Infinity Blade is Epic's most profitable franchise ever

[Philll]

iOS series Infinity Blade, developed by Chair Entertainment, earned over $30 million in the year after the launch of the first game. Infinity Blade 2, which launched in December 2011, had seen net earnings in excess of $5 million after just one month on sale. As of 5th January 2012, the first game had grossed more than $23 million.

The worst thing is, it's barely a game, it's just a bunch of nice looking set pieces where you swipe your effing finger a few times. If Infinity Blade didn't look pretty, it'd have less sales than vowels in this sentence.

I guess this means PC gaming will continually be ignored... perhaps (in the long run) even console gaming will be ignored as well, to a degree

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...franchise-ever

[gregpolk]

Well I guess Chair was a good purchase, and I can write off ever seeing a Shadow Complex 2. Why bother spending time making something great when you can spend far less time keeping bored commuters from having to talk to people.

What does he mean in saying the iPad 2 is a directx9 device? Surely MS isn't licensing DX out like that.

[proffesso]

Originally Posted by gregpolk

Well I guess Chair was a good purchase, and I can write off ever seeing a Shadow Complex 2. Why bother spending time making something great when you can spend far less time keeping bored commuters from having to talk to people.

What does he mean in saying the iPad 2 is a directx9 device? Surely MS isn't licensing DX out like that.

its been worded poorly, but the ipad / android arent directx devices, but opengl. it would be equivelent to a directx9 api more or less.

[The MWNN]

A good mate of mine works as a programmer at epic, I was shocked when he told me this a while ago.

[Zoltag]

Originally Posted by gregpolk

What does he mean in saying the iPad 2 is a directx9 device? Surely MS isn't licensing DX out like that.

I guess he's talking about the hardware capability, which technically is DirectX compatible (though I doubt Apple would ever release DirectX APIs on any of their devices, even if MS is willing to licence it to them).

[gregpolk]

Cheers, suspected as much.

[Zoltag]

Originally Posted by Philll

I guess this means PC gaming will continually be ignored... perhaps (in the long run) even console gaming will be ignored as well, to a degree

Once smart phones are capable of easily linking wirelessly to smart TVs, then I would bet consoles would disappear within a few years.

PCs will still hang around, though whether they would be developed for as a serious gaming platform would be questionable.

[Pinkeh]

I play angry birds on the work "smart board".

I link up my tablet with the smart board and have it project whats on the tablet to the screen.

$25,000 smart conferencing and projector device reduced to displaying avian projectiles launching into pig faces because nobody else in the workplace can figure out how to use it for it's intended purpose!

Well i guess you could bring in a PS3 and hook it up to the hdmi port.

[Phalanx]

As a return on investment it's better, but it's a single hit franchise. Call of Duty makes over a billion dollars in revenue with each release (MW3 did it in two weeks), Gears of War has made over a billion revenue as a franchise too over 3 games. Making 20% off a billion dollars is far better than 50% off $30 million, no matter how you slice it.

It's like asking why Apple still sells Macs. After all, the margins are better on the iPhone. But which would you prefer, $6b profits a quarter or $7b?

[Rubberband]

UPDATE: Epic executive Mark Rein has tweeted to clarify that Infinity Blade is Epic's most profitable game "in terms of man years invested versus revenue only, not total profit".

The other thing to bear in mind is that iOS games capture a pretty big market segment that otherwise wouldn't buy console/desktop games. Infinity Blade's success should be considered to be creating new gamer demographics and a percentage of those will be converted into console/desktop games increasing the market in that area too.

The development time on iOS games is shorter and only an idiot would cut off all other revenue streams especially when the iOS market feels saturated already. Even if we subscribe to the chicken little mentality Epic will keep making engines to sell on to assist other companies can more easily access the markets they vacate.

Originally Posted by Zoltag

Once smart phones are capable of easily linking wirelessly to smart TVs, then I would bet consoles would disappear within a few years.

PCs will still hang around, though whether they would be developed for as a serious gaming platform would be questionable.

But the power of a mobile device will be a fraction of what you can do with a console of the same era.

[Sundance]

Originally Posted by Rubberband

But the power of a mobile device will be a fraction of what you can do with a console of the same era.

I agree, but if there isn't as much demand for whatever the extra power produces, compared to games on iOS devices, then the extra power wouldn't be a significant advantage. A bit like Xbox 360 vs PS3, but on a more extreme scale.

edit: as in the PS3, I've read, is more powerful but 360 is more popular. Infact I read that at one point even Wii was outselling both..?

[.Radiant]

Wii outsold both, it caters more to the family crowd though, its more accesible.

When it comes to ps3 vs 360 it depends on where you go really, for most people the main reason to get either is what platform your friends are playing on. In the west it's mainly 360 and in japan it's ps3. They're pretty close atm, according to vgchartz the 360 has sold 67m, the ps3 64.9m. Though there was talk of the 360 numbers being inflated as MS were apparently counting refurbished units that were being sent out during the whole RROD debacle.

Tablet games as they currently are will never kill current gaming platforms, the games themselves have no substance. Most of them are just games you can pick up and play on a train ride and such.

[Pinkeh]

Didnt nintendo release something to say that Wii Sport being the most popular game on the platform (mostly because people buy the bundle)

[Philll]

Please don't quote VGchartz on anything :/

[lithos]

Originally Posted by Rubberband

But the power of a mobile device will be a fraction of what you can do with a console of the same era.

People tend to forget about time, yes.

Carmack, for one...