This Week In Sales: Suikoden Returns, Gravity Rush Speeds To Vita

I’ve already stated that if you still didn’t get it, you would never get it.

I agreed with James on the fact that that was just the cost of the dev kits, and in comparison to the costs of DEVELOPING A GAME, it is NOTHING.  

Your spiel on dev teams is completely irrelevant because dev team sizes can vary within studios, let alone companies.  However, THE COST OF LABOR (i.e. Dev teams) MAKES THE COST OF DEV KITS LOOK NEGLIGIBLE IN COMPARISON.  

Being “easy” to develop for IS NOT THE SOLE FACTOR IN DETERMINING DEVELOPMENT COSTS.  Aside from that, your overly simplistic analyzation of HR practices forgets that you also hire more people in order to GET A PROJECT DONE FASTER, since you know, development time is important because THAT IS MORE SIGNIFICANT TO DEVELOPMENT COSTS THAN JUST THE COST OF LABOR.  SIMPLY HIRING A DEVELOPER DOES NOT END THE FINANCIAL COST OF THAT EMPLOYEE, THEY NEED TO MAINTAIN HIS/HER SALARY, PAY FOR OVERTIME, PAY INTO BENEFITS, AND TRAIN AND DEVELOP THE EMPLOYEE (unless they are already experienced journeymen).

READ MY POST AGAIN, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, READ IT SLOWLY AND THINK BEFORE YOU ACT.  WHAT PLATFORM DID I SPECIFICALLY MENTION IN MY POST?  WHERE DID I MENTION THE VITA?  WHAT HAS EVERY DEVELOPER BEMOANED ABOUT DEVELOPING FOR CURRENT-GEN SYSTEMS THIS GENERATION?  OUTRAGEOUS DEVELOPMENT COSTS, AND I GUARANTEE YOU THEY WEREN’T CRYING OVER THE PRICE OF DEV KITS.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER.  THIS IS AN ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL PROBLEM, AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS WOULDN’T BE EXPERTS IN THIS AREA ANYWAY.  

Unlike you, I do read and half of your argument is centered on dev team sizes.  If you don’t see that, nothing more needs to be said.

READ WHAT I AM SAYING.  I NEVER SAID THAT EASE OF DEVELOPMENT DID NOT FACTOR INTO THESE THINGS, I SAID IT WAS NOT THE SOLE FACTOR IN DETERMINING DEVELOPMENT COSTS.  DEVELOPMENT TIME IS FAR MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN EASE OF DEVELOPMENT IN TERMS OF BUDGETING AND CALCULATING COSTS.  AGAIN, READ WHAT I AM SAYING.  I WILL STATE IT A THIRD TIME SINCE YOU ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY COMPREHENDING, READ WHAT I AM SAYING.

Are you a CPA?  Actually, I don’t even see how that’s possible considering you would not be able to get the professional time as an accountant in WHILE YOU ARE ALSO WORKING AS A SOFTWARE ENGINEER.  You DO KNOW what is required to maintain and achieve the CPA license right?  It’s NOT JUST AN EXAM.  AND IT’S NOT JUST A FEW “UNIVERSITY COURSES”.  The typical career path for a software engineer into accountant (why anyone would do this is beyond my comprehension, but I’ll go along with this ridiculous scenario) would be to get your Macc in accounting (or MBA with concentration in accounting) since your bachelor’s was more than likely in a different field (and no, you wouldn’t have the accounting credits to sit for the exam) while you work as a software engineer.  After you have the Macc, you are now eligible to sit for the exam because you’ve met the credit requirements (or degree requirements, depends on state), but passing the exam DOES NOTHING FOR YOU AT THIS POINT.  You will then have to QUIT YOUR JOB as a software engineer in order to satisfy the work experience necessary to actually obtain the CPA license, which can be done in government, a public accounting firm, or in some cases, in industry (depends heavily on who your boss is).  After you’ve done this, you can finally claim the CPA title, but then what, you go back to software engineering?  LOL NO.  You need to maintain your CPA title on a yearly basis with work credits that you can only get doing accounting work, and more then likely, you’ll shift into a controllership position, finance, consultation, or if you actually WANT TO MAKE THAT PRIOR ENGINEERING DEGREE RELEVANT, a financial management position in a software development firm.  But you know what?  IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE YOU CAN OBTAIN A BETTER UNDERSTANDING ON HOW A COMPANY WORKS THROUGH AUDIT THEN YOU CAN BY BEING A SOFTWARE ENGINEER.  So WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS?  ACTUALLY, WHY EVEN BOTHER WITH THE SOFTWARE ENGINEER DEGREE ALTOGETHER IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE A CPA?!

Oh, and Economics has nothing to do with Accounting or the CPA exam…but since you’re an expert on this I’m sure you already knew that.

You know what, I give you, you’re not seeing this on a fundamental level and my original prediction was right on the money:  you’re never going to get it.  

Economics has NOTHING TO DO WITH ACCOUNTING OR THE CPA EXAM.  What you mean by “logistics” is SUPPLY-CHAIN MANAGEMENT, which also has NOTHING TO DO WITH ACCOUNTING, but I digress.  SOMEONE WHO SPECIALIZES IN SUPPLY-CHAIN MANAGEMENT WOULD DEAL WITH SUPPLY-CHAIN ISSUES, but again, this just seems to go over your head.  ECONOMICS IS NOT NECESSARY OR HELPFUL IN MANAGEMENT OR ACCOUNTING POSITIONS, BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION IS MORE IMPORTANT.  Hence…MBA WITH ACCOUNTING CONCENTRATION?!

Why would you want to be a project manager with a CPA?  WHAT WAS THE POINT OF GETTING THE CPA?  THAT’S SOMETHING YOU GET WITH A MBA (or MPA in government).  WHY DID YOU WASTE ALL OF THAT MONEY AND EDUCATION FOR SOMETHING THAT ISN’T RELEVANT TO PROJECT MANAGEMENT?!  WHY ARE YOU MAINTAINING YOUR CPA LICENSE AS A PROJECT MANAGER?!  What kind of crazy world do you live in?  WHY A CPA?  A CMA IS MORE RELEVANT TO THAT POSITION.  DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA ON WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT?  IF YOU WERE SMART, YOU WOULD GO INTO A CONTROLLER POSITION, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, or EVEN CONSULTING.  *(You may be able to go into IT Audit, but I’m not entirely familiar with this area so I will refrain from this, still has nothing to do with project management though).

If maintaining and achieving a cpa license is so easy, WHY NOT GET IT YOURSELF?  IS IT BECAUSE IT WOULD BE COMPLETELY POINTLESS TO WHAT YOU DO?  BECAUSE THAT’S THE CASE.  

DO YOU NOT COMPREHEND WHAT I AM SAYING?  I AM SAYING THAT EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING DOES NOT CONSTITUTE TOTAL COST.  THERE ARE OTHER FACTORS AT PLAY HERE.  READ WHAT YOUR ORIGINAL POST STATES, YOU HAVE THA AUDACITY TO BRING UP DEVELOPMENT KIT COSTS AS A REASON FOR WHY DEVELOPING FOR A PLATFORM IS MORE OR LESS EXPENSIVE THAN OTHERS?  HAHAHAHAHAHA  YOU ARE GRASPING AT STRAWS.  YOU DON’T EVEN GET THAT BY YOUR ORIGINAL ARGUMENT, YOU WOULD STILL BE WRONG BECAUSE I ONLY TALKED ABOUT THE PS3, which…dun dun, HAS A HIGHER DEVELOPMENT KIT COST THAN THE PSP?!  

DOES PROJECT COMPLEXITY HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH MARKETING COSTS?  NO.  ARE MARKETING COSTS RELEVANT WHEN COMPUTING TOTAL COST OF A PROJECT?  Well, yes and no, this depends, but in MOST CASES YES.  WHAT ABOUT OVERHEAD?  WHAT DOES OVERHEAD HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PROJECT COMPLEXITY?  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  ZILCH.  NADA.  LICENSING FEES?  LEGAL FEES?  CONTRACTS?  NOPE, NOTHING HERE.  DOES PROJECT COMPLEXITY DEAL WITH HOW THEY ARE GOING TO HANDLE THEIR TAXES AT YEAR’S END? HAHAHAHAHAHA, YEA, YOU KEEP THINKING THAT.  

I am done, you are no longer worth my time.  Continue as you please Mr. CPA/Project Manager/Software Engineer.  All future replies by you will be ignored.

No, I am seeing this perfectly clearly on a fundamental level.

An MBA is fine when you need to keep track of multiple projects and make budget estimates.  An MBA is not fine when you need to make an estimate on project complexity and the amount of time and resources needed to complete said project.

If you are a mid-level manager at GameStop or something, an MBA would be good enough because you are crunching numbers that have nothing to do with development work.

However, if you are a manager at a software/engineering firm, that MBA is USELESS because you wouldn’t know how to properly judge a project’s complexity nor would you know how to budget for the project.

What is an MBA good for?  It is good for those who want to open their own business someday or how to sell stuff more effectively.  That’s really it.  Most MBA programs train people on the business side of things which includes finance, marketing, strategy, human resource management and general management.  I would say that MBA programs overemphasize the analyzing and solving of problems but not the preventative side of dealing with things.

Put it this way, which makes more sense in a software company?  A Project Manager with a heavy Computer Science background who happened to also have a CPA license or a Business major with an MBA degree?

I would personally go with the guy who has a Comp Sci background largely because he’ll still be productive in terms of code review, filing DCFs, and general coding.  On the bonus side, he can properly estimate a project’s complexity and can buffer the budget and schedule in case of any unforeseen snags.

What would a guy with an MBA degree be able to do?  Nothing.  What the hell is the MBA guy supposed to sell as a Project Manager at a software firm?  Hell, selling stuff isn’t the purpose of his job as Project Manager.  Managing people? Sure, but he’d be better off in the Human Resources section or the Marketing and Sales section of the software firm for his MBA to even matter.

Finally, I’m not the one with the CPA license, my boss does and he is also the one who is my team’s project manager.

Thanks for being an outrageous idiot.

@SalomeHarras:disqus :

Alright, your basic premise of how a project starts up is generally correct.  The thing is that mid-level managers (at software firms at least) cover the range of tech leads to functional managers to project managers.  In many cases, the project managers are still involved with development but depending on the industry and the company, they could spend less time on development because they have to go deal with the customer’s questions and concerns.
Where the accountant/comptroller fits into the team is by querying the finalized schedule/plans that the functional and project managers put together.  The forecast/schedule is then used as a means to budget the project.  I don’t think that there exists data on the video game industry’s budgeting history, since those are generally kept confidential, especially not specific distributions of the budget.  The most you can obtain is through their fiscal reports and even then it is questionable what you can obtain.

The directors and up are the corporate execs and those people are usually detached from the development process since their job is to actually run the company.  Of course, this varies from company to company and is entirely dependent on the size of each company.

For video game companies, making a new IP includes trademark costs and potentially licensing costs.  For most other software firms, trademark and licensing costs are usually not a factor.

Regarding ease of development, yes, ease of development does simplify the human resource aspect of it a great deal.  The problem then comes down to how complex is the project.  For video game companies, prototyping a project over and over again does factor into development costs.  

If a project is building a game engine from scratch, then yes, development costs would skyrocket.  If a project is reusing an existing engine but customizing it for a new IP or project, then you can generally expect to see roughly a year’s worth of development just customizing the engine according to the new project’s specifications.  If the engine in question is a 3rd party engine, then there is the cost associated with licensing that engine as well as the total cost of developing a game around said engine.  Of course, there’s no guarantee that the engine in question would work on all platforms.

Regarding the costs of development being dependent on the actual team, that is not necessarily true.  In many cases, developers from other teams are pulled into the project on a “loan” basis and after they are done, they go back to their original teams/projects.  As such, when these loaned developers come onboard a project, they charge to that project’s charge code because they are doing work specific to that project.  The whole thing about budgets and whatnot isn’t so much about overdrawing a particular project’s account and more of just trying to get things done.  For studios that have a publisher as a sponsor, the hours billed are what gets charged to the publisher or parent company.  The object of the whole budget exercise is really to provide a metric (and a lesson) on project risk management and mitigation.  Most Japanese companies tend to go with conservative estimates and basically do “the Atlus” thing.  The ones that aim bigger are usually the large studios and publishers where they can bet the farm and not die instantly.  Again, this is where a large studio has an overwhelming manpower advantage over the smaller studios.

One thing that gets overlooked fairly often in retail sales is the use of “Limited Edition” packaging.  Often times, the pack-in item provides a substantially higher margin which sort of subsidizes the regular packaging.

Regarding development life cycles, yeah, that’s about right.  I would personally lean more towards 2 years for a game that reused existing assets and 3-4 years for game that uses a completely new/different engine.  As it is, just because a software already exists doesn’t mean that it will automatically fit into a new game’s requirements.  There is usually a year spent just customizing the engine and assets to the specifications.  Though with the PS Vita, existing PS3 assets can be quickly converted into PS Vita assets.

The guys who made the new Ridge Racer on the Vita had what?  6 months to actually build the game?  And then there’s Capcom and Arc System Works with their fighting games on the Vita.

That wouldn’t surprise me in the least, and it’s what a lot of the smaller and even middle sized developers have done with the PS3 and even the PSP for a long time.

I agree with your 2nd point as well, however, even a “tried and true” classic can fail to meet break-even depending on the costs.  For the sake of a simplistic example, let’s say Monster Hunter Super Supreme comes out for the Vita, and will only be on the Vita, but has a total forecasted budget of $50,000,000 to develop, and we haven’t even hit marketing costs yet either.  Unless the game single-handedly moves systems by itself (which is possible), it can still go in the red.  What Capcom would probably do instead is to reduce development costs on Super Supreme and focus instead on low cost elements that differentiate it from its predecessors enough to justify the purchase, compared to making more drastic investments.  

There just aren’t enough systems out there right now to develop a “AAA-esqe” game and expect a solid return on investment.

@SalomeHarras:disqus :
Well, that’s easy.
PHOTO KANO says hi. Also, Ragnarok Odyssey also says hi.

You did ask for examples of brand new IPs that have bucked the trend. Ragnarok Odyssey had an 83% sell-through rate last week, that qualifies them as being fairly successful.

Their profit margins are obviously going to be much better on digital than retail. The metric that we really don’t know of is digital sales because that would make things much easier to figure out.

Considering that the 32 GB memory cards are constantly sold out, I really wouldn’t be surprised if people have been going digital with Ragnarok Odyssey.

I expect development costs for PS Vita titles to be at parity or lower than PSP development costs.  The dev kits being much cheaper than the PSP is one thing, the ease of development on the PS Vita is really the most important aspect of it.

To be honest, when comparing new Vita titles against new PSP titles, it is the PSP titles that ended up being more expensive at retail.  Take for example, Tales of the Heroes, which is going to retail for 6200 JPY.  And then you compare that with Tales of Innocence R, which retailed for about 4950 JPY.  

And then you have Little Busters (Vita) retailing for 5040 Yen, compared with Tsuyokiss (PSP) retailing for 6400 Yen.  Oddly enough, the PSP Steins;Gate side story is retailing for 5040 Yen.

And then there is Samurai Warriors 3 Z (PSP) retailing for 5040 Yen compared to Dynasty Warriors Next (Vita) for 3480 Yen.

These are based on prices at AmiAmi and CDJapan for regular editions.

Regarding Game Arts, my guess is that they are breaking even with sales of Ragnarok Odyssey.  After all, they have a total of 43 employees according to their company profile.  And that’s just based on retail sales numbers since we don’t have any metric on digital sales.

Photo Kano is exactly the type of game I mentioned in a different post that would be released at the beginning of a console’s life.  

Ragnarok Odyssey is definitely peculiar however.  It’s possible that they could be taking a loss per unit and hoping to recover the costs in the long-run through future projects after establishing a strong market base.  They could also be looking to supplement their revenue through other means (DLC, if it has DLC for example).  Either way, it would be impossible to determine unless they publicly released that information.  I stress that again, it would be impossible to determine unless they publicly revealed that information.

My point is that you can’t determine a project’s profitability just by the size of their development team.  If you’re too bullheaded to see and realize that, then I have nothing more to say to you.

@Ishaan:disqus :
For one thing, the Vita uses an ARM CPU.

For another thing, reusing PS3 assets and converting them into Vita assets is apparently really easy.  When the Vita was first announced as the NGP, you had a parade of developers coming up on stage and showing off their demo ports on the Vita.  Most of the developers were 

For yet another thing, the Vita is now compatible with third part development tools.  Most likely support for Visual Studios in some capacity was finally added considering that PS Suite uses C# in its entirety, and C# only exists on MS Visual Studios.

And then you have statements like these:
http://www.develop-online.net/news/38183/Sony-PS-Vita-our-most-dev-friendly-platform-yet 

And interviews like these:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/39842/PSN_dev_Drinkbox_Studios_on_porting_code_to_miniPS3_quality_Vita_hardware.php 

http://andriasang.com/comzh0/ridge_racer_spring/ 
The Ridge Racer guys took 8 months to develop the game, which kind of shows.

I guess I would say that “ease of development” consists of the ability to use existing standard libraries from a development environment like Visual Studios and simply be able to call on functions instead of having to program the same functions yourself.  For example, at my workplace, we have a system that was developed back in the 1980s, before the whole TCP/IP protocol was popularized.  Nowadays, the same functions on that system could be done with a simple call to a Java EE library.

Regarding the Wii example that you mentioned:
Third party support basically died on the Wii.  Sure, the Wii was easy to develop for being based on the GameCube architecture, but at the same time, developers were simply not seeing the sort of return on investment that they were putting into it.  This is partly because the Wii had alienated the demographic that repeatedly spends money on video games and partly because Nintendo didn’t bother to help market those games.

As for sales and whatnot, yes, you generally want to sell as many units as you can.  Thing is, we don’t know what the sales are like on the digital side of things.  If you are referring to the Vita hardware sales, then yes, those numbers could be better.  Then again, does Media Create and whatnot track sales from online retailers like Amazon.jp, CDJapan and AmiAmi?

@Ishaan:disqus :
No, my argument wasn’t just about reusing existing assets.  My argument is about making use of a set of tools that are industry standard and using that to make new games; that process being much easier than before.  I brought up Microsoft Visual Studios exactly for this reason because it is one of the best development tools in the industry, especially if your workstation runs Windows.  If you have existing game code and assets, hey, more power to you.  If you are starting from scratch, the tools are now much easier to use especially considering that PS Suite uses C#, which is a proprietary language that only exists on Microsoft Visual Studios environment.

This isn’t just about how easy it is to port existing game code.  This is about a development environment that is now more in line with what the rest of the software industry uses.

As for the Ridge Racer example, of course Ridge Racer is a bad game.  I brought it up exactly because the turnaround time on that stupid project was ridiculous fast for something that was cooked up at the last minute.  That said, the Ridge Racer example does not change my argument at all.

What I am more curious about is how long Gust has been working on Ciel no Surge, especially for the Vita.  That and how long Gravity Daze has been in development.  I know that Toyama mentioned that he had been thinking about Gravity Daze’s concept for roughly 10 years, but it would be nice to know when exactly the project entered formal development.

@Ishaan:disqus :
Ah, 4 years for Gravity Daze?  When did they decide to move the game to PS Vita?

@Ishaan:disqus :
Thanks!  That helps a lot!

I just got my Japanese copy of Gravity Daze in the afternoon and am loving it thus far.  :D

http://i39.tinypic.com/243oifc.jpg

*read your last paragraph*

Wow, are you me? oO

Thanks for the PSN, I’m certain you’ll know my PSN-nick immediately once I try to add you. Hint: it might be the same as my Disqus nick in roumaji ^^.

Good luck with the crunch time mate, I hate my “crunch times” at university. Gosh, I wanna work already -_-.

edit:// Besides having a lovely nick you also chose the best PSN-panel ;). The only other one appealing to me is the second GD one.