Comments on: “Maturing” download games market starts to show retail-like characteristics

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:45:01 +0000

Popcap as a whole are big now, yes, that’s down to their success in PC/Mac games, but a) they’re not (or were not) an incumbent console company, unlike Epic (come on, Gears of War series), and b) their team sizes and budget per game is vastly smaller than at Epic, despite the overall company size. The cost of making Shadow Complex is orders of magnitude higher than Peggle – of course any company other than Epic would have had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars just to use the Unreal engine in the first place – so in the ways that count on consoles, Popcap was like an indie (or to look at it another way, an indie could do the same with that budget). Epic is an entirely different beast, they’ve been in the AAA console business for years and had very expensive tech and established publisher relations to draw on from the word go.

As to whether XBLA needs more Shadow Complex or Peggle, that’s subjective – personally I’ve spent far more time with the latter.

By: Joe Wreschnig

Joe Wreschnig — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:09:00 +0000

Peggle is from a “small studio with a modest development budget”?

Chair may be owned by Epic, but Popcap is even larger than Epic (Wikipedia says 180 employees versus 75); Peggle is an established mainstream brand on many platforms while Shadow Complex was a risky “hardcore” original IP.

In general, Shadow Complex is what we need more of on XBLA, and Peggle is what we need less of. (At least as long as it’s taking up slots.)

Not that any of the conclusions about a user-informed marketplace are bad. It’s just an extremely strange and inappropriate example.

By: kwyjibo

kwyjibo — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:52:37 +0000

Dan, Direct2Drive is owned by News Corporation. It’s the IGN storefront. It’s not remotely independent.

If you don’t want what Steam offers, get Torchlight straight from the developers and let them see more of your money.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:15:24 +0000

I loathe Steam. Direct2Drive looks lightweight and independant, I must try it when I get Torchlight.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:47:42 +0000

I actually think Steam is doing pretty well, I know a *lot* more independents who are being welcomed there than the likes of XBLA these days. And of course, at least if Steam rejects your game you can still deploy on the platform through other means, which is impossible on consoles. If you’re deploying on Mac you have to find another way anyway since Steam still doesn’t have a Mac presence. Steam is at least an optional route, a promotional and value-added channel rather than a dictator.

By: a tired developer

a tired developer — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:01:15 +0000

Take a look at the non-casual PC scene to see the same thing – STEAM. They dominate mainstream game downloading, impulse and direct2drive are tiny in comparison. Getting a game on Steam means appealing to the secret Valve committee who greenlight or NOT all new games (and rarely explain their decisions). There is a growing tendency for them to only let things on that carry a certain level of hype which more or less guarantees a certain income. Why can’t they just open the channel up and let anything on, user reviews, user run submission system, it’s all easy to manage properly. They make life hard for themselves and then complain they only have resources to focus on big earning games. Just seems short sighted and I hate to think what it will be like in years to come.

Casual games are even worse, they’ve been around longer so the portals have really come down hard and control what gets released. Add to that a huge price war that has devalued casual games in the player’s eye. So now you have match3 and hidden object games made with $250k+ budgets selling for $6. 0.1% sell really well, the rest either never get on the portal or just die through lack of exposure.