As if we Need Proof – Original IP Doesn’t Sell

Some of you who read the site regularly may have picked up on the vibe that as much as I enjoy earning royalties on licensed product that sells through, I really long to do an original IP game again.  In today’s market where licensed property is king, I just think it would be great fun and a nice change of pace to do a low-budget genre bending title or even a platformer.

Problem is, original IP simply doesn’t sell, and as such, publishers won’t get behind many new titles.  Platform games for example are one of my all-time favorite genres but these sell particularly poorly.  I’ve found it really disheartening that Jak and Daxter titles or even the superbly produced Ratchet and Clank games don’t sell millions of units like licensed games they’re up against which recieve marginal review scores.  I’ve heard that titles like the recent Prince of Persia games haven’t sold well and of course there are the cases of studios like Oddworld Inhabitants that have closed their doors rather than becoming licensed product factories.  Oddworld Stranger's Wrath in particular was a favorite of many of my friends but didn’t sell well due to the shortage of EA marketing.  The year before it was Beyond Good and Evil which everyone loved but apparently no one purchased.

I was flipping though my BlogLines subscriptions yesterday and came across the latest entry from David Jaffe’s site.  I don’t remember if David is the design director or creative director on God of War, but suffice to say, he is widely credited with the success of the title along with the talented Sony team.

David reports that God of War has sold through about 500,000 units so far…

GOD OF WAR SALES: Can't give out official numbers but the NPD (which gets posted on the net so it's not official Sony numbers) is putting us close to half a million sold at full price. We'll do better than that before we go to Greatest Hits. Not the amazing powerhouse I wanted it to be (I was hoping for a million before a price drop) BUT still really damn good. 500,000+ people playing a game I worked on...Man, that's a good, good feeling....especially given how most games struggle to sell 200k these days.

Maybe it’s just me, and I hate to rain of David’s parade, but I’m really bummed for him.  I just can’t get on board with the excitement over sell through of 500,000 units of a game that has a stellar average Game Rankings score of 93%.  The God of War team really deserved better.  I know God of War was a PS2 exclusive, but this just goes to prove the point that original IP doesn’t sell anymore.  Unlike Stranger's Wrath, God of War had a great marketing push, was reviewed extremely well, and yet isn’t posting sales numbers.  When licensed product is selling a couple million units and isn’t nearly as well done as God of War which is posting anemic sales numbers, I just find it really depressing.

Comments

[gman]

I call BS!

Let's look at the top selling games of 2004 from this page

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/sports/espnnflfootball2005/news_6116499.html

According to that 4 of the top games are sports. You can subtract that category IMO.

Of the remaining 6 titles only 1 is a licensed title, Spiderman. The other 5 are original IP (GTA, Halo, Need for Speed, Pokemon, Halo 2)

http://www.npdfunworld.com/funServlet?nextpage=trend_body.html&content_id=2134

Going over to this page for 1st quart of 2005, again, subtracting Sports we get

6 original IP titles and ZERO licenses. GTA:SA, Resident Evil, Zelda, Mercenaries, Mario DS.

Note that I consider sequels in the original category as their IP started in games. None of them would exist if they had followed your belief that only licensed titles sell because the original would never have been created.

[Stuart Roch]

Great counterpoint and solid data.

Now if only the publishers would recognize those numbers and put more original IP in their catalogs. Perhaps the reluctance comes from the semantics of what a license or franchise property really is.

In the 2005 figures cited, only one title is brand new, Mercenaries. One can argue that the sports titles as well as the five sequels like Gran Turismo, GTA, Resident Evil, Zelda, and Mario are strong enough franchises to consider them near licensed property.

The 2004 list is a bit more compelling as titles like Halo and Need for Speed aren't quite household names yet (though one can argue that Halo is almost there at this point).

Perhaps the real problem is convincing publishers to take a chance on new IP knowing that the first game may not be a huge moneymaker but that it’s still a smart step in the long term in establishing a franchise that can be more powerful down the road.

As you point out, publisher marketing department reluctance to green light original IP only means that they’ll never have the opportunity to enjoy the financial windfall a game like GTA could bring.

[Archdlx]

I have to add a point here.

All of the original IP that is mentioned here eventually became what I would call a mass market IP. This is only after it is established as a successful brand. An example of this would be True Crime. If there was no GTA 3, then there would be no True Crime and the first two GTA titles were not known by most consumers. Not until the third iteration of this product did it become a household name. Once a product hits the mainstream and sells a million units I believe it becomes a 'mass market title' and breaks free of its original IP identity.

I think what Stuart's point is, that most new original IP, in this case God of War, has little chance to succeed when there are so many hugely popular brands, movie licenses out there that publishers can just buy, make a crappy game and make a killing on. Publishers are not very likely to pick up original IP when they know they can sell millions of a Batman or Rugrats game. The percentage of original IP product every year is very small. It is getting worse even though the Halo and GTA's of the world exist and flourish.

The biggest issue with all of this is the fact that because of God of Wars success in the rankings and review scores (93) and its lack of sales despite this, publishers are even less likely to take a risk now. They know how good that game was, they know what the review scores are, they know what the sales are and now they realize how much they would have to spend to get the same success. The problem is that this game was not a success from a revenue stand point.

Why would they take another chance on a game like God of War?

This is problem that continues and won't be solved today. All I hope is that there is a chance for more innovative product in the future that does not have to have a big license attached.

[gman]

> Why would they take another chance on a game like God of War?

Because they have no choice. The only way to have a mega hit is to try to start your own franchise. No licenses (except Spiderman) are in the mega-hit category.

[Archdlx]

It costs a lot of money to create an original IP. I have seen a ton of great original IP products that have not done numbers. I am not saying that they will not be made, but very few have a chance to succeed. The reason...Publishers are not willing to make a big bet(spend dollars to get the name out there) on something that either is not in their "book of marketable product", or a bought license. It sucks, but I have heard too many times "We don't have a model to market that from", or "Is it like GTA?, Call of Duty?, Tony Hawk?" They will only take the plunge if it is derivative product. If you can't say this is "GTA with clowns" then they won't go for it. Creativity is stifled and until we can find a way to self fund our products then sell them to publishers then we are going to see a lot of GTA's and God of War knockoffs. Is this really orignal or is it derivative? I think the "original" line is very blurred right now. I ponder this question all of the time, because in film you have "very original" films and "very derivative" films. The originals are usually indies and the derivatives are usually licensed IP. You decide.

[Jay Barnson]

Acclaim focused its strategy on licensing IP.

Arguably, they MADE the World Wrestling Federation into the powerhouse license it was through their videogames. But when the license came up for renewal, the WWF was in a much stronger negotiating position, and jacked the price on the license WAY up.

Acclaim balked, and walked away, claiming that they could repeat their success with another license that was bigger than the WWF had been when they first picked up the license. They tried their luck with the ECW.

Lightning didn't strike twice. The ECW, and later Acclaim, went out of business. Licenses can yield good short-term profits, but it's not a very viable long-term strategy.

When Ron Chaimowitz (then head of GT Interactive, later purchased by Infogrammes - now Atari) visited my studio, we talked about an upcoming "Command and Conquer" wannabe GT Interactive was publishing called "Total Annihilation." We asked about how much effort was being put into marketing the game, and whether or not it would break even.

"No," he responded. "I don't think it will do that well. But we're investing in Total Annihilation 2. And three. It's going to be a franchise, and that's what we're investing in."

Unfortunately, that plan didn't see fruition, but it made sense. It's like having a portfolio of investments. You have a selection of lower-yield investments that are pretty much guaranteed, and then some higher risk items that may lose money, but could yield MUCH more money in the long term.

[theUnguru]

Maybe everyone should en masse turn away from the big publishers and go shareware. Return to the glory days! Heh heh.

It's a crazy cycle to think about. Imagine getting the rights to write a game for the latest Pixar movie. It'd be hard. You'd be assured of commercial success, most probably. Just because of the name. So what do you do? Turn out a mediocre game. Or work hard and smart to bring out something special. And even then, it wouldn't been seen as special in it's own right, but as a Pixar Move-Game that was pretty cool.

Maybe everyone should join Second Life, so that the kids and adults get the experience of walking into a mall, buying a game from the shelf, but it's distributed electronically, cutting out the Big Fat Cats, or whoever they are.

[gman]

Just fyi, I did some analysis on this topic here you might be interested in.

http://games.greggman.com/edit/editheadlines/2006-06-20.htm