THQ in Big Trouble

[Hero]

Then the solution is treat those niche games like the boutique items they are - sell them for $100-200 a pop to get the most out of initial sales. CoH will never sell like CoD does, so why sell it at the same price and on the same budget?

[Rumpy]

You want to narrow the audience even further for those "niche" games? GTFO with that $100-200 nonsense. That's ridiculous. It would be even harder for a game to make a community to support future games. CoH lives(ed) on its multiplayer base. It sure would be awesome to have all of 12 people to play with for 2 weeks!

[Xero_Kaiser]

Yeah, that sounds like a great way to kill off everything that isn't CoD.

[MechDeus]

Then we also discuss how Company of Heroes is one of THQ's games that sells really well. If they were going to scale back games prior to this huge financial dip I don't think the sequel to the popular second-highest rated RTS of all time on Metacritic game is going to be their main pick.

[Shin Johnpv]

You can't make a game like Company of Heroes 2 with a Hotline Miami budget. And I don't know about you, but I still want to play games like Company of Heroes 2.

I agree, though I wouldn't be surprised if a game like CoH2 could be made for a bit less than it is. Talking with friends who work in game studios it just sounds like there's major waste ever where. It does seem like its time that game devs/publishers started getting their spending under controlled, and started thinking of ways to spend their money more wisely. Maybe the solution for some of them is to have more staff and a slightly longer dev time, than to hire a bunch of freelancers in the last 3 months of crunch that you end up paying through the nose for. It does seem as though things like that could really be improved upon at some studios.

[Hero]

CoH will never sell like CoD does, so why sell it at the same price and on the same budget?

[kedawa]

Games like CoD would cost a fraction of what it does to produce if they just ditched the single-player campaign.

[MechDeus]

CoH will never sell like CoD does, so why sell it at the same price and on the same budget?

Because it sold enough anyway. Just because it didn't return as much money as one of the most profitable franchises in the industry doesn't mean it didn't turn a profit at all.

[Hero]

Because it sold enough anyway.

If the publisher is in dire straights, then it's not. Either it needs to sell better to shore up the other titles, the other titles need to be ditched, or production costs need to come down.

[FirstBlood]

LO-fucking-L at the idea of jacking up the price on CoH as a viable strategy for success.