It's solely down to greed and nothing got to do with development costs or time. Many studios/publishers turn a very nice profit releasing games without mt's, like CDPR with TW3. I'm pretty sure even SW:BFII has already covered production costs without mt's turned on and made some profit, but it's just not enough for the likes of EA and their only goal is to make as much money as possible.

"This business is very competitive"

Thing is that competitiveness shouldn't be based on the market being sold to. A company that offers a product that's going to make or break them doesn't have the right to build safeguards into that assures that they more than make money from it. Especially when those safeguards compromise the quality of that product.

Are companies entitled to a fair profit for offered products? Of course. But what we're seeing with SW Battlefront 2 the Destiny series and something like MG Survive aren't attempts at "fair" profit. They're exploitation. That other games like Team Frotress and Overwatch are good examples of MTs, of manufactured excessive profit, is besides the point.

If a game isn't successful, having a MT implementation isn't likely to make them more successful. Just means the loss wouldn't be as great....and even then, that's a maybe as it still may be a significant loss. Games fail. Doesn't matter if they're SP or MP. Being MP doesn't insure success anymore than being SP does. In fact, a MP game that fails at the start is likely to never be successful, whereas a SP game has more chance to eventually recoup investment through other means such as sales or inclusion through PS+/GWG/Humble Bundles. SP games aren't reliant on a user base to continue on, so if a MP game goes on one of those services, it still may not have enough users to make it successful for the long run.

The only MP games which get the big AAA budgets are those that are proven successful, or have really strong backing from proven developers with good ideas to make something great. But there is far less risk taken when making new AAA MP games, compared to their SP counterparts.

A SP or MP game take about the same time to develop overall. MP games require more post release support though.

Many SP games released nowadays actually have a lot of time that can be put into them. A side effect of the open world trend. I just put 100 hours into ME:A...although I have no idea why since I didn't enjoy it much. I put about 70 hours into Horizon. I could easily put 20-30 hours into any given Naughty Dog game while attempting to get the platinum. I put in about 20 hours into R&C. So on and so forth. While a lot of those games have MT or even MP, I didn't use any of them, and outside ME:A, they were all pretty successful.

The issue of MP or MT is not as black and white as a lot of people make it out to be.

HZD wasn't guaranteed success. Sony has had big new IP AAA games which failed in the past. The Order being a fairly recent example, although I'd wager they still made their investment back based on initial sales. No game, regardless of budget or production quality is gauranteed success. Mass Effect Andromeda should have sold gang busters being in the ME franchise. but it flopped pretty hard. So much so the chances of the trilogy being completed are pretty slim.

New MP games with MT aren't gauranteed success either. Lawbreakers, despite having CliffyB's name behind it, and tons of exposure through the media, flopped. Titanfall which could have been a huge new IP this gen did well, but it isn't likely to ever hit the big MP list because they went exclusive to MS with the first game. MHW is probably in the AAA realm. It's a big game with a ton of content. Its production quality isn't in the same line as most big budget AAA games this day, but I'm sure that the game was still up in the 30 million dollar range in terms of budget.

Otherwise, I do agree that a game doesn't have to be AAA to be successful. Just that a AAA game that flops tends to be a bigger hit to the bottom line than a mid-tier game that also flops, and return on investment is much more likely on a lower budget game due to sheer install base of systems nowadays.

Wow I'm in awe of your comment! HZD was a HUGE gamble, hell there were "doomsday" articles on here saying it wouldn't be successful!

Your right that games don't have to be AAA though as Hellblade is a great example of this!

HZD wasn't a guaranteed success. It was a pretty big risk for Sony and I'm glad it paid off for them.

You people probably didn't read any articles about that each year creating video games costs more and more? Seriously, because microtransactions are bad for us, consumers (in a SHORT run, that is), it'll obviously make many of us hate it do a degree of making excuses for developers explanation around the concept. We may think they're greedy, but the truth is, while, sure, some of them obviously are, but some of them actually NEED it to survive in the gaming market.

If a game is good enough, it'll sell millions and millions of copies without the help of MTs.

Plus, the market is growing each year as development costs go up, so they even out. Like I have said in almost a dozen articles now, the gaming industry is one of if not the highest grossing form of media today. Games are making billions of dollars in a few days where it takes weeks to a month plus for a movie to break even $1B, and that's with generally a $200-250M budget PLUS marketing. That's not even factoring how much money one single copy generates versus a ticket or a CD/MP3 download.

Games do not, never have, never need MT's/Loot Boxes. Pure and simple. $60 is all I should have to pay for a game and should have all the content on the disc, and nothing more. Want to add to it after development is all said and done? Fantastic. Don't take away from the main game to do that. All these "cosmetics" were free just a few short years ago and I didn't hear anybody screaming for additional money needed.

@Enturax

Are you getting that info from them or an actual investor site? Just take a look at this ycharts report from EA and you can see they are spending much less then they were in 2008. https://puu.sh/zAFzi/c9fbe2...

They like to lie to protect their reputation, don't fall for their lines. Though I should clarify the data varies across the board. Companies like Take 2 spent a measly 49.9 million last quarter compared to 2011's 19 million, but that cost is in no way hindering their development to the point of NEEDING MTs. Their potential earnings are hit instead but they like to use fallacies to imply it's needed when it's "We'll make a few million less because we spent more." It doesn't matter tho they have GTAV and RDR2 so there's no excuses.

Its like the final episode of the Sapranos. You gonna go to make a comment and when you click add th-

Timezone thing maybe.... RIP