An interesting read on PG http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Various/NGP/news.asp?c=27940. Looks like Ngmoco is predicting handheld futures.
Meh, he doesn't say anything important. NGMoco fell of really hard after they started doing their "freemium" games.
I will never understand why people link to link to an intermediate site and not the actual source. http://www.industrygamers.com/news/sonys-ngp-dead-on-arrival-and-3ds-gimmicky-says-neil-young/
I particularly enjoyed the response to that recent front page article. The article spoke of Ngmoco's success since they went into the freemium business and no one could name any good games they've made since then.
If they were not making any good money, they'd change the way they did business... having said that, I am not saying that Making Good games = Making money. I saw How to loose friends & alienate PpL again y'day... what a co-incidence! Freedom of press is not equal to successful business, Rigging stuff about (so-called) celebs will keep the magazine @ top 14 internationally!
Ngmoco is a business first and a game developer second. It's amazing how few people have figured this out.
Your'e getting way off topic here sir. Anyway I can't tell if he really believes gaming on handheld is going to be good. He says NGP is dead upon arrival 3DS' 3D is a gimmick and idevices don;t really play games that well.
Are you saying other game companies like EA, Gameloft, chillingo are game developers first and bussiness second? How are they different from devs that are earning money while making actual Good games?
That certainly explains their lack of anything worth playing. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my games to be made by people who want to make games.
Didn't they sell for some crazy-ass figure like 400 million dollars? I admire them from a business standpoint, although I'm never going to forgive them for shitcanning Rolando 3.
Yep. What people don't understand either is that even though these kind of freemium games aren't very popular around here, millions of people are playing and enjoying them. The reason they were able to sell for so much is because the amount of daily active users is flat out insane. *shrug*
Millions of people enjoy listening to music by Avenged Sevenfold yet they have sold out and suck now. They deserted their first audience of core gamers. While I could go into sentimental nonsense like they feel like they've been betrayed after making NGMoco what they are today, the truth is that someone needed to get left behind or they would eventually cease to exist, and because the casual demographic is bigger this unfortunately was the original fanbase.
If you made a venn diagram of "core gamers," 99¢ whiners, and pirates, I think there would be a shocking amount of overlap. Don't get me wrong, the Rolando games and Star Defense are high up on my list of favorite iPhone games, but it's basically impossible to build a high-value business on iPhone games targeting the core gamer demographic. From a business perspective, what ngmoco has accomplished is pretty phenomenal. It's just too bad the price that came with was abandoning games like Rolando.
I still just don't get why they abandoned Rolando. Why can't they do both their Freemium garbage and their paid titles...?
Likely because they ran some financial report and it was like: MONEY MADE: Rolando- ||||||||||||| TouchPets Dogs- ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Just came along to say this gave me a chuckle. Unfortunately, it seems like developers across the board are following the same type of line, no matter what type of device. Rather than branching out and trying new types of games or building on great stories, they stick with what has sold for the past decade and avoid changing it up in ways that might drive away their customers. I can't blame them. It's all good business. But sometimes it feels like I've seen all this before.
I'm surprised more people aren't complaining about the fact that even "hardcore" games now are nothing but sequels and knock offs. There was a really great image circulating around a while ago of screenshots of a few different first person shooters and without captions you wouldn't even know which was which. Multi-million dollar game budgets have forced publishers in to "safe" games like Call of Duty #4756, or, yet another freemium reskin.
