The success of Zelda and Uncharted is not proof that games can do without micropayments

It is impossible to criticize micropayments, setting as an example projects like Mario, Zelda or Uncharted. They are created to sell consoles and fight back differently than the projects of most teams.

This is the opinion of the author of Ridiculous Fishing, Rami Ismail, who tried twice yesterday to convey this position to his Twitter audience, which was not ready for such statements.

Rami’s programmatic statement sounded like this: “Can someone explain to people who use such titles as Mario, Zelda or Uncharted as an example of games that do not need micropayments, that the micropayment in these games is an investment of $400 in the console, plus margin from each game for the platform that you purchase in perpetuity.”

The statement caused a flurry of criticism from opponents of micropayments. In response, Rami published his detailed position. With a few abbreviations, we present it just below.

Rami Ismail
I am an implacable opponent of exploitative micropayments.

At the same time, I am against the incredibly delusional, but popular criticism of exploitative micropayments. It makes it difficult to find a real solution to the urgent problem.

The games I mentioned in the tweet are First Party Games. These are the projects whose developers belong to platform companies.

Nintendo is well known as a company that prefers to focus on such projects. Among them are such series as Zelda, Mario, Metroid.

By analogy, Microsoft has Gears of War and Forza, PlayStation has Uncharted, Killzone, Horizon and The Last Guardian, and Steam, for example, has Half–Life, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Portal and DOTA.

Despite the fact that these games are often very successful, the task of these titles does not necessarily come down to earning. Their goal is to sell the platform (console), demonstrating to the audience what it is capable of.

Once a user has bought a console, its holder can generate profit through the sale of any hardware or accessories associated with it, as well as earn on each game that the user purchases after: the platform usually takes from 29% to 31% from each game sold, regardless of who is its developer.

Steam has for a long time allowed developers to create as many keys as they want for free for distribution within Humble Bundles. Steam does not make money on this, but it pays for the servers from which downloads are coming.

Why is she doing this?

It’s very simple: if all your games are on Steam, you will also buy new games on Steam. You remain assigned to the platform, and the platform will take a percentage of any game you buy.

If you periodically buy games on Steam, you pay for this free Steam code.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Apple, with its billions of dollars flowing through the App Store, still considers it not the main channel for earnings. For them, this is, first of all, what can convince you to buy an iPhone or iPad.

This is the strength of those who own the platform: you can develop a game despite losses and still be in the black, thanks to the income from the sale of games by other developers.

Third-party games (Third Party Games) are those projects that are developed by studios independent of the platform. It can be publishers, it can be studios, inside Ubisoft, Activision and EA, or completely independent teams.

Whoever they are, they don’t have that luxury. If a game, merchandising, licensing, DLC, micropayments (cosmetic or not), subscriptions, in general, any model for extracting income does not return the invested funds in sufficient volume to launch new projects, the studio is finished. In some cases, if expectations are much lower than the payback level or the level of sufficient payback, publishers will prefer to lose the funds already invested than invest more.

I mean, First Party Games should never be compared with Third Party Games in terms of how they have monetization built. The former can fight off financing through console sales or the interest that consoles receive from the sale of games. The latter can only earn money on sales of their game and everything related to it.

A source: ramiismail.com