Syd Lexia wrote:

Douche, there are almost certainly other devs onboard, such as Square Enix, but you never know. When an industry giant develops hardware, they generally ASSUME that devs will jump onboard, and it doesn't always happen. Some of the greatest failures of our time, such as the N64, were failures because devs never materialized.

Well it wouldnt have happened if Nintendo went with CD technology instead of sticking with Carts. That and the licensing was inevitably cheaper as well when Sony first came on the scene. Since the NGP is using "similar" type cards for games I can imagine that developers will have little issue developing for both. It's actually a really smart move on Sony's part. That and I forsee downloadable content making a huge leap in the near future. Say goodbye to the used game market

Syd Lexia wrote:

Sony has said their emphasis will be on downloadable games over physical games. It'll be interesting to see if that pays off for them. My guess is no. Gamers tend to still prefer physical games when given the option. The PS3 version of Record of Agarest War was a PSN title, the 360 version was a disk. And the 360 version outsold the PSN version by such a huge margin that Aksys decided to put the upcoming prequel on a disc for both consoles.

The idea of strictly downloadable games is still in its infancy. I personally prefer to have my physical copy, however when game companies start to see the increased revenue of people not being able to purchase these games second hand and the fact that no production is involved they will undoubtedly all move in this direction.

Personally I see the reduction in production costs being traded off into the marketing aspect. The main issue with strictly downloadable content is that it's marketed so poorly. If your Joe Blow your not going to be actively seeking out games you've never heard of to download, but then again most games allow free trials so that could further push the effort. To prove the point I have never heard of Agarest War, but I will most likely download a free trial to see what it is about.

tl;dr version: If they provide a better marketing effort downloadable games will become the new standard.

When you add it to millions of copies and over production that number can get very substantial. Lets say you create 1 million copies of "Poop is fun". You spend as a rough estimate, $.50 for a manual, $0.05 for cover art, $.25 for a case, $.50 for the disc. So that's $1.30 per unit in costs without including shipment, manufacturing of the discs in a production facility plus warehousing of the actual items. So $1,300,000 is spent just for the materials.

Typically when you get a game from a wholesaler you get the new game, from my experience, at a very similar price to what you are going to charge. A $50 game will typically cost $44. The wholesaler usually aquires the item from the developer at slightly lower price of about $39, so taking out the mark up and excluding all other costs the developer is saving/making around 3.33% more than they would. Add in those other costs and the % will increase. Not to mention the costs associated with over estimating production or the game just bombing and producing the physical product for multiple systems.

So basically several million dollars could be saved by the developer on a single title, so I very much see this as being a likely direction for companies.

That's just a rough estimate to manufacture a game which only includes materials. No labor or any additional variable costs included. The number 1.3 million is several million dollars under a realisitc number. So let's say best case scenario it's roughly 3 million for everything...that's 6% lost revenue.

Also if a game cost's $50 Million to develop and sells for $50 you need to sell a million copies to just break even. I think we can agree that the development costs are going to be a little lower and if the development costs are lower that means the lost revenue % goes up even more.

"On this generation of consoles, games commonly require budgets of US$15 million to $20 million. Activision's Spider-Man 3, for example, cost US$35 million to develop, not counting the cost of marketing and sales.[1] Every game financed is, then, a large gamble, and pressure to succeed is high."

So on average that 3 million is roughly 15%-20% of the development costs. That's a lot of money to not have to worry about recouping.

Why have the iPhone and the iPad and the iPod. Sony Ericson is clinging to hopes that this might revitalize their cellphone market share. I can't really remember the last time anyone exclaimed having a Sony Ericson cell phone. They are two different medias with similar interests, but quite different aspirations. The Xperia looks like it might try and take a stab at the nonexistent cellphone game market (no phone seems to have a good way to play games without some form of criticism), while the NGP will take on Nintendo.

Can't really blame them for doing it, but it's not like it's going to stop other companies from creating knock offs for far less.

I'll definitely pick up the wifi version. 3G does not appeal to me at all. Do Japanese systems include an option for the English Language. Trying to find it might be another game in and of itself.