtaining it's patents.

I'll dig out the name of that company if anyone's interested.

I wonder who's getting all the Tetris royalties now? Mabye it's all going to Nintendo?

Maybe the should all hand in their company cars, their FAT paychecks, the options schemes...
Good Games Dont take MASSIVE BUDGETS to make, just a touch of Genius, TETRIS is still being sold today... Dont think the ruski made much out of that though...

Ah.

Dagnammit!