That seems like such a sure bet
We don’t know the budget of the game - might be bigger than your average shooter due to the original cast involved in the projet - nor do we know if Sony (Sony Pictures) is getting a share of the earnings as part of the deal since they own the brand. Also, Ghostbusters isn’t the brand it used to be in the 80s. Activision - who published the original Ghostbusters game - might not want to rely on the nostalgia factor.
-Julian
No its not!
I’m not gonna go back and quote myself, but in a recent thread I speculated that Sony’s licensing cut plus the cost of talent might have made profit margins smaller than usual on the Ghostbusters game. I still contend that it’s a sure bet. Even if it is banking solely on nostalgia, that nostalgia is firmly rooted in gaming’s target demographic, that is males in their mid 20’s to early 30’s with a lot of disposable income. I think Ghostbusters will sell like gangbusters (heh) when it eventually comes out. If it doesn’t, I’ll fully admit I’m wrong, but I really do believe that Ghostbusters can’t miss.
I’ll add I think that the franchise and nostalgia factor has the potential to attract oodles of non-gaming press coverage in a positive way that we are only seeing Rock Band or Wii Fit. The game will definitely come out, far too much has been invested to go back.
Hellgate London never sold very well. It had a lot of preorders and day-1 sales, yes, but the sales went down the drain post-release.
Count on the hype and lies to give people a different impression, though. 1 million players in Korea? Haha, right. Try open beta registrations.
Your comparisons confuse me.
I dunno… now I don’t have access to american sales statistics, but both Hellgate and World In Conflict have sold about the same amount of numbers (differs at <5%) in Sweden since release and both were top 10 PC titles that year.
Here are some short news from Massive regarding this.
You just linked an article that refers to the very same piece as the news the OP mentioned.
-Julian
Oh, sorry. I just didn’t make the connection for some reason when they didn’t mention the Develop conference (except in the referred article) in the first piece.
FIGHT! FIGHT!
Ubi bought Massive and World in Conflict IP
http://www.actiontrip.com/rei/comments_news.phtml?id=111008_7
Awesome, I really hope the WIC brand stays alive.
omg if only they had done that before the assets of end war got feature frozen
Tom Clancy’s World in Conflict anyone?
Heh seeing as the plot to WiC’s single player was written by larry bond, Tom Clancy’s World in Conflict would be Red Storm Rising ;-) (and that would be a very VERY good idea!)
Awesome, I was really hoping the expansion would somehow get picked up by a publisher. It’s a shame that Massive, who created a really innovative and excellent RTS last year ended up getting axed in the first place, but hey, if it can happen to Ensemble it can happen to anyone.