Disney Shuts Down LucasArts
Here's how fucked the games business is: Tomb Raider sold 3.5 million units in 4 weeks, and yet failed to meet sales expectations. Hitman sold the same, and Sleeping Dogs sold 1.75 million and they both failed to meet expectations. Square Enix lost over $150m last year, despite those three critically and commercially (by any reasonable metric) games coming out. Despite selling millions of copies they aren't profitable because game budgets are too high.<p>EA thinks that next gen budgets will be "only"10% higher than this gen. That means that gmaes need to sell <i>at least</i> 10% more units than current games are doing, and eren that will only guarantee the losses of tens of millions we're seeing now. To be profitable they'll need to sell far far more. On consoles that, because they are new, will have a limited user base anyway. Either that or raise the price to make up the shortfall. In the middle of the longest recession in a century.<p>The industry is <i>fucked</i><p>The only way to make money from games is what Disney have done, license the IP to other companies and get them to pay for it.