Spencer, head of Xbox: most game manufacturers rely too much on the "old IP of more than a decade ago" and dare not "take risks"

CTOnews.com, September 27 (Xinhua)-- with the release of new FTC v. Microsoft acquisition documents, Microsoft Xbox director Spencer believes that the vast majority of game manufacturers are relying on "the old IP of more than a decade ago," and these publishers are not willing to take the risk of "developing a new game IP."

CTOnews.com inquired that Spencer said in a leaked email that the vast majority of game makers are conservative in terms of risk and reward, discouraging "taking risks on new things" and relying more on the old IP of more than a decade ago.

Before the era of Steam, physical games were mainstream, and it was extremely important for manufacturers to go up and down the store and advertise, which was something that small studios could not do at all.

Now that we have come to the digital age, not only the way of buying and selling has changed, but also the way of publicity is also different, even the largest exhibition E3 of that year is about to disappear.

This also allows large manufacturers to rely on other advantages, such as the 3A game budget. Things like Activision's call of Duty and Take-Two 's Wild Dart: redemption 2 are rare, and the minimum return on capital from large-scale production will be very high, which greatly hinders the creative level of developers.

Now we can see that more and more 3A games use IP to avoid risks, such as "Star Wars", "Spider-Man", "Avatar" and so on, so the industry will stagnate, these game manufacturers will only drain the value of IP, and many companies are still taking advantage of the successful old IP of more than a decade ago.

▲ image source leaked FTC documents Spencer believes that as many game manufacturers find that innovation risk is higher, more turn to rely on "old IP", "successful IP", let a group of fixed players pay for this, rather than actively explore, in "new things to take risks."