Ashes Cricket 2013 E3 Game impressions

[Biggs]

Devils Advocate, but I don't think it's about picking one over the other or "picking a team" ...we're the losers here if one game is abysmal. As Ross has said plenty of times, if the 505/Trickstar team put a GOOD game it's better for their product. Competition is healthy and vital for any thriving franchise...

We need to kinda keep at least some semblance of positivity towards this franchise because ultimately we loose if it's a crappy game, that means we're reliant on the BigAnt guys putting out an incredible game and it being financially viable for the long-term. That's an eggs in one basket scenario...

I know this game is not heading in a terribly positive direction and as we head further down the rabbit hole it's getting worse, not better. But I genuinely do NOT wish this product ill because it's going to suck if we only have one gaming product to look forward to every 2 or 3 years if the BigAnt one is the ONLY one that is sustainable and profitable.

Bigger picture and all that...

 

[cricket_online]

The classier thing to do would've been to have everyone in the room just wear brown paper bags over their heads...

Classier thing would have been for Chief and 505 Games to apologize to folks who showed up at the event for wasting everyone's time. They could then have followed it up by paying everyone's 2 way fare.

 

[zimrahil]

I know this game is not heading in a terribly positive direction and as we head further down the rabbit hole it's getting worse, not better. But I genuinely do NOT wish this product ill because it's going to suck if we only have one gaming product to look forward to every 2 or 3 years if the BigAnt one is the ONLY one that is sustainable and profitable.

Bigger picture and all that...

Spot on

 

[superfreddie]

Devils Advocate, but I don't think it's about picking one over the other or "picking a team" ...we're the losers here if one game is abysmal. As Ross has said plenty of times, if the 505/Trickstar team put a GOOD game it's better for their product. Competition is healthy and vital for any thriving franchise...

We need to kinda keep at least some semblance of positivity towards this franchise because ultimately we loose if it's a crappy game, that means we're reliant on the BigAnt guys putting out an incredible game and it being financially viable for the long-term. That's an eggs in one basket scenario...

I know this game is not heading in a terribly positive direction and as we head further down the rabbit hole it's getting worse, not better. But I genuinely do NOT wish this product ill because it's going to suck if we only have one gaming product to look forward to every 2 or 3 years if the BigAnt one is the ONLY one that is sustainable and profitable.

Bigger picture and all that...

I do sort of understand your point, and I know Ross has said its good for them if Ashes succeeds because it means there is a market for cricket games.

But surely if Ashes is delayed massively until after Bigant has released and Ashes is rubbish, with bad reviews when it does come out, then Bigant will steal all the sales from Ashes from the people who were only going to buy one game.

Then going forward if Bigant have no competition year on year then they will gobble up all the sales and keep their game profitable, ultimately if a game doesn't sell enough then there won't be a sequel, so every single sale that a competitor doesn't get keeps the series alive.

Also Bigant have shown I think to maybe release their sports titles every 2 years, with great patches in between, so maybe one game is all we need.

 

[barmyarmy]

I was also in the back row which in hindsight was probably silly! I was also listening to Jamie talk and trying to tweet.

Big Ant have domains registered for Cricket14, Cricket16, Cricket17 and Cricket19 which ought to give you some idea of their future plans. I've not checked the FTP but those might well be Ashes years.

 

[cricket_online]

I was also in the back row which in hindsight was probably silly! I was also listening to Jamie talk and trying to tweet.

Big Ant have domains registered for Cricket14, Cricket16, Cricket17 and Cricket19 which ought to give you some idea of their future plans. I've not checked the FTP but those might well be Ashes years.

That's where you slipped up.

Surprised BA don't have anything for World Cup to be held in Aus. Maybe it would be a world cup edition instead of Cricket 15.

 

[superfreddie]

This might look like rubbish, but if I could make my point using figures. These figures are all hypothetical but here goes.

Say there are a total number of all cricket games sold in one year across all platforms of around 100,000 and Ross needed 70,000 copies of his game to sell in order to justify continuing the series.

If there is credible competition from Ashes, Ross might only sell 50 or 60,000copies, with the rest going to ashes meaning total profits not being enough for Ross to justify continuing the series.

But if Ashes is awful and perhaps doesn't even release, then Bigant grabs most of those sales and sells say 80,000 copies, making the Bigant game profitable and continuing the series. Surely more resources/money can be spent on subsequent iterations, taking the game from strength to strength and growing the core fanbase.

In this scenario no competition is surely good, I'm not a marketing expert so all this could be total rubbish, what do you think Biggs

 

[Biggs]

Two products are better than one product. That's really all the pretend numbers you need to worry about. More choice, more competition, more options for us as fans.

 

[MattW]

It's usually a gamble that competition increases the overall market. If you're the better product, it means the competition also do your advertising for you - get you interested in the genre in general and then win over the customer in the end by being better reviewed.

There's also possibly a factor that if there's not competition, people will assume each new release is just a cash in with no improvements and not buy it. Perhaps some of the reason behind IC2010 flopping in the market, you're more likely to think the new edition will be a bigger improvement if you know they are trying to keep up with their competition than if they are releasing into an empty market.

That's not to say it has to be Big Ant vs Trickstar. The cricket games market has usually been two games, but the developers behind them changed fairly frequently.

I certainly think the next major cricket title after Big Ant's release can't be without a Career mode if they want to compete. Every previous game used to get a pass on that because none of them had it.

 

[Biggs]

Absolutely, it could be another up-and-coming game company. But I think the more GREAT cricket games we have, the more chances are people will buy em and the more healthy the competition will be and the innovation we get as fans.

Last thing we need is one company half-assing releases because they had one or two successful titles and zero competition in the market.