Frontier have been a multi-game studio since 1994 some of the comments seem to assume they didn't exist before Elite.
Concentrating on one product and expecting a developer to drop everything and work on a game you previously bought but doesn't meet your subjective pre-conception of "good"? That seems hugely detrimental to the games market. There is opportunity to read reviews and even get refunds these days. I have a library of steam games and I don't think the developers of any of them are updating them significantly having moved on to sequels and new titles. It's a ludicrous business model to expect them to work flat out on something that's been and gone. Frontier's approach of expanding while having further iterations of the core game seems like a good compromise.
Multi-game studios can hire more developers and enhance core technologies, they are also more likely to be resilient to the changing market. I was previously employed by Codemasters and had access to core tech that was used on multiple games and platforms and worked on by a separate team. Those kinds of studios have been around since the 80's and survived turbulent times. There are studios that do very well out of a single franchise, but they are the exception to the rule and often if you dig deeper you find if they really are successful they have diversified in their portfolio somewhere.
Not so much with perpetually crowd funded titles such as Star Citizen though. I really hope PC gamers aren't looking for a future where developers don't put anything out on it's own merits anymore, instead taking cash in advance and concentrating on show pleasing demonstrations and concept work. That may be the beginning of the end for PC gaming in terms of quality and complete units of work. Maybe the future really is the DayZ model, judging by some of the comments in this thread it seems it's the way to go for developers and it's a poor position for consumers ultimately. Even if Star Citizen somehow turns out to be great (and none of their pre-release claims of Alpha modules being comparable to AAA games have been achieved) it still isn't a model I want to see applied to other developers. It just isn't a good thing. I don't even see how it's in SC's interest to release a final product when the alpha P2W state is the business model they have refined over the years.
I prefer the old model, developer makes a game and then we pay for it. We get to decide if it's good based on what's out there. We don't decide it's going to be good five to ten years in advance and consume marketing for a decade and reasons to spend more money on the game's development. What a horrible state of affairs.
Concentrating on one product and expecting a developer to drop everything and work on a game you previously bought but doesn't meet your subjective pre-conception of "good"? That seems hugely detrimental to the games market. There is opportunity to read reviews and even get refunds these days. I have a library of steam games and I don't think the developers of any of them are updating them significantly having moved on to sequels and new titles. It's a ludicrous business model to expect them to work flat out on something that's been and gone. Frontier's approach of expanding while having further iterations of the core game seems like a good compromise.
Multi-game studios can hire more developers and enhance core technologies, they are also more likely to be resilient to the changing market. I was previously employed by Codemasters and had access to core tech that was used on multiple games and platforms and worked on by a separate team. Those kinds of studios have been around since the 80's and survived turbulent times. There are studios that do very well out of a single franchise, but they are the exception to the rule and often if you dig deeper you find if they really are successful they have diversified in their portfolio somewhere.
Not so much with perpetually crowd funded titles such as Star Citizen though. I really hope PC gamers aren't looking for a future where developers don't put anything out on it's own merits anymore, instead taking cash in advance and concentrating on show pleasing demonstrations and concept work. That may be the beginning of the end for PC gaming in terms of quality and complete units of work. Maybe the future really is the DayZ model, judging by some of the comments in this thread it seems it's the way to go for developers and it's a poor position for consumers ultimately. Even if Star Citizen somehow turns out to be great (and none of their pre-release claims of Alpha modules being comparable to AAA games have been achieved) it still isn't a model I want to see applied to other developers. It just isn't a good thing. I don't even see how it's in SC's interest to release a final product when the alpha P2W state is the business model they have refined over the years.
I prefer the old model, developer makes a game and then we pay for it. We get to decide if it's good based on what's out there. We don't decide it's going to be good five to ten years in advance and consume marketing for a decade and reasons to spend more money on the game's development. What a horrible state of affairs.
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