With the proliferation of first-person shooter games, you’d think there was gold in those gun-flavored hills, but according to Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis, you only really make money if you’re Call of Duty.
“Nobody really buys any FPSes unless they’re called Call Of Duty,” he claimed. “I guess Battlefield did okay, but aside from that pretty much every FPS loses money. I mean, [look at] Crysis 2: great game, but there’s no way it came anywhere close to recouping its dev costs.”
Ellis said he spent the entirety of 2008 attempting to get Timesplitters 4 made, but that no publisher would take the risk. He said the high cost of making an FPS is too risky for companies to do anything quirky or unique.
It’s an interesting claim, though one has to wonder — if trying to play it safe and copy Call of Duty is not proving successful, why aren’t companies trying more new things? Oh right … because publishers don’t understand how reality works. I guess it all makes sense.
Free Radical founder: “pretty much every FPS loses money” [Edge]
