Similar conversations have been going on of late in both film and gaming.
Strained by the pandemic movies have gone through fits and bursts of releases but when in full motion they have faced extremes within the market. Some making huge sums whilst others earning less than nothing as audiences make very Yes/No decisions on what they go to watch. Hollywood has not just been catching up with delayed titles, but also making new ones as a continuation of the viewing habits of the years before and this has been raised as a potential problem. Projects with budgets so immense that to make a single dollar of profit they need to make more box office than most studios could hope to pull in across the span of years. Ru times so long that they test the patience of viewers and cut down on the amount of screenings that theatres can hold per day. Reliable, recognised IP has proven a massive winner - as long as it's not the same reliable, recognised IP that people were going to see at the big screen in the lead up to the pandemic.
In gaming we have a similar problem but born from a different trajectory. Where the film industry largely closed up shop over the pandemic years, the games industry boomed. Stuck at home consumers dove in with greater numbers playing online, buying newly released hardware, testing the waters of VR and more. With things opening up more the tide pulled more back out and some high profile titles that have since struggled have seen studios closed, bought out or more commonly suffering layoffs. Studios have raced to produce cheaply maintained, highly profitable GAAS titles for a marketplace too crowded to sustain them all. AAA single players still see success but take so long to produce and cost so much to make that the profits are often required to be spread out sustaining the studio rather than lining the pocket.
This week see's the release of RoboCop: Rogue City which is scoring reasonable reviews, featuring a limited scope but with care and attention focused on delivering the core experience its IP promises. Quantum Error is also releasing and is also scoring relatively wonkly scores but was made by a team of just four people, breaking financially even before it even releases.
In a year where Sony has released just a single AAA title and Microsoft has shelled out an eye watering $69bn to by a company primarily responsible for a AAA franchise that requires nine studios at a minimum to sustain it:-
Should it finally be the time for companies to step back from AAA and GAAS titles and revive efforts to make smaller scale, more frequent AA titles?
Would you be happy to see less AAA titles if it meant more variety and frequency albeit with less quality consistency?
Strained by the pandemic movies have gone through fits and bursts of releases but when in full motion they have faced extremes within the market. Some making huge sums whilst others earning less than nothing as audiences make very Yes/No decisions on what they go to watch. Hollywood has not just been catching up with delayed titles, but also making new ones as a continuation of the viewing habits of the years before and this has been raised as a potential problem. Projects with budgets so immense that to make a single dollar of profit they need to make more box office than most studios could hope to pull in across the span of years. Ru times so long that they test the patience of viewers and cut down on the amount of screenings that theatres can hold per day. Reliable, recognised IP has proven a massive winner - as long as it's not the same reliable, recognised IP that people were going to see at the big screen in the lead up to the pandemic.
In gaming we have a similar problem but born from a different trajectory. Where the film industry largely closed up shop over the pandemic years, the games industry boomed. Stuck at home consumers dove in with greater numbers playing online, buying newly released hardware, testing the waters of VR and more. With things opening up more the tide pulled more back out and some high profile titles that have since struggled have seen studios closed, bought out or more commonly suffering layoffs. Studios have raced to produce cheaply maintained, highly profitable GAAS titles for a marketplace too crowded to sustain them all. AAA single players still see success but take so long to produce and cost so much to make that the profits are often required to be spread out sustaining the studio rather than lining the pocket.
This week see's the release of RoboCop: Rogue City which is scoring reasonable reviews, featuring a limited scope but with care and attention focused on delivering the core experience its IP promises. Quantum Error is also releasing and is also scoring relatively wonkly scores but was made by a team of just four people, breaking financially even before it even releases.
In a year where Sony has released just a single AAA title and Microsoft has shelled out an eye watering $69bn to by a company primarily responsible for a AAA franchise that requires nine studios at a minimum to sustain it:-
Should it finally be the time for companies to step back from AAA and GAAS titles and revive efforts to make smaller scale, more frequent AA titles?
Would you be happy to see less AAA titles if it meant more variety and frequency albeit with less quality consistency?
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