Hello Games Shares The Asinine Reasons Publishers Pass On Great Games
If you've played Joe Danger on PS3 then you know it's one of the most polished, quirkiest, and just plain fun games to hit PSN since, well, ever. And yet, as Hello Games' Sean Murray revealed at the Develop 2010 conference, no publisher would have them. In fact, Joe Danger was originally coming to the Xbox 360 as well, a 360 build was even playable at PAX East, but without a big name publisher a 360 release just wasn't in the cards.
"XBLA is kind of a slaughterhouse for smaller developers," Murray said. "There are games that do amazingly well. But there's two titles released every week and a lot of those are falling in that 25,000 or less category."
On the other hand, Sony allowed Hello Games to self-publish their game, something that wasn't an option on the 360, thus PS3 exclusivity was born. So why would a publisher pass on a great game like Joe Danger in the first place? Murray has a list of excuses that publishers gave him.
- "Name me one popular game with motorbikes?"
- "Collecting giant coins feels unrealistic to me."
- "I can see this working as a Facebook app."
- "We want games that are less about fun right now."
- "We love the theme, but with a different game."
- "We believe the iPhone will be largely unsupported."
- "Can Joe be a monkey? We like Monkeys."
I especially love that fourth one, It explains so many bafflingly bad digital releases. It's actually frightening how out of touch some publishers are when it comes to digital releases. And, as the vicious cycle goes, bad games from out of touch publishers contribute to those sub-25,000 copy sales.
As if to prove just how wrong those publishers were, Joe Danger went on to sell 50,000 copies in its first week alone. Although, I bet it would have been 60,000 if Hello Games had used a monkey.
'No monkeys?!' Why publishers nixed Joe Danger [Develop Online]
NaviFairy
Posted to Video Games on 14 July 2010
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: develop conference 2010, hello games, joe danger, ps3, psn, publishers
Great article, I don't own this game (yet) but I do agree with the comments about XBLA. It does feel like if a game doesn't have a good sales on the first week on XBLA it's not going to have a good sales at all because it will be buried among mediocre games. I have a ps3, 360 and Wii but I have to admit that when I want to buy a direct download game, I'm feeling more comfortable with the PStore; it does lack of a trial/demo for every game on the Store (feature that XBLA has) but on the other side it does feel like less quantity and more quality. Games, like Flow, Fat princess, Joe Danger, Last Guy, Pixel Junk Eden, Monsters, Shooter, Ratchet&Clank Quest for Booty, Siren, echochrome, Super StarDust HD or Trash Panic are among the funniest direct download games I played. I will like to mention the price, most of the good games available on the PStore cost $9.99 not 15 bucks, which for me it is a difference because I expend 20 bucks and I get 2 games.
I want to know who that 4th quote is from, so I know who's games aren't worth my money.
Well, maybe publishers want their "fun" games to be the big-ticket items, and don't want "fun" games that are inexpensive and simple to compete with them. So, they want to publish games that are un-fun so their really fun ones stand out.
I know, I'm trying to rationalize something irrational, but I like a challenge.