alanschu

I don't know if it's necessarily a "new IP" thing or not. Maybe it should have the "RPG" qualifier attached to it, if anything. A "new IP RPG" so to speak. As there's plenty of new IP games that are huge sellers.

No, in other words, it's almost 7 million based on two years of salary alone. It's definitely up there in costs with the rest of the Triple-AAA titles that have gone on to sell multiple millions of copies. This ignores the rest of the additional costs that I presented. I never said I directly knew the costs. I mentioned it was in the same league as the rest of the high budget games out there. It's common knowledge that the AAA titles are between $5 and $10 million in development costs. You can ignore "sandwiches and building space" if you want, but unfortunately realy businesses don't have to. Since you were making implications that Bioware's future was directly dependent on the success of Jade Empire, it'd be foolish to ignore it. I am able to make educated guesses on it from that alone. The fact that you ignore them is typical however. I don't care if you do or do not care whether or not I have a friend working at Bioware now. But that's the facts. And his entry level salary was $45k. Unless the rest of the employees all make that exact same amount of money as him, the 3.15 million in one year of wages is a gross underestimate of wages. It also ignores the development cost of an engine. There's a reason why companies like Epic games are able to license their engines for close to $1 million dollars, and it's considered a deal by the licensee.

But there's no guarantee that they would have kept playing hockey this year either.

Police are not trained to handle emergencies in any sort of measure that the military is. That's why the National Guard exists. To suggest that Police are trained in dealing with emergencies of all kinds is, well, asinine. I suggest you research a bit more on the two prior to making such statements in the future. I suppose scale and duration would have nothing to do with it. You're comparing apples to oranges. The situations are very different. That's why they created the National Guard. What's the population difference between New York City and New Orleans?

When you state that his retirement is a reason to hate the new NHL, it gives implication that the new NHL is cause for his departure. If you didn't intend that, then I suggest you practice up making your points a little clearer.

I would think that the genre has evolved though. I don't see why it can't.

Jade Empire had over 70 employees working on the game. Considering my friend just recently got hired there pretty much right out of University (i.e. he's not some bigshot coming in) and is making a $45k per year salary, lets just assume that the asymptotic lower bound of the cost for one person is 45k per year. That means that in one year of working on the game, the cost of development is minimum $3.15 million dollars, and that's just salaries, and that's just for one year. The game was "officially" announced in September 2003. However, development HAD to go on quite a bit before this, and not just because of preproduction. Building a quality engine takes years, and Jade Empire uses an in house developed graphics engine. Now, game ENGINE programmers make substantially more than my friend does (according to Gamasutra), working away on the engine alone before the announcement can even be considered. It ignores the allowances given to employees for books and research, and other benefits. Given the rather generous benefits Bioware seems to have for it's employees (coupled with it's remarkably low turnover rate), I'd suspect they probably got Christmas bonuses as well! Not to mentioned the catered breakfasts and catered suppers (and I'm not talking sandwiches, but roast ham and stuff) given to the staff during crunch time (and only the suppers, breakfast is all the time!) for the staff. This also ignores fixed costs such as those annoying utilities and renting out virtually an entire office building, keeping the workstations up to date with the latest hardwire, maintaining their servers and a host of other fixed costs. But I'll be nice and only assume responsibility of 1/4 of that, given that they have 4 games in development right now (although I don't know if they did when Jade Empire was in development, so it's even generous for that). Not to mention the frequent trips to China for research, and lord knows what else.

I can download roster updates for NHL 2006 as well. But there isn't one at the moment, which means that many moves haven't happened yet. Likewise, the retirements of Messier, Damphousse, Stevens, and MacInnis are not represented either. It's too bad that a player is only part of the NHLPA once they've played in an NHL game, because that means none of the high profile rookies that have never played an NHL game (i.e. Crosby, Ovechkin) are not in the game.

He's already admitted he can't be bothered to show proof in a different thread. Something about "because other people never show him proof" or something along those lines. You'd think he'd quit asking. But proof is all in the eye of the beholder for him, and he beholds his opinion over the statements of Bioware employees and marketters, as well as over trends in business marketting.

Wrong. But a nice try nonetheless (well, maybe not). Stating that Messier's departure is a reason to hate the "new" NHL indicates that the new NHL is to blame for his departure. Tsk tsk Volourn, you've fallen from grace it seems.

Police Officers aren't trained to deal with hurricanes. Even though you grossly compare them to 911, which is a situation that would not result in rampant looting, and for the most part was overwith relatively quickly compared to New Orleans, you wouldn't make such silly allegations. What's more pathetic? Someone that shows fear in a horrible situation that they have not been physically or emotionally prepared for, or someone sitting in his cozy chair passing judgement on those whom he cannot relate to?

I don't consider Dave Gaider a God either. But I do consider him a bit more knowledgeable about the games industry than you. His word certainly carries a lot more weight. You just choose to descredit it, as it goes against what you would like to think. Give me a list of games that have sold 500,000 units (but not more than 600,000), and you'll see how unreasonable your request actually is. However, the other games of Jade Empire's exposure and budget tend to make 500k sales in their first few days. Yeah, the 74k units sold by February had nothing to do with it. r00fles!

Proof please. Of course the fact that Bioware is still in business has absolutely nothing to do with the huge sellers they've had previously. I mean, the entire success of Bioware rested solely on the shoulders of Jade Empire. If the game didn't sell at all, then Bioware would have crumbled. R00fles! Most people at one point thought the world was flat too. Didn't make them right. Just because YOU don't know of one, doesn't mean that it's not possible. When a lead designer for the same developer says that sales pretty much need to exceed a million for the high quality games, it's funny that you just toss it aside. I'm pretty sure Jade Empire is not an exception to that rule, but nice try. You certainly don't have "hardcore proof" though. You yourself have admitted that it's not possible to get hardcore proof. Mind you, this is all coming from the guy that makes claims that JE exceeded expectations too, so we all have pretty much hardcore proof that you'll say anything to make Jade Empire seem more successful, even if it's flatout lying.

You don't know that. Please list to me all of the games that have sold 500k copies so I can verify your information. Perhaps it was somewhere in the article where you state that Jade Empire's sales have exceeded expectations.

That has nothing to do with the "new" NHL though. Even if it was still the "old" NHL he'd stand a good chance of retiring.

Steve Guttenberg would probably accept the offer too. Haven't seen him tearing it up on the big screen in quite a while.

That's not proof. It's still guessing. At the same time, our proof is that throughout the history os business, companies have still given out positive assessments to failing products in order to try to maximize the sales out of the product. Companies still like to maximize their return on investment, and stating that a product is a failure financially doesn't do much to help make up the return on investment either. Typical that you expect me to give hard evidence, yet speculation is all you need. Tsk tsk.

I'm still waiting for the proof that it's more than just marketting

So what you're saying, is that just because someone says something, doesn't necessarily make it true?

The "new" NHL has little to do with Messier's retirement.

Which is why people call you a Bioware fanboy.

It was the fact that he flashed right before punching you. And one uppercut is all it took!

Oh, I think it could. That Fallout 1/2 Dual Jewel and the PS:T and... something one sold at Walmarts for years with a prominent place on small metal racks - I saw the same layout in multiple states. I assume other similar retailers sold it the same way. At $10 for well-known and attractively packaged games I could see them selling an awful lot of copies. Not three million, though, and I don't have any particular numbers to back my presumptions. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I suppose. I would still assume that, like most games, the majority of the sales still occurred when the price was greater than $10.

For a second there I thought you were talking about me ^_^

The rosters are still pretty outdated unfortunately. Had to make some moves to put Palffy/Leclair on Pittsburgh, and Hamrlik onto Calgary, as well as Lindros onto Toronto. Too much movement this summer for poor sports game developers to have accurate rosters.