News Arkane Studios acquired by Zenimax Media

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/08/13/arkane-studios-acquired-by-zenimax-media/1

 

Seems like a good match given that both Arkane and Zenimax have a strong RPG heritage. Unfortunately the cost of RPGs seems to be taking a toll on many developers - a recent example being Radon Lab's (the developers of Drakensang) bankruptcy and subsequent acquisition by BigPoint.

 

I want another Dark Messiah of Might and Magic...

 

Bankruptcy is because making genuinely good RPGs is no longer profitable. Rising production values plus a genre whose games require a whole lot of unique content just isn't viable, even for many large developers, which is why you are seeing guys like BioWare and Bethesda do their best to switch over to action games instead of actual RPGs. It's a sad state of affairs, and at this point I'm quite inclined to blame the current generation of gamers rather than Evil Capitalists.

 

*Reinstalls Arx Fatalis*

 

Mmm - I think the profit is there, look at recent releases like Dragon Age, The Witcher and Neverwinter Nights 2. However the upfront costs (due to the reasons you noted) and development time seem higher than in other fields - the original Neverwinter Nights took over 5 years at Bioware.

 

As an independent developer working on my own RPG (Fatal Optimization) it's an absolutely ENORMOUS undertaking. Especially when you do all content creation yourself as well. I can well see why just developing an RPG bankrupts people. It's very difficult.

 

The audience for Rpg's is shrinking.

FPS/RPG with real time combat is what's up. Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl sold 4 million copies on the PC with very little advertisement as it was a solid FPS with loads of exploration and RPG elements.

Turn base warfare only works for Pokemon and Final Fantasy