The Future of Blockbuster Games
Up until 2005, everyone in the states thought a blockbuster was either some national video rental chain for movies and new TV DVDs or thrilling movies released in the summer which are marketed towards the 20 year olds and teen generations. In the last 8 years since Halo 2 smashed those entertainment ambitions, video games have begun to take cultural precedence in a way that arcade developers of the 80's could only begin to dream.
It should be no shock to any gamer reading this headline that I'm going to talk about GTA V and it's impact on the western world. Domestically, Christopher Nolan's final entry into his Dark Knight trilogy pushed expectations to the limit grossing $450 million during it's theatrical run. Within two days of Rockstar's latest version of Grand Theft Auto, not only did GTA V make more money domestically than the Dark Knight Rises but it also beat it's combined international gross income, of $1.1 billion, becoming one of the few entertainment intellectual properties to exceed it's initial investment in just hours of the release.
So those competitors like Activision's Call of Duty and Microsoft's Halo franchises have big shoes to fill as they've been the industry's biggest titles of the last decade. What's in for the future of blockbuster games?
Since the economic crisis of 2009, we've seen many developers and publishers fall due to poor investment planning with consumer demand for these blockbuster games. Scores of small developers have closed including ones partnered with some of the industry's biggest publishers. Last year, publisher THQ was forced to step down from the industry dissolving in a public auction to sell all of it's IPs and studios to other publishers or developers interested in what they had to offer.
Many people like I speculate this was because greediness to capture the heart of big-name titles. Gamers have only so much money to spread around for $60 games. With the delay for the next console generation, gamers have been able to spend a little bit more as of late due to not having to invest in the latest console. Still with so many people being unemployed or having to take paycuts, unneeded entertainment budgets for international consumers have dwindled in the fear of a double dip in international stock markets.
The future for blockbuster games is bleak as we knew them during the first decade of the 21st century. No longer can companies afford to throw hundreds of millions of dollars into development as we've seen with EA and Visceral Games. Last September, CVG had an interview with Steve Papoutsis, executive producer on Dead Space 3. The popular space horror series had seen growth and the developer Visceral had already made plans for the continuation of the series half a year to the third title's release. Boasting plans for making the title a AAAA blockbuster, Dead Space 3 only sold about six hundred-thousand units within North America during the game's month of release. Obviously, February isn't the best month to release for such a title; but escaping a release window that was to compete with Modern Warfare 3 and Halo 4, EA saw it fit to release outside of the usual late holiday season.
Honestly, this was a smart business move though as if the title released during the holiday months, as I would predict the game would have seen a dip in sales of at least a fifth of what they actually received within it's debut month. There just isn't room for over a dozen major titles anymore.
Jade Raymond, the studio head of Ubisoft Toronto, believes there is still room for the big-budget AAA experience. Releasing the first Assassin's Creed title in mid-November of 2007, the series has exceedingly grew to be one of the biggest franchises in the industry. During an interview with the Guardian US in March, she exclaimed this saying that the space in the industry is only fit for less than a dozen titles each year. She points out how titles like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale weren't one of those titles that could meet expectations for such success.
With so many casual gamers playing cheaper and shorter experiences, we probably won't be seeing as much success with big-budget titles to come out annually as even Jade Raymond's Assassin's Creed has taken a bit of a dip in the last few years from Ubisoft's financial expectations. Games like Minecraft have seemingly re-crafted the term 'blockbuster' to not have to have a large original investment in order to see mass success. From a cheap indie game being developed in Stockholm, Sweden, a studio has created an empire within a corporate battlefield. To deny that fact is to be ignorant entirely for the landscape of video games.
Regardless of facts and industry champions' opinions, the future of blockbuster video games has been locked for a small amount of titles to dominate the market. Until unknown games like Minecraft change the way games are funded, we'll continue to see perpetual repetition for these large franchises. Where will the future of blockbuster games lead to within five years or two decades? With the current generation of traditional consoles reaching their twilight, a definite answer is unattainable by these fingertips but what do you think? Will the future of blockbuster games grow, linger on or disappear during this renaissance of video games?