I can refute that easily – See Duke Nukem 4. Years in production by big name(s); Massive budget; Name recognition; Total fail in the market place. Compare this with Goat Simulator which was done as a joke.
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There were great games that did not sell aswell.
System Shock 1 (Lost money in the end. Considered one of the greatest games of all time.)
Tera Nova: Strike force centauri (Pretty much created Squad based gameplay. Great game too. Lost A lot of money to the point were they laid of Warren Spector!)
Grim Fandango
Jet Set Radio
Shenmue
Beyond Good and evil… And many others.
Proof that one cannot just expect something to sell. (Sometimes…)
Goat Simulator was not luck either. The game was a game jam game, whose trailer was made as an April Fool’s joke that went incredibly viral. Coffee Stain wisely used the enormous viral success of that trailer to turn it into an actual product. Once again, it’s not luck, they made the game in response to demand for the game.
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Sounds like the epitome of luck to me.
That a smart company used to their advantage.
The shovelware storm is hitting Valve’s bottom-line really hard, they are losing money because consumers are losing confidence in their platform and buying fewer games (and a number of successful mid-tier developers no longer even use their storefront). It’s more or less an exact mirror of the games market crash 82-85 - when consumer confidence is low, consumers stop buying. In the early 80s this almost completely wiped out the console games industry, and it was caused by an over-saturation of low budget, poor quality releases. Atari allowed almost complete freedom for third parties on their platform - it cost Atari everything and they never recovered. Nintendo on the other hand were highly selective, and went on to massive success. This isn’t a coincidence, it’s an important consideration in market economics.
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Nintendo fixed that with quality control.
Not overpricing. And this mainly affected the US only.
England seemed fine with their low budget Speccy games. They had a golden age. (Most made on no budgets at all!)