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Sony is more of a first party developer rather than making video games. Konami is a second party developer, which means they make the games, such as MGS4. Sony had nothing to do with that or any other games for that matter. They have had some hand in the released PS1 games, but Sony is mostly about hardware, from DVDs to other areas they have their hands in. So even if the PS3 sunk under, they still have revenue coming from their other markets.

I don't know if that's a totally accurate viewpoint Vin.

It's not even that game companies enjoy money too much, it's the fact that a lot of them are on the brink of bankruptcy. If I'm not mistaken, SE was facing this at some point. You are correct, exploring new games with new ideas is a huge risk. It's the same thing with movies. If you're just trying stay alive, you need to go with the safe bet. In SE's position, FF and DQ are well established names in the market that will get a broad audience to buy it from the name recognition. It'd be like if Nintendo tried to make a new Earthbound game. While a lot of people do know about the series and a lot of fan boys would know the characters, it wouldn't be the same as making another Mario game since more people probably know who Mario is than they do our Vice President.

I wouldn't put Microsoft or Blizzard in that last. Microsoft simply because they will never be known for anything besides producing computers, which is what the XBOX basically is. Blizzard because they can't get away with just anything. They had successful games before WoW, but they were not really any bigger than anyone else in the competition. For Wow, Blizzard did one thing that other companies neglected or didn't have to do, and that was...

Marketing.

WoW is nothing but a creative marketing campaign. The game is cookie cutter to another thousand MMOs that were released on the market, and inferior to about half of them in game play, graphics, sound, and so on for at least half of its life. The difference was Blizzard spending money on marketing. SE had an older and by far superior MMO on the market but they never marketed it on US Television. But even with their marketing push, I wouldn't overestimate their importance. They have a firm but unraveling hold on one market, which come this fall depending on how SE markets their next MMO, Blizzard is going to lose out hard with out recruiting Obama to push their product.

But yeah, from what I've heard the gaming industry is probably as hard as the soda industry. I wouldn't want to risk my money in it. But if it's your passion, money probably isn't the motivating factor for you. As long as you break even, right?

An advice given to many aspiring designers: if you're going into this industry, don't expect to become a millionaire. Anyone who goes into video games are mostly going into it because they love doing it, same reason for me. We just have publishers and other people to worry about the money, so we can continue doing what we love to do. But when you have publishers who don't like taking risks, then that means you yourself is going to have to fund your own projects to get them underway. That's what Peter Molyneux did. He left his company, made his own right in his house, and funded everything himself. So you have to have some sense of money and business, but still have the mind of a game developer so you won't saturate what you make.

The only way to really save the game industry and make it safer is the drop of development costs.

Yep.

I don't know how offically compares to officially, but I'll assume it's sorta like, Diet Banned. All the taste of Regular Banned, with none of the calories.

Microsoft doesn't produce computers.

Yeah, you having known him personally must make it so much worse.