Will XBL EVER Release XMen or The Simpson Arcade 4 Player...

[DCAllAmerican]

classics? I THINK I remember an article that you (Racketboy) wrote but I can't really remember

[aaron]

all of those games (TMNT included) are konami games and i would love to see them released as some sort of package someday. my friend definitely had amiga32 versions of TMNT and the simpsons arcade. they were/are awesome.

[All Hail The New Flesh]

X-Men I am not sure it will happen, The Simpsons on the other hand will happen since The Simpsons movie will come out soon and they might release the Simpsons game...Hey, they did it with TMNT, one of the reasons why they released it on the XBLA because they where advertising the movie, so they might do the same thing with The Simpsons, just release it sometime before the movie comes out...or maybe the DVD release.

[racketboy]

I REALLY hope so.
Having the Ninja Turtles released gives me hope that licensed games like that have a chance...

[lordofduct]

I bet they will... with Konami also releasing "Castlevania", they are probably testing the waters and I guarantee you it is selling well (gauntlet... an OLD rehash was in the top 10 selling XBLA downloads) just imagine how many people jumped all over Castlevania and its ads all over the dashboard.

They'd have to be stupid to not see the amazing profit margins on XBLA. Look at it this way (I have my friend researching this a lot for our own company)

100 MS points cost 1.25 US dollars
The average game costs 800 points
That is an average price of 10 dollars per game
100 thousand units is a very reasonable quote of units for a quality, ok game to sell (nevermind big name games like Konamis)
That is 1 million dollars! Microsoft keeps a percentage ranging from 30% to 70% (depending on the hosting needs they require... such as XBOX Live multiplayer functionality)
So lets assume it averages out to 50%... that is a profit of 500,000 US Dollars for a game on a MERE 100 thousand units.

Konami would easily best that 100K units... (the top sellers have sold MUCH more then that) and they only put in a minimal amount of effort (it is just a port) and there are hardly ANY publishing costs (no printing, no distributing... its just a license and advertisement... Which MS DOES FOR YOU! If you pay more they advertise it on the dashboard as well!)

The advertisement is amazing too... you might not think it is much... but on the dashboard is an option to automatically download ALL new trials. There are several users who have this on, this alone puts your game in 100s of thousands of households automatically!

Konami would make a very nice profit, it wouldn't be anything near an in store release, but the amount of overhead is negligeable and net cost/net profit margin is huge. A freakin' no brainer!


For instance an indie game developed by a small group of designers at an initial licensing cost (development software and hardware) of about 25 grand and a payroll cost of about 125 grand a year (which is negligeable by indie developers who swallow that in ties to the indie company) would profit greatly. Such in the case of title like Geometry Wars (top selling game on XBLA for several months) and Marble Blast.

In the instance of a big company like Konami who puts a handful of payrolled programmers to port the game with minor upgrades of nearing 200K in 6 months look to easily triple their cost/profit margin easily with out expanded advertising... add on the extra advertising and they widen that gap even more.



Keep in mind this is a very uneducated estimate from me... I am not the one researching the figures. I have someone else doing the research and I am pulling it from memory during our meetings.

Oh yeah and another thing I should say... titles like The Simpsons and X-men WILL require royalties so those games would decrease the profits. But Seeing as TMNT was released, hopefully they make a reasonable profit off of that which will probably increase interest in licensed games like on top of there in house titles. But I am betting we will see more in house titles then licensed titles as the profits are much larger... upside licensed games have a nice advertising back to ride on. Probably why TMNT was released in tune with the release of the movie...

I saw the movie last night too... FUN! See it if your a TMNT fan (I used to watch the cartoon, movies and read the comics a lot)... if your not a fan at all... I suggest to go elsewhere.

[racketboy]

Well, what I was alluding to was the licensing/legal issues for these game.

TMNT was probably the trickiest since Konami doesn't have the TMNT rights anymore. That's why you're seeing Ubisoft as the publisher.

For X-Men, you not only have to clear it with Konami and Marvel, but EA which has the current rights to Marvel gaming properties, IIRC

Simpsons would need to have an agreement with Fox, but that's about it, I would guess.

[lordofduct]

Well, what I was alluding to was the licensing/legal issues for these game.

TMNT was probably the trickiest since Konami doesn't have the TMNT rights anymore. That's why you're seeing Ubisoft as the publisher.

For X-Men, you not only have to clear it with Konami and Marvel, but EA which has the current rights to Marvel gaming properties, IIRC

Simpsons would need to have an agreement with Fox, but that's about it, I would guess.

I expanded on these topics... I was editing my post probably while you were writing that.

[racketboy]

Well, what I was alluding to was the licensing/legal issues for these game.

TMNT was probably the trickiest since Konami doesn't have the TMNT rights anymore. That's why you're seeing Ubisoft as the publisher.

For X-Men, you not only have to clear it with Konami and Marvel, but EA which has the current rights to Marvel gaming properties, IIRC

Simpsons would need to have an agreement with Fox, but that's about it, I would guess.

I expanded on these topics... I was editing my post probably while you were writing that.

no problem

[Gamerforlife]

I was actually listening to a gaming podcast today. It's hard to remember which, since I listen to a couple of different ones. Actually, I believe it was a 1up podcast focusing on the history of Simpsons video games. Anyway, one of the hosts said he spoke to someone recently who said that they are actually plannng an upcoming release for the Simpsons Arcade game on Xbox Live Arcade. I don't have any hard evidence to back that up, but I presume we can give the guys at 1up some credibility and assume that he wasn't making this up

For me, this would be even more awesome than X-Men and TMNT being released. I would love, love, LOVE getting to play this on a regular tv on an actual console!

[The Last Horseman]

You know that you revived a 4 year old topic right? Just making sure.