Alright Boyz, Here We Go!!!! (OOTP 2007 release thoughts!!!)

[Ksyrup]

I'm not enjoying all of the clicking I have to do to go back and forth while reviewing players. I like the fact that I can go from player to player with the arrow buttons on the right side, but the problem is that once I click on any part of a player, to look at stats or some other page on his card, I can't get back to where I was. Even if I use the back button, when I get back to the initial player screen, the arrow buttons are gone and I can't continue to scroll through players anymore. So basically, what I end up having to do is start over from scratch. I review 3 or 4 players, the 4th guy I want to check out stats, and instead of backing out 5 screens through all of the players I've just reviewed, I go back to the manager or team home screen to get back into my roster or transaction screen to find where I left off. It's very annoying.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

Anyone else think the interface is just a piece of crap? I love all the features. It does everything a wet-baseball dream sim should do. But damn it's a Godawful tub of lard to play. I'm sorry but when it comes to any kind of computer game to play, the playability is far more important than the features. And this one, like its predecessor, fails that test.

not me - while there could be some areas of improvement, i think it's far from a piece of crap.

[Ksyrup]

Anyone who spends more time over at the OOTP boards fill us in aas to this exchange? Spleen?


Quote:

Originally Posted by Claymore
Right now there is some concern if there WILL be a ootp2008...

I believe Markus will continue to make OOTP. SI may not be involved at some point, but I think Markus will continue making the game.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by Leonidas

Anyone else think the interface is just a piece of crap? I love all the features. It does everything a wet-baseball dream sim should do. But damn it's a Godawful tub of lard to play. I'm sorry but when it comes to any kind of computer game to play, the playability is far more important than the features. And this one, like its predecessor, fails that test.

I actually like the interface. It took some getting used to, but I think it's light years better than the old OOTP interface.

[Cork]

Put me in the "like the interface" camp as well. I am really baffled by those who say it is horrible. What would be interesting to see would be their version of an acceptable interface.

-Cork

[miked]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Anyone who spends more time over at the OOTP boards fill us in aas to this exchange? Spleen?


Quote:



I believe Markus will continue to make OOTP. SI may not be involved at some point, but I think Markus will continue making the game.

Eh, from reading Marc Duffy's posts, he stated that OOTP2007 has not hit sales targets yet and people are worried that since SI most likely owns the code, OOTP will be going the way of EHM shortly.

[Cork]

Anyone see a possible trend developing? SI acquires the EHM series and it dies after 2 iterations. SI acquires the OOTP series and now after 2 iterations there is talk about the 2008 version being on shaky ground.

Very interesting.

-Cork

[MizzouRah]

Although I don't find the interface horrible anymore, there was something about the simplicity of 6.5 that I still loved.

This version is so much deeper than 6.5, yet I would be lying if I didn't say I miss 6.5 at times when playing 2007.

What would happen if Jim all of sudden went to a totally different interface? I would find it cumbersome and hard to get the data I wanted to get, quickly. While there is more data in ootp 2007, I still find it hard to get where I want to go in the least amount of clicks possible.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Anyone who spends more time over at the OOTP boards fill us in aas to this exchange? Spleen?


Quote:



I believe Markus will continue to make OOTP. SI may not be involved at some point, but I think Markus will continue making the game.

Marc Duffy started a thread asking the people who haven't yet purchased the game their reasons for holding off. In the thread, he stated that OOTP isn't meeting sales expectations.

A number of his other posts in the forum have been a little ominous-sounding as well. With the recent death of EHM (and the theories that the pirating of the game was just a convenient scape-goat and not the real reason it was pulled), people are a little nervous about the future of the game. And since Sega is now in the mix, there's no telling how long a leash OOTP has.

Obviously, it's way too early to be predicting the game's demise, but Marc has caused the issue to be discussed and has done little to nothing to end it, IMO.

[KWhit]

I think jbmagic puts it best:

jbmagic
Hall Of Famer

Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 3,307

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Although I don't find the interface horrible anymore, there was something about the simplicity of 6.5 that I still loved.

This version is so much deeper than 6.5, yet I would be lying if I didn't say I miss 6.5 at times when playing 2007.

What would happen if Jim all of sudden went to a totally different interface? I would find it cumbersome and hard to get the data I wanted to get, quickly. While there is more data in ootp 2007, I still find it hard to get where I want to go in the least amount of clicks possible.

I posted a more in-depth critique over there about my problems. Personally, I think having to rely on sortable views and bookmarks treads the line between "maximum customization" and laziness (you do it yourself). I'm not sure which way it tends to lean, but I'm willing to give Markus the benefit of the doubt. One of things someone over there hit on that's been a problem for me is the combination of browser screens and completely different in-game screens that come up at different times depending on where you access them from. There are two types of player "cards" in the game, for instance. I don't understand why. I don't like going from the in-game screens to browser screens so many times. There's something odd and clunky about that. And just practically, ti doesn't make sense for why there's a difference between the screens. Why are the pitching and batting stats accessible on particular pages that are browser reports, but my roster and transaction screens are in-game screens?

The more I get into the game, the less I enjoy playing it, although it's nothing that has overcome wanting to play it. I'm just clicking way too much and it's starting to eat at me.

[Ksyrup]

Thanks for the background on the SI/OOTP thing. Interesting. It's unfortunate that sales aren't where they want them to be. As much as I'm having some personal issues with how the game plays, I still think it's been worth purchasing.

[DaddyTorgo]

i don't know what sales targets for OOTP are, but I would expect that they still could expect to pickup a sizeable number of buys as we move into the baseball season. particularly with the crazy weather lately, I don't think it has really...awakened in everyone's mind that it's baseball season.

could also be a marketing opportunity though...hookup with some of the fantasy sites...toting recalc as a huge feature and historical play. ads on the big fantasy baseball sites. I know SI isn't huge and doesn't have a massive advertising budget, but certainly if Sega wants to see the game sell well and profit, they would pony up to some degree I would think?

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I posted a more in-depth critique over there about my problems. Personally, I think having to rely on sortable views and bookmarks treads the line between "maximum customization" and laziness (you do it yourself). I'm not sure which way it tends to lean, but I'm willing to give Markus the benefit of the doubt. One of things someone over there hit on that's been a problem for me is the combination of browser screens and completely different in-game screens that come up at different times depending on where you access them from. There are two types of player "cards" in the game, for instance. I don't understand why. I don't like going from the in-game screens to browser screens so many times. There's something odd and clunky about that. And just practically, ti doesn't make sense for why there's a difference between the screens. Why are the pitching and batting stats accessible on particular pages that are browser reports, but my roster and transaction screens are in-game screens?

The more I get into the game, the less I enjoy playing it, although it's nothing that has overcome wanting to play it. I'm just clicking way too much and it's starting to eat at me.

I'm in agreement with you. I hate the two different kinds of screens so far for me, there's no way for me to tell which one is going to open up at various times. Hopefully, the next patch will address some of the UI goofyness.

[Ksyrup]

I'm not really sure that is something they can or would want to change. I think it's been set up that way for purposes of almanacs and html reports for online leagues. But for solo players, there's too much cross over between the types of screens. LIke I pointed out over there, something as simple as wanting to view RL stats of historical players - that info is on a player's in-game screen, but not browser screen. And when reviewing league history, 99% of the time, I'm viewing it from the browser screen, so when I want to compare a guy's sim results with his RL stats, I can't do that from the browser screen. I have to either track him down "in the game" or, if he's retired, from the retired players screen. Or, I simply look him up on baseball-reference.com, which is faster!

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Thanks for the background on the SI/OOTP thing. Interesting. It's unfortunate that sales aren't where they want them to be. As much as I'm having some personal issues with how the game plays, I still think it's been worth purchasing.

I could be seeing the whole situation incorrectly. Markus has said in the past that OOTP would be a life long project. So, I am only assuming that if SI drops OOTP, Markus will continue with it.

I don't know any details about who owns the code, etc.

With Markus' health issues, I don't know if he is still set on making this a lifelong project.

Who knows. I just don't think OOTP is dead if SI gives up on it.

Let's see. We are making a baseball game. Baseball is not big in Europe, so let's put a commerical on tv in England and try to sell this puppy.

Sounds like they are pulling the trigger themselves to me. There needs to be more US advertising.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

could also be a marketing opportunity though...hookup with some of the fantasy sites...toting recalc as a huge feature and historical play. ads on the big fantasy baseball sites. I know SI isn't huge and doesn't have a massive advertising budget, but certainly if Sega wants to see the game sell well and profit, they would pony up to some degree I would think?

Generic marketing observation -- it's often very difficult to recover the costs of marketing through sales for niche products, regardless of what type of widget you're talking about.

Even with an internet-friendly product going on a per-click basis, I would think that the odds of recovering costs on something like this aren't very good with the large majority of options (and I say that even as someone who doesn't get paid when advertisers don't advertise).

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

I could be seeing the whole situation incorrectly. Markus has said in the past that OOTP would be a life long project. So, I am only assuming that if SI drops OOTP, Markus will continue with it.

I don't know any details about who owns the code, etc.

With Markus' health issues, I don't know if he is still set on making this a lifelong project.

Who knows. I just don't think OOTP is dead if SI gives up on it.

Let's see. We are making a baseball game. Baseball is not big in Europe, so let's put a commerical on tv in England and try to sell this puppy.

Sounds like they are pulling the trigger themselves to me. There needs to be more US advertising.

IIRC, and Jim or anyone else can correct me on this, but I think EA owned FOF2K1 code, so when Jim wanted to do FOF4, he had to build it entirely from scratch again. I think that's how FOF4 happened.

[Honolulu Blue]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

There needs to be more US advertising.

I'll agree to a point, but I think it's going to be a bit of a hard sell:

* They don't have the real MLB logos & team names (which require MLB approval - and royalties),
* They don't have the real player pictures (which require MLBPA approval - and royalties), and
* They don't have the real player names & stats (which may or may not require MLBPA approval - probably not, but SI & Sega are being cautious)

It seems to me the only people who would buy a game like this are the kind of hard-core fans who don't watch much TV (other than baseball and perhaps other sports) and can probably be reached more inexpensively by other methods.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

IIRC, and Jim or anyone else can correct me on this, but I think EA owned FOF2K1 code, so when Jim wanted to do FOF4, he had to build it entirely from scratch again. I think that's how FOF4 happened.

That doesn't mean that is the case with Markus and SI.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

That doesn't mean that is the case with Markus and SI.

It may not be, but if it is, I'm just saying that Markus wouldn't be prevented from creating a "new" OOTP-like game in the future. In the worst-case scenario, he would just have to start from scratch. Otherwise, he may just be abel to buy out of his deal with SI and take the game with him. Who knows. We have no idea what's really going on, so I don't want to discuss it as if it's a done deal or anything, I was just curious about those comments since I hadn't seen what lead to them in the first place.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

Sounds like they are pulling the trigger themselves to me. There needs to be more US advertising.

I may have misread you, but based on the phrasing of HB's subsequent post, I started to wonder what you meant here. I commented earlier about advertising in general but was mostly thinking of internet, now I'm wondering if you might have been thinking more about TV.

I can assure you that the cost of doing television effectively in the U.S. would be quite prohibitive for something like this. They simply couldn't reasonably expect to sell enough units to cover the cost of the spots on the obvious outlets (like the ESPN networks, the FSN's, etc), not in prime baseball territory nor even in less expensive times. Heck, no slight to SI intended, but I would have significant doubts that they could even recover the costs of producing the commercial.

[Ksyrup]

What would a 30 second spot on say, the late edition of Baseball Tonight run?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

What would a 30 second spot on say, the late edition of Baseball Tonight run?

I'm digging through some old proposals now

(I stopped pulling those a couple of years ago, as the rate was - like ESPN baseball in general - way beyond what the viewership could justify for me)

edit to add: Found it.
Last year's rate for 2nd quarter for the late East Coast run of Baseball Tonight was $10,200 per.
By comparison, that's more than double the cost of random primetime program on ESPN Mon-Fri but it has roughly the same household audience.

And to have a reasonable expectation of any sales, the bare minimum is seeing the spot at least three times. Just off the top of my head, I wouldn't go with less than three weeks X 3/week, so let's round that off to $100k for the lightest possible schedule, add several more thousand in for the production of the spot, (not to mention internal man hours expended on the project, etc) What's the price point of OOTP now, like $40? You're talking about needing to move 3,000 units in 3 weeks just to break even, something that I don't see as remotely reasonable with only 9 commercials. 300 would be more likely IMO, and the number could easily end up closer to 30.

Again, not a knock on OOTP or SI or anybody involved, just my honest evaluation of why you're not likely to see spots for the game somewhere like that.

[Ksyrup]

Thanks. I'm just curious.

[Toddzilla]

FWIW, BaseballProspectus.com is advertising the daylights out of OOTP...

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I may have misread you, but based on the phrasing of HB's subsequent post, I started to wonder what you meant here. I commented earlier about advertising in general but was mostly thinking of internet, now I'm wondering if you might have been thinking more about TV.

I can assure you that the cost of doing television effectively in the U.S. would be quite prohibitive for something like this. They simply couldn't reasonably expect to sell enough units to cover the cost of the spots on the obvious outlets (like the ESPN networks, the FSN's, etc), not in prime baseball territory nor even in less expensive times. Heck, no slight to SI intended, but I would have significant doubts that they could even recover the costs of producing the commercial.

I wasn't just talking about tv. I imagine tv is pretty costly. I was talking about in general. It may be that I just to frequent the mediums they are adviertising with.

Maybe a baseball text sim isn't worth a compny like SI developing. Maybe the market for such a game is so small that it is better for indie devs to do them instead.

Clay over at BM thinks he is out selling OOTP by leaps and bounds. I believe he implied that was because his game is in stores. He must be because if forum activity is any indication, OOTP should be kicking BM's ass.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

FWIW, BaseballProspectus.com is advertising the daylights out of OOTP...

They have partnered some what with OOTP. Will Carroll did a lot of work for injuries with OOTP.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

Maybe a baseball text sim isn't worth a compny like SI developing. Maybe the market for such a game is so small that it is better for indie devs to do them instead.

Just looking at the advertising end of it, I'd say it's extremely difficult to justify marketing costs as your cost of production gets higher, which I have to think is typical for larger developers vs one person/small developers.

For many (most?) indies, the majority of their expense is incurred in personal labor, or "sweat equity". Unless I'm totally misreading the situation, most of them aren't writing too many payroll checks. (Again, no slight intended, just being real). That keeps capital outlay down & could make funds available for select advertising opportunities.

Even then, it's very much a coin toss as to whether they can break even on the spending directly. More likely that the ROI calculation would have to include expanding their word-of-mouth opportunities, which still seems to be the most effective way for products in this niche to grow. And to analyze that realistically & to try to factor it in, I'd have to be privvy to information I simply don't have - sales history, internal research, etc. I certainly wouldn't want to say that there's no good advertising opportunities out there for Niche Game Developer X, Y, or Z, but I would say that the wise choices are few & far between. More often than not, I think they would be looking at negative return on their investment, they simply couldn't get back in sales what they spent on the ads.

[JW]

Interesting discussion and I rely on this forum when making text sim purchase decisions. I chose not to get OOTP2006 after reading this forum. I'm watching the discussion on OOTP2007 closely.

Ironically I'm right in the middle of my best career ever with 6.5 I recently pulled that out, with the start of baseball season, and created a ficitonal league in Australia -- I just wanted to get out of the US entirely, even though I know the market numbers are US-based. I didn't want to buy 2007 yet.

I created a small league for the first time, 12 teams, two one-division leagues, first two places in each league make the playoffs. I used some of skydog's numbers and my own to create a fictional universe of 50-ish type baseball.

And I ended up with the greatest 6.5 experience I've ever had. Really strange. Sure after a few seasons I was able to build an excellent team, but I haven't ended up with the complete dominance I've had in every past league. And the strangest thing is that one of the franchises in the other league has become dominant in that league, so I've ended up really for the first time ever in my OOTP experience with an ongoing interleague rivalry, as evidenced by the past champions. In the past that kind of thing has always been much more random. I manage Alice Springs.

Past Champions
1946 Championship Round Winner
Darwin, beat Sydney 4 to 3

1947 Championship Round Winner
Brisbane, beat Perth 4 to 0

1948 Championship Round Winner
Cairns, beat Fremantle 4 to 3

1949 Championship Round Winner
Sydney, beat Alice Springs 4 to 3

1950 Championship Round Winner
Alice Springs, beat Sydney 4 to 3

1951 Championship Round Winner
Sydney, beat Fremantle 4 to 3

1952 Championship Round Winner
Alice Springs, beat Brisbane 4 to 0

1953 Championship Round Winner
Alice Springs, beat Sydney 4 to 1

1954 Championship Round Winner
Sydney, beat Alice Springs 4 to 1

1955 Championship Round Winner
Sydney, beat Alice Springs 4 to 0

1956 Championship Round Winner
Brisbane, beat Adelaide 4 to 2
(Alice Springs and Sydney both lost in the first round)

What really pisses me off is that I have yet to really get the best of Sydney.

6.5 really still has a lot going for it, though I'm going to buy 2007 after this career runs its course.

One reason I think this league has been so much more interesting btw is because it is smaller. I usually have played with 24 or more teams. In this league, I've gotten to know the players around the league much better and I think somehow the smaller number of teams leads to more interesting results.

The thing about 2007 I'm hopeful for is the ability to create leagues like this with an even greater sense of realism and also fun.

What I would really like though would be the ability to easily create promotion/relegation leagues. From what I've read, that isn't in 2007, though you can manipulate your league manually to get promotion and relegation.

[bhlloy]

Originally Posted by Honolulu Blue

I'll agree to a point, but I think it's going to be a bit of a hard sell:

* They don't have the real MLB logos & team names (which require MLB approval - and royalties),
* They don't have the real player pictures (which require MLBPA approval - and royalties), and
* They don't have the real player names & stats (which may or may not require MLBPA approval - probably not, but SI & Sega are being cautious)

It seems to me the only people who would buy a game like this are the kind of hard-core fans who don't watch much TV (other than baseball and perhaps other sports) and can probably be reached more inexpensively by other methods.

Bingo. And if a casual gamer does manage to make it over to the OOTP forums to at least see if he can get "real" MLB rosters, he is going to see all the arguments and bitching and still no rosters. Not a great advert for the game.

Personally, the reason I haven't bought yet is a combination of the roster issue and people on this forum reporting issues that seem to have been around for ever and not fixed. The demo plays pretty well, but other than a brand new interface and the opportunity to put a major league in Kazakhstan, I'm not that sold on it being a massive upgrade over 6.5 (which was an awesome game)

I haven't read Marc Duffy's comments so I will give him the benefit of the doubt. But if he is really holding the demise of OOTP over people's heads in order to force people into buying the game, that is bullshit.

In regards to Markus carrying on if SI does drop the hammer on OOTP, if SI does own the code I can't imagine it being that easy to completely re-write an 8th generation game from scratch. That is just speculation though.

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

I could be seeing the whole situation incorrectly. Markus has said in the past that OOTP would be a life long project. So, I am only assuming that if SI drops OOTP, Markus will continue with it.

I don't know any details about who owns the code, etc.

With Markus' health issues, I don't know if he is still set on making this a lifelong project.

Who knows. I just don't think OOTP is dead if SI gives up on it.

Let's see. We are making a baseball game. Baseball is not big in Europe, so let's put a commerical on tv in England and try to sell this puppy.

Sounds like they are pulling the trigger themselves to me. There needs to be more US advertising.

NASN has over 6 million subscribers across Europe. The UK is a small market - it's more we got a VERY good deal (and I mean a very good deal) it was a no brainer.

It's not a UK company doing UK advertising on a US product by any means! So far, it's proven to be one of our most effective tie ins ever

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by Honolulu Blue

I'll agree to a point, but I think it's going to be a bit of a hard sell:

* They don't have the real MLB logos & team names (which require MLB approval - and royalties),
* They don't have the real player pictures (which require MLBPA approval - and royalties), and
* They don't have the real player names & stats (which may or may not require MLBPA approval - probably not, but SI & Sega are being cautious)

It seems to me the only people who would buy a game like this are the kind of hard-core fans who don't watch much TV (other than baseball and perhaps other sports) and can probably be reached more inexpensively by other methods.

We're targetting sites where we believe people go daily, a couple of times a week, to get baseball news or information.

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I may have misread you, but based on the phrasing of HB's subsequent post, I started to wonder what you meant here. I commented earlier about advertising in general but was mostly thinking of internet, now I'm wondering if you might have been thinking more about TV.

I can assure you that the cost of doing television effectively in the U.S. would be quite prohibitive for something like this. They simply couldn't reasonably expect to sell enough units to cover the cost of the spots on the obvious outlets (like the ESPN networks, the FSN's, etc), not in prime baseball territory nor even in less expensive times. Heck, no slight to SI intended, but I would have significant doubts that they could even recover the costs of producing the commercial.

You are indeed correct - way out of our league financially.

The NASN stuff we got at a very good rate and it was an opportunity we could not miss

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

They have partnered some what with OOTP. Will Carroll did a lot of work for injuries with OOTP.

Just so you know, the two are very much not connected.

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

Bingo. And if a casual gamer does manage to make it over to the OOTP forums to at least see if he can get "real" MLB rosters, he is going to see all the arguments and bitching and still no rosters. Not a great advert for the game.

Personally, the reason I haven't bought yet is a combination of the roster issue and people on this forum reporting issues that seem to have been around for ever and not fixed. The demo plays pretty well, but other than a brand new interface and the opportunity to put a major league in Kazakhstan, I'm not that sold on it being a massive upgrade over 6.5 (which was an awesome game)

I haven't read Marc Duffy's comments so I will give him the benefit of the doubt. But if he is really holding the demise of OOTP over people's heads in order to force people into buying the game, that is bullshit.

In regards to Markus carrying on if SI does drop the hammer on OOTP, if SI does own the code I can't imagine it being that easy to completely re-write an 8th generation game from scratch. That is just speculation though.

No, Marc Duffy is not doing anything of the sort.

I made a throwaway comment that people seemed to have jumped on. We've got a target for OOTP, it's not there YET and that is all I said. The season is 1 week old!

But for this holiday weekend, I would have stubbed it out quicker.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

The NASN stuff we got at a very good rate and it was an opportunity we could not miss

And, as I alluded to (or tried to), good opportunities do exist ... there just aren't as many as people might think at first blush.

If you got a deal that made sense (and I gather that you did), congratulations & more power to you AFAIC.

[Coder]

I'm curious.. no one knows FOF-sales, but I'm actually having a hard time thinking that FOF outsells OOTP. But I still think Jim gets more profit per unit than SI does for OOTP.

Maybe the problem is that for sports other than soccer, there simply ISN'T a market big enough for a larger company to make text-based sims around that sport. With larger company I mean more than 2-3 people splitting the profits.

Just counting on my fingers, I'm sure that OOTP-production costs are way higher than FOF's, diminishing profit/unit even more. The Facegen SDK isn't cheap, and add to that more people involved in production on the SI side (testing, extra programming, producers etc).. and on to SEGA for promotion costs, SEGAs cut etc.

I wonder where the limit goes.. to get more sales, there needs be more promotion, and promotion costs.. I don't think there's a chance in hell that OOTP will ever reach FM-sales.

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

And, as I alluded to (or tried to), good opportunities do exist ... there just aren't as many as people might think at first blush.

If you got a deal that made sense (and I gather that you did), congratulations & more power to you AFAIC.

The problem is, that at first glance it looks like we're trying to advertise / convert those guys in the UK which could not be further from the truth (given a fraction of the subcriber base is in the UK) but that's a different story!

[Coder]

FWIW, I haven't seen the NASN-commercial, but it's a great idea. NASN targets both Europeans who have an interest in American sports, but also all the American soldiers stationed across Europe (primarily in Germany).

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by Coder

I'm curious.. no one knows FOF-sales, but I'm actually having a hard time thinking that FOF outsells OOTP. But I still think Jim gets more profit per unit than SI does for OOTP.

Maybe the problem is that for sports other than soccer, there simply ISN'T a market big enough for a larger company to make text-based sims around that sport. With larger company I mean more than 2-3 people splitting the profits.

Just counting on my fingers, I'm sure that OOTP-production costs are way higher than FOF's, diminishing profit/unit even more. The Facegen SDK isn't cheap, and add to that more people involved in production on the SI side (testing, extra programming, producers etc).. and on to SEGA for promotion costs, SEGAs cut etc.

I wonder where the limit goes.. to get more sales, there needs be more promotion, and promotion costs.. I don't think there's a chance in hell that OOTP will ever reach FM-sales.

Like many things, the Facegen tech is cheaper than you think.

We use simple maths to work out an advertising spend for the game (which we base on our sales targets)

[Marc Duffy]

Originally Posted by Coder

FWIW, I haven't seen the NASN-commercial, but it's a great idea. NASN targets both Europeans who have an interest in American sports, but also all the American soldiers stationed across Europe (primarily in Germany).

Ladies and gents. we have a winner.

[Coder]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

Ladies and gents. we have a winner.

Considering I work for the department at Volvo targetting US Military with their advertising, it wasn't that long of a reach ;-)

[JonInMiddleGA]

erp ... removing an unintentional double post.

But while it's here, I'll add that I didn't know Coder was in advertising (or did I misread that, and it's actually the product you work on that's the subject of the advertising?)

[Coder]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

erp ... removing an unintentional double post.

But while it's here, I'll add that I didn't know Coder was in advertising (or did I misread that, and it's actually the product you work on that's the subject of the advertising?)

No, I work for a department within VCC (Volvo Cars) specializing in sales for US Tourists (buy your car locally in the US and come over here to pick up the car combining it with a vacation driving in Europe and getting a "factory tour") as well as US Military.

So, no, I don't work in advertising, but we're a small department and the guy next to me does .

[Ksyrup]

My brother almost did that with the Volvo he bought a couple of years ago. Can't remember why he didn't, but he ended up just special ordering it locally.

[DaddyTorgo]

imho you could sell tickets to the 2nd coming of jesus and not reach the sales in a year that fm does in a month

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

imho you could sell tickets to the 2nd coming of jesus and not reach the sales in a year that fm does in a month

That is true. I am reminded of the quote from a versions back that it sold 100,000 units the first weekend alone.

[Young Drachma]

My most recent universe decided to go kaput. I just clicked on a players name and for some reason, that was the end of that. Won't reload no matter how many times I try to restart it. I'm annoyed, but..that's not something that hasn't happen -- the mystery lost universe -- in past versions.

So..now I have to figure out what I want to do now for a universe to get immersed into. I'm thinking reloading with the baseball world that I had before -- at least, with those teams or similar -- and having a promotion/relegation system in the US. What could be better than those third-division New York Yankees?

Hmm...

[adubroff]

Originally Posted by Coder

Just counting on my fingers, I'm sure that OOTP-production costs are way higher than FOF's, diminishing profit/unit even more. The Facegen SDK isn't cheap, and add to that more people involved in production on the SI side (testing, extra programming, producers etc).. and on to SEGA for promotion costs, SEGAs cut etc.

I would bet this one cuts both ways.

Most of the other things you mention Jim does himself. Jim ends up "paying" a very senior game developer to do testing and a lot of fairly simple programming tasks. SI is not paying somebody what Jim would make on the open market to do testing. Now, Jim probably catches up in efficiency in some other arenas. He can make all of the decisions himself and not have to deal with the overhead of collaboration.

I would not be totally suprised if Jim's cost is less than SIs but I think that might have something to do with the ambition of the game (SIs architecture is very open/moddable, which adds a lot to the production costs I would guess). Jim's game is generally not that flexible but the lack of flexibility allows him to produce a product which behaves more consistently than OOTP does.