Why isn't there a GAA game for Xbox/Ps3?

hooradiation

ColeTrain wrote: »

Wind your neck in.

The comparison with other sports is usually with the EPL or the top level of Rugby. The GAA is played by completely amateur players. I can line out for my local club even if I'm not that good. So a lot of club games will not be the best showcase.

But when the best from every county play each other in an arena like Croke Park then the games are taken to another level and stand up to other sports in intensity, excitement and skill.

So, things that are done well are good?
Thanks for that riveting insight.

COYVB

Funnily enough, I asked Peter Moore of EA this very question a few years back when I was visiting ea Canada. The answer, as people have said here, was simply that there isn't a big enough market. Maximum sales over the lifetime equal about twelve hours worth of fifa sales

VinLieger

People really have a distorted view of how much it costs to make a game. The amount of money it would cost to create such a polished and working game with all the features people want would never be recouped by how many copies it would sell

c_man

ottostreet wrote: »

GAA. The sports that the rest of the world have looked at and said 'No thanks'.

Poor attempt, 1/10.

Freddy Smelly

there was one in development back in 2007

Nailz

MrStuffins wrote: »

Top 5 I bet, but for some reason all I could think was "Sold more than Fifa? Get the f*ck!"

Well in fairness Pro Evo was better than FIFA back in those times and it's likely that if it outsold PES, it outsold FIFA.

COYVB

Rayne Wooney wrote: »

25,000 sold? I think I paid 45 quid for it. Some of my mates paid €50

Taking in roughly €1.2 million on a game that looks to have been thrown together in a week is not bad.

Yeah, apart from the fact that the store needs its cut, the distributor needs its cut and the government needs its cut before the publisher sees a shiny cent. Absolutely no money to be made from a GAA game, if there was, there'd be lots of GAA games

COYVB

theholyghost wrote: »

I think it was a real celtic tiger one, we were finally financially worth having our own computer game!

AFAIK, the game was made in Australia

COYVB

Nailz wrote: »

Well in fairness Pro Evo was better than FIFA back in those times and it's likely that if it outsold PES, it outsold FIFA.

It likely did outsell PES and FIFA, for a week or two. In terms of combined annual sales over all 52 weeks post launch, it wouldn't have come close

Mr Whirly

I worked in a games shop when that GAA game came out. They changed their returns policy for it after a week. Almost every copy sold came back.

micks_address

You would wonder if they could take the fifa or madden game engines and tweak them slightly to come up with something..

COYVB

micks_address wrote: »

You would wonder if they could take the fifa or madden game engines and tweak them slightly to come up with something..

Have you any idea how much that would cost?

Nailz

COYVB wrote: »

It likely did outsell PES and FIFA, for a week or two. In terms of combined annual sales over all 52 weeks post launch, it wouldn't have come close

According to a couple of folks on the first or second page it did over all, you see it came out in the middle of November, perfect Christmas release; parents going out and buying them for the young lads for Christmas, regardless of the quality of the game.

Mainly what comes out from the end of September up until Christmas is usually the game to come out best in sales at the end of the year. And word didn't really come out as to how crap it was until after the majority of the buying had been over and done with. Regardless of all that though, it was a terrible game, it was funny playing as Cavan on the PS2 though, not to mention Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh's commentary was hilarious!

Liamario

The games were ****. Just like real life.

micks_address

I dont, do you? suppose the GAA got behind it and marketed it to all the diaspora in america/austrailia?

From a physics point of view - they have a rugby game, ok the rules are going to be different, and it would be expensive to photograph every GAA star etc.. but still there might be a surprising market for it.. I think the level of graphics in these games as got to the point now where you dont need a new game every year, all Fifa is really doing is adding slight enhancements with new squads each year..

COYVB wrote: »

Have you any idea how much that would cost?

COYVB

micks_address wrote: »

I dont, do you? suppose the GAA got behind it and marketed it to all the diaspora in america/austrailia?

From a physics point of view - they have a rugby game, ok the rules are going to be different, and it would be expensive to photograph every GAA star etc.. but still there might be a surprising market for it.. I think the level of graphics in these games as got to the point now where you dont need a new game every year, all Fifa is really doing is adding slight enhancements with new squads each year..

Actually, I do. It would cost far more than the game would make. The FIFA engine is completely tailored towards FIFA, not anything else. FIFA is actually making fairly comprehensive changes to the underlying physics and engine every year.

micks_address

They certainly made major enhancements for fifa 12, but i dont think there were major changes for 13, ballpark how much would it cost?

COYVB wrote: »

Actually, I do. It would cost far more than the game would make. The FIFA engine is completely tailored towards FIFA, not anything else. FIFA is actually making fairly comprehensive changes to the underlying physics and engine every year.

COYVB

Ballpark, to base a full game on the FIFA engine, with all the tweaks and physics changes necessary and acquire all the licenses needed, as well as market the game a reasonable amount in oz/america, probably $15-20m, maybe more

If there was a market there for it, the game would exist

*edit*

Just to clarify, that'd be for the first iteration of any new series, if minimal changes were made to follow ups, you'd be looking at a lower cost for each iteration until the next engine change was required

jill_valentine

There were two Gaelic Games: Football releases and then the Gaelic Games: Hurling one. The hurling one, as I recall, didn't sell as well as the other two but actually was a better game.

Just relevant to this conversation - they were by Transmission Games/IR Gurus, who had previously done Aussie Rules football games, and as far as I know, the game was basically a modified version of that original engine. So that's the only reason that was viable, it was basically a pre-existing game with a few localisation tweaks.

rgmmg

Yurt wrote: »

But people buy Madden,NHL,Tiger Woods etc....I know they have massive markets compared to GAA but i'd still like to see what % of people that buy these games are actually fans of the sport.

I can see it now, outselling Madden in the US.

JR: "Hey Tex, you gettin' the new Madden?"

Tex: "F**k that mannnn, that new G double A Soccer game is out next week. It features Mikasa Gloves whoever the heck he is."

COYVB

rgmmg wrote: »

I can see it now, outselling Madden in the US.

JR: "Hey Tex, you gettin' the new EA Sports NHL?"

Tex: "F**k that mannnn, that new G double A Soccer game is out next week. It features Mikasa gloves whatever the heck that is."

If Ireland was a bigger country there'd definitely be GAA games from EA, particularly since they've got NHL which only really sells in Canada and NCAA which only really sells in America. Cricket was another one that was mentioned when I spoke to Moore, but even that's not financially viable in retail and it's got a far, far bigger number of followers than GAA

The only real hope of a GAA game would be a downloadable title based on a relatively crude, but versatile engine. That's something they DIDNT rule out BTW, but they said it'd have to be an engine that would work for multiple similarly targetted games. In the case of GAA you'd be able to do a football, rugby and aussie rules game from the same engine, each of which would probably sell semi-reasonably and probably recoup costs, which would then be supplemented with annual roster updates for a tenner or something along those lines.

Not something I'd be holding my breath for though

Yurt

This might sound stupid but how does it cost so much to develop games ?

COYVB

Yurt wrote: »

This might sound stupid but how does it cost so much to develop games ?

Because games take large teams years to build

Grand Theft Auto IV cost in the region of $100m (though that's an exception to the rule really; most triple A games are between $50-65m)

jill_valentine

Yurt wrote: »

This might sound stupid but how does it cost so much to develop games ?

Big teams of people who all need current edge technology, basically.

Once upon a time, any schmuck with a Sinclair could hammer something together and it would look indistinguishable to a "studio" effort. But as the state of the art has moved on, players will no longer accept a fire effect that looks like a toddler's drawing in a breeze, they expect more graphically and physically, and that requires a bunch of people to implement.

Nor will they accept wacky gravity, or having a character wade through water without any sense of mass. So the physics engines get more complicated too, so that's more people.

And as game physics engines get more complicated, there's more to go wrong, because one physics effect could have a weird effect with another that you couldn't predict, so that's more playtesters etc.

Speaking of characters, hey, characters. You need voice actors, possibly distinct motion actors, sound men, script writers, directors and so on. They could wind up recording 15+ hours of dialogue, so several times the length of a movie on top of the rest of the game.

All that takes time. Because games take a few years to develop, by which time the market could have moved on, you have to have a bunch of suits to make sure all that money is going the right way and to minimise the risk, so that's more people. And minimising the risk means marketing, so we've got somebody else again.

Of course, once there's so much money involved then, you have to look at ways to get the most money back out, and that means online. So you need somebody to work on an online side, and then somebody to maintain it.

etc, etc, etc. It's a huge business, but basically, it's about the number of people involved over the lifetime of the end result, and to some extent, the risk of the investment. That's why there are so few "new" game series' anymore, as the risk of introducing a new one has grown, the spectrum of titles has gotten narrower and narrower.

NTMK

COYVB wrote: »

AFAIK, the game was made in Australia

it was originally planned for PS1 and developed in Ireland but a ton of delays meant it got shipped to IR gurus as they had an engine that could be transferable to gaelic football (they make Aussie rules games)

ColeTrain

hooradiation wrote: »

So, things that are done well are good?
Thanks for that riveting insight.

Anyone that uses the word "riveting", well, they're a special breed.