Well, that explains the Game Boy market, doesn't it?

MobyGames just posted this from a Game Developer Conference talk by Trip Hawkins:

Trip also talked about the overcrowded license market and how more original titles will encourage the growth of the industry. Trip also talked about the royalty fees that a major licensor imposed awhile back. For GameBoy games it was 4%, for Playstation it was about 7%, online stuff it was about 11%, and for mobile games it was about 50%. This type of abuse causes the quality of games to be lower and as a result, the consumer, the publisher and the developer all end up getting burned.

Seeing that fee structure, is it any surprise that more than 50% of the GBA library was
licensed games when I crunched the numbers over 3.5 years ago? I'm betting it's far, far higher now. Of course the PlayStation was also a dumping ground for junk, as was its successor.

How depressing.

Update: Next-Gen.biz is also covering the Hawkins talk, and adds this bit:

He added that some larger publishers are too interested in playing safe, saving some direct criticism for the Electronic Arts, the company he originally founded. "They spent a lot of money tying up Tetris and gaining placement on the decks, but if that's the best we can think of [them?] then there is something very wrong." He said too many customers are simply being offered old games but in a second rate form.

I think Hawkins licensed this fiery old Costikyan rant regarding GDC 2003 changed a few words, and made it mobile-centric:

Year by year, budgets increase. Year by year, sales increase less. And year by year, the publishers become more conservative; at $3m a pop and a 3 year dev cycle, it's too risky to invest in any game that's--risky. Thus only sequels and licensed drivel get funded. -- Greg Costikyan, March 2003

Sequels, remakes, and licenses flood the game market. Now the same is happening game conference speeches. Where will the madness stop?

Labels: developers, gba, nextgen, psone

--jvm at 15:36

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