3 ms·

Sold a million by end of the year. Look where they are now. You saw “too big and too expensive”. History sees five sequels and then Horizon Zero Dawn franchise.

pandaman 2y ago
"Sold a million" might be something cool in music, where you get a "platinum" for selling a million of CDs but a PS2 full price game was $50, of which ~$10 went to Sony for license and $10 went to various expenses from shipping to shelf space. So "sold a million" means, at the very best, $30M in the bank. When you spent $40M to get the game out it's not a very good number to have in the bank (it's a nice chunk of change if you spent $2-10M like other AAA devs at that time). And it's unlikely Killzone ever sold a million at full price to begin with. Sequels and Horizon or whatever else you like are irrelevant to the financials. Sony game business does not seem to be doing well now but how is it related to the financial performance of an European studio from 20 years ago? (Even though I can see how acquisition of Guerrilla eventually led to the current sad state of affairs, the Guerrilla's boss had been in charge of Sony's first party development during the period of Sony's decline).
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Yes, it's fortunate they got bought out by a very hungry Sony looking for anything to make their next COD competitor (even sending out Insomniac to try their hand with Resistance) instead of dropped and shuttered like oh too many other studios. I've see much lower budget games sell about that much and shut down the next year in those PS3 days. Funnily enough, they are doing this again, but with Fortnite, given buying Destiny and working on Concord and publishing Helldivers. Helldivers seems fine, but I'm not sure if Firewalk and Bungie will get the same graces Guerilla did back in the day. The game has definitely changed for the worse in that regard.

pandaman 2y ago

"Sold a million" might be something cool in music, where you get a "platinum" for selling a million of CDs but a PS2 full price game was $50, of which ~$10 went to Sony for license and $10 went to various expenses from shipping to shelf space. So "sold a million" means, at the very best, $30M in the bank. When you spent $40M to get the game out it's not a very good number to have in the bank (it's a nice chunk of change if you spent $2-10M like other AAA devs at that time). And it's unlikely Killzone ever sold a million at full price to begin with. Sequels and Horizon or whatever else you like are irrelevant to the financials. Sony game business does not seem to be doing well now but how is it related to the financial performance of an European studio from 20 years ago? (Even though I can see how acquisition of Guerrilla eventually led to the current sad state of affairs, the Guerrilla's boss had been in charge of Sony's first party development during the period of Sony's decline).

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Yes, it's fortunate they got bought out by a very hungry Sony looking for anything to make their next COD competitor (even sending out Insomniac to try their hand with Resistance) instead of dropped and shuttered like oh too many other studios. I've see much lower budget games sell about that much and shut down the next year in those PS3 days. Funnily enough, they are doing this again, but with Fortnite, given buying Destiny and working on Concord and publishing Helldivers. Helldivers seems fine, but I'm not sure if Firewalk and Bungie will get the same graces Guerilla did back in the day. The game has definitely changed for the worse in that regard.