Awhile back, while I was living under a bus, I saw an article on Joystiq which pointed to a much larger article on Gamasutra, which in essence, said “new IP for EA fails.”
They’re referring of course to the less than stellar launch of EA’s new IP this quarter of Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space. While both articles seem to paint the failing economy and the consumer’s lack of faith in spending money they might not have combined with the fact that “new IP is hard to sell” as the culprits, I think they’re missing the larger point as to why they fell short.
I’m pretty sure it isn’t the fact that they’re new IP. New IP is certainly difficult to get people to buy, if you compare it to selling a sequel, such as Madden, as the graph above (liberally stolen from Joystiq who stole it from Gamasutra) implies. But the problem is that a blanket statement like that is patently false, and pretty easy to shoot holes in. Left 4 Dead sold pretty well (450k on Xbox 360 alone, and Valve never releases the Steam sales #s, so who knows how much better it did there). Spore has sold upwards of two million units. Both are new IP, so we can see that EA doesn’t have much of a problem publishing new IP or getting consumer traction with them. If we look to previous years IP, we can see that Gears of War (the original) sold what, three million units? Assassin’s Creed sold something like six million units. Even lame duck new IPs like Kane and Lynch sold well over a million.
So it’s probably not that they’re new IP. Mirror’s Edge was marketed out the wazoo, what with multiple comic books, flash animated web trailers, ads everywhere, and I’m sure their internet “buzz” rating was high considering all of the pieces written about the main character and the first person nature of the parkouring. Dead Space had a pretty high anticipation rate, at least in the quick straw poll amongst my friends and co-workers, so, why didn’t people buy it?
The problem with this notion, is that I think people did buy them. They bought them both used. My team in particular grabbed Dead Space for competitive analysis used a mere four days after it had launched. This is pretty much a death knell for any title, as the vast majority of your sales occurs within the first two weeks following launch. To have those numbers crippled by used sales is horrible, but there’s a reason why it happened.
Both games are relatively short single player games. Sure, sure, there’s some time trial business in Mirror’s Edge, but I don’t think that’s a big draw for a lot of folks who bought it. There is no great value to a repeat playthrough, especially since there is little to no branching content in either title, and it’s my opinion that neither title was particularly innovative, either (I’m going to suffer the slings and arrows for this opinion, but I’ll elaborate in a later piece). So, I don’t think there was a very large retention rate amongst consumers who didbuy it new. They probably burned through the game in a two or three night playthrough, felt it wasn’t worth the $64 they paid for it, traded them in and got something else for their money while the title still retained a high trade-in value, and moved on. Meanwhile, people who missed out on the launch bandwagon were able to buy the title used less than a week after it hit the shelves.
While I would like to turn this into a hit piece on why used games are bad for the industry, I’m instead going to take the route that I can impact and point out that we as developers need to deliver content that’s worth keeping. This means a single player campaign that lasts significantly longer than 6-10 hours, if there isn’t any multiplayer content. Games like Spore and Fallout3 do this quite amicably, with something in the neighborhood of 25-50 hours of content. Both titles also have a decently high replay rate, as it’s nearly impossible to explore all of the game’s content on a single playthrough.
Other Q4 titles such as Gears 2 or CoD:WaW have a high consumer retention value due to the extensive multiplayer aspects of the titles (and the fact that they’re sequels to highly successful franchises goes a long way to boot), so there isn’t a ton of used titles to be found, especially during the critical first month of sales.
There’s some kind of secret formula here, one that should hopefully keep your title out of the hands of the used stockpiles, and while oversimplified, it goes something like this:
- Single Player Content ~ 12 hours
- Co-op or other networked non-competitive online play
- Rich compelling multiplayer content, append-able with DLC
That’s pretty much the CoD/Gears/Halo/L4D formula up there. The Spore/Fallout/Oblivion/Final Fantasy example is much more simplistic:
- Single Player Content > 25 hours
I’m not saying I’m any kind of rocket scienctist for throwing these formulas up here; tons of people are already rolling their eyes at them.
The point here is that you just can’t release a game that takes 6 hours to play and expect people to throw out $64 for it. I’m sure both titles are at a reduced price now, but they launched at full retail price. I don’t care how new and innovative you think your IP is (and let’s be honest, neither Dead Space nor Mirror’s Edge was horribly innovative or changed the game space we play or develop in), if you don’t deliver the consumer “their money’s worth” they’re going to not give you all of their money, or worse, they’re going to make sure you don’t make it (intentionally or no) by returning your game as a used title and buying something else.
Consumers wouldn’t accept a movie that cost $10 to get into but only lasted for 40 minutes. Why should we expect gamers to latch onto a retail model that delivers a similar value?
New IP here isn’t the problem. A small value per dollar is.
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.game-ism.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.game-ism.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Reddit]](http://www.game-ism.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[Slashdot]](http://www.game-ism.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/slashdot.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.game-ism.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Email]](http://www.game-ism.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
12 responses so far ↓
1 Ace // Dec 29, 2008 at 12:51 am
I think you’re spot on here.
I went through Fallout 3 two times now, spent the last 4 months playing, and still haven’t seen EVERYTHING in the game.
It’s hard to pay the same price for a game that will take a day or two to complete.
2 Vel // Dec 29, 2008 at 12:58 am
spot on
3 no // Dec 29, 2008 at 2:16 am
Brill.
4 Moshe // Dec 29, 2008 at 4:24 am
You seem to be right, but i gotta ask, how does Portal fit in these equasions?
Its a single player game with less then 6 hours of play…
5 Brandon Bloom // Dec 29, 2008 at 5:21 am
I’d also be curious to see sales by store. I’m willing to bet Madden sells best in Walmart, but new IPs sell best at GameStop.
6 Sol Invictus // Dec 29, 2008 at 6:02 am
You’re pretty spot on with this. While we could rag on GameStop and their used-games policy and talk about how it hurts the industry (it does, somewhat) I think it’s fair to say that the ball is still in the industry’s court to produce games with higher retention value. Playing a game that lasts for 10 hours isn’t exactly a good deal if you have to pay the full price for it, no matter how good it is.
It’s probably the reason why BioShock is on sale for 5 dollars on Steam while Call of Duty 4, a game with much higher retention value and multiplayer capabilities has only seem a 20% reduction in price.
7 Malta Soron // Dec 29, 2008 at 6:08 am
Spot on.
@Moshe: First, Portal is cheap. It was part of the Orange Box (five games for 50 bucks) and is now sold on Steam for $5. Second, it’s a very good and innovative game. Even though it lasts a few hours, those few hours are worth every penny.
8 Aaron Davis // Dec 29, 2008 at 8:36 am
Sorry to latch onto to such a small point:
“While I would like to turn this into a hit piece on why used games are bad for the industry…”
Don’t. Used car are bad for the automotive industry also. So don’t write such an article unless you can do one of two things: 1) explain, adequately, why the videogame industry is so different from any other industry that the First Sale Doctrine should be further eroded for it, or 2) conclude that, while some sales are certainly lost to people who buy used, this is not an insurmountable problem, and isn’t worth eroding people’s rights in favor of your wallet.
“New IP here isn’t the problem. A small value per dollar is.”
This. I have a personal policy that I won’t pay the full $60 for a game unless I can get *at least* 20 hours out of it. If I were independently wealthy, it might not matter, but as it stands, I don’t have the money to shell out $60 for a game that only lasts 10 hours and has no replay value.
9 Skybot // Dec 29, 2008 at 11:36 am
My thoughts exactly. There are plenty of games out there coming out that I wouldn’t mind playing but there is simply no way I am going to pay $70 (canadian) for a game that won’t even last me through a day. I want to know when it became common practice to sell every new game for the same price (59us, or 69can). Is it a standard among game distributors or is it simply because any game that is “new” can justify the price on that merit alone? One thing we all know is these games never stay that price for long. Example, Call of Duty4, even a month after the release of its sequel, still sells for $50. No wonder game companies want to erode the second-hand market away. Without it, their crap games could potentially sell for higher first-sale prices for far longer periods of time.
10 Skye // Dec 31, 2008 at 11:40 am
I agree with a lot of the points made. Similar to Skybot, I won’t buy a new game at 60 dollars unless I am going to get significant play time with it. There are exceptions to this, but it serves as a general rule of thumb.
Mirror’s Edge failed because it was superficial flash. The marketing machine went to work and created an initial market, but the end of the day the cost-benefit value was out of whack and the market collapsed.
The industry understands that new IPs are essential to growth, but somewhere along the line “the substance in the game” portion gets lost for some. Hype only gets you so far. At some point you have to back it up. Video gaming has an incredible market/ hype machine that can become disadvantageous to developers and publishing houses. It can provide a lot of false expectation and willingness to cut corners. You get products like Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space. Cool new products labeled as innovative and the new best thing, when in truth they really aren’t. Once you pull back the curtain you see what is really there and it is not as impressive or revolutionary.
In the end it gives a bad name for new IPs and a hesitancy by the industry to go that route in the future. It is always easy to dismiss failure but not as easy to genuinely figure out why we failed in the first place.
This is both unfair and unfortunate for all parties involved. Gamers miss out,the industry stagnates, and greater financial opportunities are lost. There are times I wonder if good risk management practices would change these situations.
11 Bri // Jan 1, 2009 at 12:10 am
I got 63 hours into Fallout before I decided to start a new character, and within 2 hours of my new one I found 2 locations I had never stumbled across in the whole length of my first character. There are JRPG’s on the market which offer 40-80 hours easily in their main quests, and in the days of PlayStation we got those same games for $20 less than they ask of us with games like ME and DS. Don’t get me wrong, I love ME, I think it’s a terrific game, but for the short amount of time I got with it, I find myself puzzled that they are CHARGING for the new DLC when other games will even give us more content for free.
12 Making games last: Social Cost « Game of Design // Mar 12, 2009 at 1:21 am
[...] a problem because at these budgets, those games need to sell millions to make money. Mr. Game-ism clued me in. Why did EA’s new IP do so poorly last season? It doesn’t seem to be because they [...]
Leave a Comment