159 réponses à ce sujet

[The Flying Grey Warden]

David7204 wrote...

Fast Jimmy. Who said the industry spends 'dollar for dollar' as much on advertisement as development.

Let's see. 200 million to make the old republic mmo, lets say a good 100 million to operate the servers for that fiscal year, just to be on the safe side. EA spent 700 million on their advertisement budget that fiscal year.

700 - 300 = 400.

Well what do you know, mathematics saves the day again. Not only could EA's advertising budget cover the production cost of the old republic, it could also still have a 400 million dollar advertisement budget left over.

So wheres the part in your logic that says EA doesn't spend dollar for dollar as much on advertisement as it does on game creating?

Modifié par The Flying Grey Warden, 18 décembre 2013 - 09:01 .

[David7204]

Are you somehow under the impression that EA is only funding the Old Republic, instead of many dozens or hundreds of games?

Where exactly do you think the rest of that money goes?

[wolfhowwl]

David7204 wrote...

Only a fraction of the sale price goes to BioWare.

Bioware and EA are one and the same.

[The Flying Grey Warden]

I've checked the 2011 games released list on wikipedia, they really didn't release a whole lot of games that year.

And of those games, SWTOR was the most expensive. In fact is used to be the most expensive game ever created until Grand Theft Auto V with its 265 million dollar budget was released this year.

So really, if SWTOR can't even top EA's marketing budget, then there is some serious distribution of wealth issues going on here. A marketing budget should never be in excess of 20% of gross revenue IMO.

[The Flying Grey Warden]

It just whenever they give bioware less development time and make the teams work more hours and cut out more content and that everything needs to be justified to have money spent on it and how there is even a word budget to ensure the team doesn't write too much dialogue, and then you see how much EA spends on their marketing without any real provable results outside of the initial high resolution cgi movie trailers, it just screams that EA has a different set of priorities then it should for developing this type of game.

Their largest cost is most likely salaries and maintaining studios, I am under no delusion that the majority of the gross income will come from that. But I still think that the games should be getting at least a 1/3 of the budget instead of seeming like it's the smallest part of the company budget.

[Skorm777]

Orian Tabris wrote...

Angrywolves wrote...

I googled and found this:

http://board.sonicst...ered-a-success/

In the article EA is alleged to have said 5 million copies for a franchise.

Interesting... So if Dragon Age: Inquisition doesn't sell 5 million+ copies, does that mean that there won't be a 4th DA game? Even if the game is well received by critics and fans/players? Does the same apply to other companies?

There is enough demand for quality games within the gaming community, that any game recieved well by critics and players will be a success. 
Why would you not purchase a game that everyone is raving about when the last major title rpg considered excellet was released years ago. 

[billy the squid]

David7204 wrote...

I'd be delighted to know what magical math you used to turn 29.1% into 50%. Does it involve listing off as many nonsensical terms as you can find off Wikipedia in a clumsy and transparent attempting to feign competency? Or perhaps squealing that any deduction is unfounded because principles only apply in textbooks and not in the real world?

I'm never disappointed when stupidity abounds in every answer you give. 

EA's gross income was $76 million last year, it's market opperating costs were 33.3% over $700 million. The servicing of geared banlance sheets anually, borrowing repayments, investor dividends, investment and acquisitions, R&D offsets for Origin's development, overhead running costs such as and legal, support staff salaries, payments for retainers, supply chain costs, property lease,  patent maintenence costs for IP's they hold ie: Sports. None of these are R&D... or do you thing lawyers are cheap? Or do you think a multination company operates on a few million a year?

R&D is seperate to that and not included in any ratio calculation when it comes to Market budget : R&D, Company general expenditure doesn't factor into that.

So try again please, you ignorant ****. I do enjoy it when you show how little you know.

Modifié par billy the squid, 18 décembre 2013 - 11:10 .

[David7204]

The first option, apparently. Very tedious.

Apparently this little magical math of yours also has the ability to make 33.3% of less than 2 billion more than 700 million. Since I'm fairly sure EA turned a profit last year and all.

[billy the squid]

EntropicAngel wrote...

The Flying Grey Warden wrote...

And a third of the budget being for nothing but advertisement, when even a 1/3 of that budget could have been divided up and used to give both the old republic and mass effect 3 a much more comfortable budget to work with, is pretty damn bad.

They didn't spend as much on their biggest game to date as they did on just advertising the game, that's just sad. And before you try to play cute and innocent and claim that "Oh so they shouldn't advertise at all huh?" No, that is not what I am saying and you damn well should know that. I am saying that i feel more then confident that EA could still advertise their games at top efficiency while only spending 500 million, and the rest could be used to give more games, such as dragon age inquisition, a bigger operating budget to work with that fiscal year.

I agree that marketing costs shouldn't be so high, but I'd like to point out that EA isn't really pinching pennies for the ME and DA teams just so they can market things more.

EA is spending as much as they feel comfortable financing those games, AND on top of it spending money on marketing. Not cutting development costs for the purpose of adding marketing.

Kind of like single-player and multi-player budgets, except they're actually segregated.

Which is generally the problem when it comes to pilling it's money into franchises, the requiremnt that it needs to sell a number beyond the user base's capability to consume the product to actually be a worth while investment. And it also goes hand in hand with the issue of homogenising games to the widest possible audience as so much is riding on it a company dare not take a chance. 

The expectation that pushing more money into Dead Space 3 development will generate a greater income yield is faulty at it's core when the market that will actually buy it isn't 5 million strong. There is no guarranteed 5 million sales there to justify the increasing cost in the first place. This is the same thing that happened with TOR, over $200 million, and 6 months later it's a free to play game because the subscription base couldn't support the running cost of the game, let alone justify the investment that was made. 

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Oh Davey you are just so utterly consistent, its beautiful like a painting or a particularly impressive explosion.

[billy the squid]

David7204 wrote...

The first option, apparently. Very tedious.

Apparently this little magical math of yours also has the ability to make 33.3% of less than 2 billion more than 700 million. Since I'm fairly sure EA turned a profit last year and all.

You do know the difference between revenue and income, yes?

Their revenue in 2011 was $3.8 billion, their operating costs were $2.1 billion. Now adjust, equity payments, defered corp loan repayments, corp bond repayments and there is the net income. Last fiscal year it was $76million. c. 

So the $700c. million in marketing is almost exactly 33% of the operating costs, which is, based on the average running costs of large multinationals is a rough 1:1 ratio. 

Hence the P:E ratio has currently been in the minus figures as of late due to decreased income from the trainwreck of BF4 and the securities fraud allegations regarding the returns, because that's what happens when heavy investment and marketing costs in a single game aren't supported by the underlying revenue from the franchise.

So, how about that math Davey, or are you still think I use magic math?

Modifié par billy the squid, 18 décembre 2013 - 11:09 .

[Fast Jimmy]

David7204 wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote... 

David7204 wrote...

I don't think examples are going to convince me.

Why did you ask for some then?

I didn't.

You asked for evidence. I don't know what kind of evidence I could provide outside of examples of games that have done this? Any article I could link from business journals talking about the trend in the industry you would likely say is "this is just some hack."

Do you want me to get a notarized statement from the Evil Video Game Publishers Cabal that explicitly states marketting costs vastly exceed the actual development costs in many games, causing the industry as a whole to have close to a 1:1 ratio of marketing budgets to video game development budgets? ...because that is goikg to be hard to get on a Tuesday nght.

In regards to the entire EA balance sheet discussion, taking $700 million as a straight 30% of $2.1 billion pure revenue is really wrong accounting. You are assuming every bit of revenue earned that is not spent on marketing is applied to game developmemt. It isn't.

For instance, there's this new fangled thing called TAXES. A multi-billion dollar corporation like EA has to pay them. Before you can spend even a dime on any of your expenses (let alone your profit), you have to pay them out.

In addition, there are activities and expeneses a company like EA would have that have absolutely ZERO to do with video game development. A very visible example is Origin, their digitial distribution service. The money spent on its servers, development, on-going maintenance costs, etc., are neither video game developmemt NOR marketing.

So when a company's balance sheet shows a third of their total EBIT revenue (earnings before interest and taxes) is spent on marketing and marketing alone, that's a pretty clear indicator that it is one of their largest expenses, on part or even exceeding that of video game development. 

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 18 décembre 2013 - 12:28 .

[Ziegrif]

Depends entirely on what the games budget is, including marketing and other costs such as actually moving said product.
This also assumes that EA has learned from their Dead Space 3 mistake of over budgeting a game.

Modifié par Ziegrif, 18 décembre 2013 - 12:37 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Ziegrif wrote...

Depends entirely on what the games budget is, including marketing and other costs such as actually moving said product.
This also assumes that EA has learned from their Dead Space 3 mistake of over budgeting a game.

Given that they gave a 3+ year development cycle to a game who's previous installment only sold 2 million copies, arguably they have not. 

[llandwynwyn]

They'd be fools if they expect the game to sell more than 3 millions.

[Ziegrif]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Ziegrif wrote...

Depends entirely on what the games budget is, including marketing and other costs such as actually moving said product.
This also assumes that EA has learned from their Dead Space 3 mistake of over budgeting a game.

Given that they gave a 3+ year development cycle to a game who's previous installment only sold 2 million copies, arguably they have not. 

I guess EA is thinking 5 million or more then.
Or they're trying to salvage some PR by publishing something pristine.
Or they're still out of their bloody minds.

Modifié par Ziegrif, 18 décembre 2013 - 01:17 .

[HiroVoid]

I wonder if they're possibly thinking the Mass Effect 3 audience will migrate to Dragon Age: Inquisition. That would be pretty bad since even the next Mass Effect almost certainly won't reach the same number of sales.

[fchopin]

If the game is as good as it looks and all the promises are delivered by Bioware there is no reason not to expect a 3 or 4 million sale and maybe even 5 million.

[Rusty Sandusky]

simfamSP wrote...

scyphozoa wrote...

Yeah, Bioware games are never the biggest sellers. I find it odd, because they get a ton of hype, but they still are never as popular as other RPGs like TES/Fallout. Still, Bioware does okay for itself in terms of sales. Frankly, I think Bioware needs DAI to be a 90+ on metacritic more than they need sales.

BioWare as a company is rather 'niche.' Even in their attempts to broaden their audience, they still fall under 'talky talky' games. There are rare exceptions when them talky talkies get the amount of love GTA or TES does, but overall, I think they'll never reach those sales unless they do something extraordinary.

>Implying GTA isn't talky talky
Have you played GTA IV?