Re:Layoffs at EA Today
by arrrg on Thursday April 25, 2013 @05:26PM
(#5609989)
You can't make AAA games with the money those games are making.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Really? How many people have bought Minecraft? More than 10 million (on PC alone) [1]. Assume everyone paid the beta price of €14.95 [2] and we get €150 million! That sounds like triple-A money to me.
Okay, that could be wildly inaccurate if everyone buys it cheap through deals like Steam. 75% off and similar.
Wikipedia says the Notch estimated €25M in purchases a few months after the beta [3]. By the end of the beta that was 4 million purchases which has now risen to 10 million. As far as I can tell, that doesn't include any figures from Apple, Google, or Microsoft.
[1] https://minecraft.net/ [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20110114022633/http://www.minecra... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#Commercial
Minecraft is a fluke. It cannot be imitated.
I'd rather play a fun non-"AAA" game than a boring "AAA" game.
Obviously. Everyone would.
But I do not want AAA games to not exist. They can do things that indie games cannot. It’s as simple as that.