Bigger and bigger video game studios (2)
Roberto Rocha has an article telling Ubisoft’s acquisition of Hybride Technologies, the studio who made the special effects of movie hits 300 or Sin City. The studio’s talent and assets will be used for the production of video games, and also for move tie-ins.
The acquisition comes also in a week where Blizzard and Activitision have merged. Add that to EA’s efforts to buy Take Two Interactive and we’ll have just a couple of behemoths in the industry, maybe just in a few years. I expect cost of production to increase, as titles takes more resources & time; with small video game programmers having to face huge barriers of entry, since they cannot in any way produce the same level of work as a specialized fx studio like Hybride. Those independent programmers will actually have to move to casual gaming, for the web; or produce games for devices like the iPhone.
There are majors in film and music. Windows is bigger than Mac. And yet… there are still indy movies, french movies, movies made in Québec. Small music labels, millions of bands not represented by majors. Thousand of apps built by small outfits “agains” Office, thousands of apps for the Mac, Linux exists, etc.
Your conclusion ignores the long tail, assuming that only huge crazy ass games offered on all platforms can potentially exist and it’s just not the case. Small gaming companies can still exist if they are original and unique enough.
(Although I’d still prefer if gaming wasn’t going the way of the behemoths)
There are lots of niches, but I agree with Heri that the barriers to entry are pretty high and getting higher. The typical niches are not so exciting either.
- Ports on less popular platforms, e.g. PS2, PSP, DS. On the pro side, these platforms are not considered as sexy as the “next-gen” platforms, so there are less developers willing to work on them… yet despite their unsexiness, they remain very viable platforms, e.g. there were more PS2 sold last year than XBox 360 or PS3. Down-side: your skills will eventually become obsolete/commoditized/outsourced to China and India.
This is the approach that was taken by Beenox. They became the favorite porting partner for companies like Activision, which acquired them a few years ago.
- XBox Live Arcade and Playstation equivalent. Pro: much lower budgets than AAA titles. Down side: 50% of the retail price will go in the pockets of Microsoft or Sony, and it takes an amazing titles + connections to get approved.
- Focus on delivering a new experience with a specific platform feature, e.g. Eye Toy, Stylus.
On the plus side, you’re no longer limited to making a deal with a publisher right away, now that there are alternative funding sources.
So developing a game is high-risk and rarely high-reward. Don’t do it unless you have an amazingly original idea or you can afford to spend a lot of money and time.
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