As dev costs rocket, game creators need the ‘core-market’ consoles to hit ‘PS2 sales’, says Miles Jacobson
The games industry will suffer more staff cuts and studio closures unless its ‘core-market’ consoles begin to reach PS2-levels.
That was the warning offered by Miles Jacobson, studio head at Sports Interactive.
“At the moment I don’t think the Xbox 360 or PS3 are completely mass-market devices,” said Jacobson. “The Xbox platform has sold better than before, but the PS3 has not at all reached the levels that the PS2 did.”
Total lifetime sales of both the Xbox 360 and PS3 stands at a combined 55 million units, with Sony’s system approaching its third birthday and the Xbox 360 approaching its fourth.
The PS2 sold over 70 million units alone in the space of four years, eventually going on to hit record sales figures of over 125 million.
All the while, development costs are rocketing, with some well-regarded industry figures stating that budgets have ‘doubled or tripled’ since the PlayStation 2 era.
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“Unless we can reach a saturation point of this-gen consoles that’s higher than last gen consoles, the result of this will be clear,” warns Jacobson, who also remained pessimistic on the opportunities that the Wii provides.
“The Wii has obviously done phenomenally well,” he said, “but publishers outside of Nintendo are having a hard time working with its user-base.”
"'The Wii has obviously done phenomenally well,' he said, 'but publishers outside of Nintendo are having a hard time working with its user-base.'"
Why does this sort of nonsense get propagated without challenge? Lots of third-party titles have done very well with the Wii, such as Tiger Woods, Guitar Hero, and Lego Star Wars.
Now, perhaps Mr. Jacobson wants to claim that some third-party "hardcore" titles haven't done well on the Wii, but that argument falls flat when you look at what "hardcore" titles third parties have put on the Wii. When are these developers going to make serious efforts to court the Wii's hardcore base? Where are the Wii's equivalent to Bioshock or GTA 4? Why do third-party developers bring half-baked "tests" to the market-leading console?
The secret to being successful on the Wii is the same secret to being successful on any other system -- bring your best work to the table, and don't talk down to your audience. But apparently it's easier to ignore the obvious than to treat the Wii market with respect.
