Something to feel good about [Take 2's last quarter]

[DFG]

You were probably more profitable then Take 2 last quarter:

Shortly after the stock markets closed yesterday, Take-Two Interactive announced a $50.2 million loss for its second quarter. Today when the markets reopened, the publisher took a beating worthy of that doled out in one of its more violent games. At the closing bell, its share was down $2.94, or 17.53 percent, falling to $13.83. The final figure was just $0.19 above the stock's 52-week low of $13.64, but the share value had sunk to $13.74 during the day.

[Anthony Flack]

I still earned a lot less money than anyone who worked at Take 2. Only the mightiest businesses can lose money on such a grand scale.

[svero]

Well I bought some Take 2 games recently.. Here's my experience with them..

Elder Scrolls Oblivion : crashed on startup wouldnt run at all

Civ 4 : screwed up my sound system, needlessly uses 3d in a 2d game marring the gameplay and rendering it less fun than civ3 - dvd copyright system aimed only at legit customers (pirated games are cracked of course) doesnt recognize dvd in drive 4 out of 5 times. Had to use system restore to fix what it did to my sound drivers.

So both games are sitting in fancy boxes on my shelf unplayed. Shame because I think at their core they're good games. There are some really REALLY questionable things being done to these games that don't seem related much to the games themselves.

I donno if this customer satisfaction strategy carries over to their other titles, but for me it's essentially had the effect of swearing me off buying any more retail games. It's going to take some pretty big convincing to get my wallet out again. Maybe spore...

[cyodine]

It's a shame that they're suffering a loss. I love Civ IV. I'm a big fan of all the Civilization games, and I was initially wary of the 3-d aspect. But I'm quite pleased with the way it was done.

I haven't played Elder Scrolls Oblivion yet, although I hope to soon when I fly up to visit my brother this summer. I hear nothing but praise from him about it. The graphics look gorgeous.

Not trying to do propoganda or anything for Take-2. It's just when companies make games that I'm really fond of, I hope they do well business wise.

[cliffski]

I love the *idea* of Civ4, but its the best example so far of a pointlessly added 3D engine. I thought that the total war series went too 3D on their strategy screen too. bah.

But theres something for me to feel good about, I just sold my 3,000th copy of Democracy online. Hurrah (bit more actually coz thats just plimus sales). I feel pretty good about that :D.

[svero]

3000 copies of democracy, selling direct, is pretty damn great. If Kudos does at least that well (and it may do better) then leaving your day job may end up being an excellent decision for you.

[cyodine]

Seems all strategy games are going 3-D now. I've recently been playing Galactic Civilizations 2 alot and it's 3-d (vs it's predecessor which wasn't). Heroes of Might and Magic 5 is also 3-d as well despite the lack in it's predecessors. As long as the 3-d is incorporated in a way that you can still zoom out to get a 2-d feel if you wanted then it's great. Guess you'll need to do a 3-d Democracy now Cliffski ;)

Though on a more serious note, does 3-d work well at all for the casual market? It seems most casual games are 2-d although they may incorporate 3-d looking balls/beetles/jewels etc..

[svero]

Seems all strategy games are going 3-D now. I've recently been playing Galactic Civilizations 2 alot and it's 3-d (vs it's predecessor which wasn't). Heroes of Might and Magic 5 is also 3-d as well despite the lack in it's predecessors. As long as the 3-d is incorporated in a way that you can still zoom out to get a 2-d feel if you wanted then it's great.

Except that's it's not great great at all. The graphics look crappier. The system requirements are higher, and the games are improved in no way whatsoever.

In Galciv I can see a point to 3d for the ship building and ship fights, but in civ 4 or heroes 5.... the games are worse than they would have been with solid 2D graphics. They look and play worse than the previous version in the same series. And I can't help but feel that the decision to make those games 3d had nothing to do with the gameplay or even how it looks, but rather just some desire or arbitrary publisher decision that all games going forward have to have EXTREME 3D engines. They all have to be "cutting edge" .. some crap decision like that.

[Davaris]

Take-Two Interactive announced a $50.2 million loss for its second quarter.

Take 2 are linked with Bethsoft aren't they? What does this mean for Fallout 3? Is it going to get canned if Take 2 go bust?

Do you have the link to the source?


Except that's it's not great great at all. The graphics look crappier. The system requirements are higher, and the games are improved in no way whatsoever

The only good reason to use 3D is its much easier to get art assets into your game. The downside is its butt ugly. ;)

[Sysiphus]

I'm an strategy games fan. And I've got back to 3d pre rendered games. they're nicer, they don't ask for the latest hardware technology (and that counting on I am more a hardcore gamer than a casual ) and...in strategy at least, I keep liking graphically more the good rendered stuff than real time 3d. What is more, I don't know others, but i rather prefer more depth in an strategy game, better AI, more units, more complexity in what the game is, than the "3D feel", which anyway, doesn't add much: you tend to use only the fixed camera for better control and range of view, so...besides, the mehes tend to be really low when you aproach. And nice graphics in strategy imo is a must. Nice, well ended, like Age of Conquerors, or the like.


And...cliffski huge Kudos to you. Specially once you get the point you can avoid bosses... :) Also, even if one goes bankrupcy, it's surely way better than to get informed the company you work at went so, and you are not informed till last day...

[Anthony Flack]

And...cliffski huge Kudos to you.

Here's hoping, eh?

[BrutoMemo]

I don't feel good about a huge loss like that. It makes me wonder how badly commercial decisions can make such big hole in finances of a copmany :eek:

[lennard]

Kudos to Cliffski for the success and for being candid about his #'s. Nice to see somebody in our sector making a few $.

The big companies feel they have to make big bets - I think the number is around 1 hit game carrying 10 others in "the bigs". All the decisions that go into that kind of big machinery just give me vertigo. Here's hoping more of us have some Democracry level success.

[svero]

Well from my perspective as a customer you've got...

- High system requirements : New games these days have requirements that are absurd! Sure the screenshots look great, but whats the point if nobody can play the game and have it look like that? Softimate XSI also produces nice graphics for me at 1 frame every 30 hrs, but its not a game is it? My computer is less than a year old, and I can't play ... well pretty much anything. The last 5 games I bought retail rand poorly or not at all.

- playing it "safe" : releasing the same thing year after year.

- Needlessly high budgets stifle innovation and risk taking : Ironically a lot of the budget probably goes to making the game unplayable per my 1st point.

- copy protection schemes and anti piracy measures that are targeted *only* at legitimate customers : This one can only be defined and pure madness. It's totally insane. WTF are they thinking? Do they have absolutely NO IDEA WHATS GOING ON?? If I want a pirated game, I go to the local pirate place and buy a **CRACKED** dvd. Not one that uses their stupid completely pointless broken and useless anti pirate system. So we've got a scenario here where the pirate dvd plays better than the legit one. Not too enticing to buy a legit copy.

- little attempt to make games accessible to wider audiences. After playing casual and downloadable games for a while, running a retail game is like the ship from the end of Hitchhikers guide. A black button on a black console with black fonts on a black screen. You practically need a PHD to figure out some of these interfaces. Compare that to nintendo games like mario kart. Why cant pc retail games play that clearly/nicely? It's just sloppy poor quality work.

- Terrible crazy bug rates : Patch city! It's hard to even consider buying a game until I've seen at least 2-3 patches available for download. This might be a reflection of devaluing experienced developers in favor of cheap labor, or rushed releases to make arbitrary ship dates. I don't know.. but again it seems like sloppy poor quality work has infested the industry.


This isn't true of all companies/games but it's true for a lot of them. The last 2 yrs have been a complete disaster for me as a consumer. I can't remember the last time I bought a game on a shelf that i was happy with... Maybe civ3 a few years ago was a pretty good buy. Aside from that... ehn...

The retail PC industry just seems to have gone barreling downhill faster and faster, and never paused to reevaluate what customers really wanted out of games, or what they were doing. It just seems a terrible mess. If sales aren't hot... well frankly it seems a well deserved fate. I think some industry self reflection is in order.

[Dan MacDonald]

Retail PC game sales have been the pits lately. Many publishers are moving exclusively to Console games. The funny thing is, the console manufacturers have strict controls on what meets the publishing bar and what doesn't. It seems the PC business with it's open platform has fallen prey to the same thing that killed games in the 80's.

[Ricardo C]

The console manufacturers' control over publishing has very much to do with ensuring a healthy royalty revenue stream, and little to do with actually controlling the quality of what gets released on their systems.

Retail PC games sales are in the crapper because that's exactly what they've been releasing, not because of the PCs open architecture. The majority of the games developed for the PC don't reach retail, anyway.

[Dan MacDonald]

Well everything comes back to revenue, if you want to read up on video game history you can see how nintendo was able to restablish revenue by implementing tight controls on the games that were published.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Game_Crash_of_1983

These controls were established to prevent the glut of low quality titles that flooded the market in the early 80's and bottomed out the video game industry.


Nintendo reserved the lion’s share of NES game revenue for itself by limiting most third-party publishers to only five games per year on its systems. It also required all cartridges to be manufactured by Nintendo, and to be paid for in full before they were manufactured. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk.[6] Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all games released for the system. Although most of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted by later manufacturers like Sega, Sony and Microsoft, the others never used such strong measures to hold a larger share of the games market for themselves.

[Ricardo C]

Although those measures are ostensibly in place to prevent poor quality games from flooding the market, to me, they appear to be just a way for Nintendo to exert full control over the publishing end of their business. The loads of sheer crap that was published for the NES seem to bear this out :D

And again, the vast majority of the games developed for the PC don't actually make it to retail, so Joe Sixpack doesn't really have a chance to be "flooded" by anything, good or bad. If you don't have the backing of a major publisher (most of whom do meet the "strict quality controls" of Nintendo et al), getting into brick and mortar stores is nearly impossible.

So I don't think the retail PC games market looks that different from the retail console games market. Consoles are booming because they're cheaper than an equivalent PC, online gaming becoming a standard feature in new systems has further bridged the gap with the PC, and console gaming is just plain easier than dealing with the usual PC hassles, as described by svero. Buy system, insert disc, play game. And you can have it in your living room, hooked up to that lovely new HDTV.

If the PC platform is on a downturn, but it's not because of its open nature.

[Sysiphus]

I have a friend inside a HUGE company doing console games, (which I wont mention, of course) with lots of internal disorder between too many people.
Lots of non qualified artists and coders, etc. You wouldn't believe some stories.

If you ask me, I agree with all those points, and imo...well, we -little and productive b-series game company we *were* for mobile- saw how they do...they(another game company) sent us a project, and man, what a disorder...

Bad coordination among several sections on houses with 100+ people , investors and marketting ppl as always not caring about games, actually, not even getting minimally informed,(what is worse, this letal combo of guys have the habit of put suddenly and impossible date while at same time add extra features non planned breaking any order, forcing the product to be released in whatever the way, how a bunch of poor destroied guys can in a 12+ hours of stressful labour days are only able to do, even being crazily skilled...) huge quantities of money invested for long years with no income, and unsure income after the years, with high posibilities of failing= no risk. No risk -> broing eternal copy. The WWII games was a clear sign of that. And it still continues.

Small companies allow better cared work, imho. Big can mean big disaster. There's also great huge ones.But to me is a harder point to get. You can't do BAD graphics in a 2, 3, 5 guys company. You get spotted instantly, besides, you're not just doing door textures, you're doing the whole freaking game thing, usually u all the game, UI, marketting, website...etc.

I don't criticize the whole AAA market. but too many game companies are just like this. I've only *really* enjoied Age of Empires, Unreal 2003 T.

Not only in pc, in general, HUGE companies are trying to kill the small rivals (you ;) ). they want all the cake. And while small is unimportant, taken one by one, is dangerous as whole. I have understood this very recently. And is more global than I thought...pc, mobile (trust me), consoles... IMO it's worth the fight, though, and there will allways will be a place for the kind who are "hard to kill" , hehe.