Quotes intéressantes de John Sawyer, ancien de chez BIS
My point is that a large number of IPLY titles failed by a huge margin. Icewind Dale was very profitable. Heart of Winter was also very profitable. Even Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale II were profitable. Remember that IWD2 only took ten months to develop. It really didn’t have to sell a large number of units to turn a profit.
It is also important for people to recognize that cancelled projects are often less damaging than projects that linger on and on for years, then finally get released to poor sales. Combine Jefferson and Van Buren. You’re looking at about three years of development, with a fluctuating team size of between 6-25 people. Compare that to Run Like Hell. RLH was in development for about four years, with (as far as I know) a similar team size. It shipped and tanked hard. The cost of development certainly wasn’t covered, and the cost of publishing and distribution was just thrown away, since barely any units moved. Jefferson and VB also never had to pay for audio development and voice acting. I am pretty confident that even those two titles combined did not lose anywhere near as much money as RLH.
Feargus made good decisions in cancelling Torn and SK2. One might suggest that it would have been an even better decision to never start them, but hindsight, etc.
Profitable BIS titles: Fallout 2, Torment, IceWind Dale, Heart of Winter, IceWind Dale 2, Baldur’s Gate, Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur’s Gate 2, Throne of Baal
Unprofitable/loss BIS titles: StoneKeep 2, Torn, Jefferson (alias Baldur’s Gate 3), Van Buren (alias Fallout 3), Lionheart
Of the above, only Lionheart actually shipped. Compare this list to the general Interplay list. Christ, Sacrifice sold about the same number of units as Heart of Winter, and Heart of Winter was not good. I remember walking through the halls of Interplay’s marketing/PR department around the time before Sacrifice and HoW were supposed to ship. At the time, HoW was getting one-page ads (this was before Justin’s two-page spread). Sacrifice got six-page spreads (yes, six) in holiday issues of something like fifteen magazines. It blew my mind.
Interplay’s problems certainly can’t be traced to a single source. However, I’d start pointing at a lot of other places before I’d point at games that didn’t ship in the past two years.
(lu sur NMA)
Trop d’années de développement dans des titres qui ne sont même pas sortis, quel gachis.
Ca fait des années que je le souhaite: vivement qu’Interplay vende sa license Fallout à une boite de développement compétente. Maintenant on sait que Troika n’a pas des 1000 et des 100 à mettre là dedans (ce que demandera Interplay pour se sortir de sa merde fiancière), même s’ils aimeraient l’avoir. Donc à moins que personne ne soit intéressé par cette license, ça m’étonnerait qu’elle tombe entre leurs mains.
Ou au mieux c’est un éditeur qui la rachète et qui demande à Troika de leur faire un jeu dessus (comme le fait Activision avec la license Vampire), connaissant leur expérience avec cette license ![]()
