14 DAY TRIAL // In a quite T crossing - I dotting interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Charles Cecil, managing director of Revolution Software (Broken Sword) reveals how a smaller developer's job of cracking the already steroid pumped gaming market, is a tough nut to crack. Apparently, the word "blockbuster" has something to do with this issue:
"In film you have the blockbusters," comments Cecil. "Gears of Wars was clearly a blockbuster, people are happy to pay GBP 40 for that and feel it's good value. But then we have all these smaller games like Katamari Damacy that get very well reviewed and perceived very fondly by people within the industry, but don't sell to a wider audience. My view on that is you can only sell something for GBP 40 if it's truly epic. Therefore, what we need to do is explore ways of bringing these highly innovative and great games in a different way, and that's more like the TV model where you sell something cheaper and find ways to distribute it to a wider audience and maybe advertising can cover some of the revenues. We've got to find different models where we have the epic games on one side and the more 'indie' games on the other," 1UP posts.
And are developers the only ones that suffer from this "blockbuster" issue? How about gamers? When young gamers hear the term "blockbuster" (not in a press release of course - according to PRs, everything's a blockbuster), they start pulling mom's hand like there's no tomorrow. And let's not mention the price tags when it comes to a Sony original title. Don't tell me that "do not remove memory card 8MB (PlayStation 2), or Dual Shock 2 controller (PlayStation 2)" is strictly formal stuff? It's almost like they're subliminal messages.
OK, maybe it's not exactly like that, but everywhere you look it's either Sony or Microsoft, like only they can come up with the blockbusters. Cecil reminds his audience, towards the end of the interview that a good game has just as good of chance at the big title as the big ones, because "a good game will work on pretty much any format. [...] Each format has a wide audience and plenty of opportunities."
Sooner or later, it pays off for who rolls out a good playing and fairly good looking game. Console owners share impressions with each other from time to time you know...