WB has lost thier freaking minds!

#21 Well said Joe.

Really, this isn't about "big business is evil" it's about, "this is the most idiotic thing I've ever heard!"

For arguments sake, let's say we're running a car company. (Hypothetical situation of course)

At this company, we pay our design teams, engineers and all, based upon the "critical" success of each make and model the team designs.

Team A designs a small, economical compact car designed to be feul efficient and have low maintenance costs, while team B creates a sports car.

Because of the design nature behind each car and the resulting price point of each model, team A's little compact outsells team B's sports car 3:1.

After "Car and Driver" finishes their review, wherein the compact car gets a lower score due to a lack of "frills" and lower performance point, the team that created the sports car gets paid more - regardsless of the fact that their model sells considerably less and isn't as popular in the consumer market.

What the hell kind of sense is that supposed to make?

The fact is, games allready have a "built-in" profit scaling mechanism - it's called sales.

#22 But sales AREN'T a good metric. A game comes out with a nice bit of IP licensed and good marketing. A lot of people will buy it.

The real problem is that hardly any stores will take returns. I can't return a crappy game, so if I'd bought Enter the Matrix I'd be stuck with it and even though I'd be unhappy my sale would register as a vote in favour of the game.

If it sold 4 million copies, and 2 million were returned, no one would argue it was a success. And the cost of those returns would make publishers think twice about spewing out well-marketed crap.

#23 XPlay's reviews seem to be quite in-depth. Also, this has good prospects:

www.rottentomatoes.com/games/

#24 Ken,

Perhaps I mispoke my point.

Are sales a good metric of game quality? Not really, there are circumstances under which they are, and circumstances under which they aren't.

That's niether here nor their though - what sales ARE a good metric for is how much of the PROFIT the developer deserves to get - that's what I meant by a "profit scaling" mechanism.

#25 If anyone bought into the hype and purchased Enter the Matrix, then that should count as a 'vote in favor' of not just the game, but the approach they took in order to sell it to you... It may make people unhappy, but it happens all the time with film and games.. and consumers continue to spend their money on what they are told they should be spending their money on.

the BIG games industry is not about making good games.. it is about making lots of money selling games. It is important the distinction is realized. Good games don't always make a lot of money, and games that make a lot of money are not always good.

A bad game should not make a lot of money, but it happens all the time. In big business, it is becoming, how much money can we make on this and how do we do it. Positioning and strategy, and tons of marketing are a big part of this. Game quality is not the most important factor. It would be great if a good game were the single most inportant factor, but it really is not when it comes to the 'mega' titles.

I try not to get too upset with the big publishers over this. This industry is BIG, and the big players need to satisfy their shareholders. The big side of the industy is about making money selling entertainment. It is staffed by many people that love games, but the bottom line is about making money for the owners of the company (the shareholders)

WB does have a right to be concerned about damage to their IP.. Look at what has happened to the public perception of the quality of Disney. Disney, in the span of the last 20 years, has gone from being a well respected brand to a brand that many now find synonymous with cheap knock off pop culture junk. The used to define the market, now they follow it. Kind of sad. Also kind of sad that these moves initally are what made disney shaerholders a ton of money.

#26 If a game is junk and sells well because of marketing, then the developer does not deserve anything.

Many games do not have demos. There are very few places where you can rent PC games. With no returns, you often have to take a leap of faith. Fans of the Matrix gambled that since the game was developed so closely with the movie that it would have similar quality. Whether you like the movies or not, the game was of lower quality.

Sadly game returns are not likely to be a common thing. If companies released a good demo it would go a long way towards making purchasing decisions easier. But then if you know what you have is shovelware, you wouldn't want to release a demo, would you?

#27 I agree with Ken, but its not about the company who gets the better reviews has to pay less royalties, its the company who gets bad reviews that has to pay more. So if you do good, you dont have to worry about it, if you do poorly, then you do.

It seems like a good plan to me, because I trust many of the sources listed, and they dont give low scores to good games, or high scores to bad games. Ive trusted these sites for years, so if a company decides they want to base their business off sites I've trusted for that amount of time, so be it. They know how to run their own company better then you know how to run their company.

#28 I don't have much respect for either Jason Hall's veiwpoint or Bruno Bonnell's viewpoint. I'm amazed Infogrammes, er Atari (boy they sound so less French now that they changed their name), is able to sell as many games as they do. They consistently put out crappy games, and I would hope that consumers would eventually stop buying their junk. Puplishers who cater specifically to naive customers who buy products purely based on a brand name (eg The Matrix) don't really contribute to human culture much.

Jason's idea has a bit of relevancy, but the simple-minded way they are planning to implement "quality control" is just dumb.