CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red
These are the breaks when you deal with an empire the size of Disney. They have altered the bargain, theater owners. Pray they do not alter it any further.
It is a free world. Theater owners do not have to screen the Last Jedi, and as many of them chose not to.
We are not talking about withholding medicine or necessities like food & water here.
Disney has an impressive list of demands for theaters who want to show 'The Last Jedi
"This deal is getting worse all the time."
Lando Calrissian's statement about his arrangement with Darth Vader could well be on the minds of theater owners, given that they reportedly have to hand over a record 65 percent of the ticket take from The Last Jedi to Disney.
The contract to run the latest Star Wars film, which lands everywhere in just six weeks, also ups Disney's take to 70 percent if the theater puts a foot wrong on a number of counts, according to a Wall Street Journalreport.
U.S. theater owners are required to run the movie for four weeks without skipping a single screening if they want to avoid that penalty. They also have to run specific marketing promotions for the film exactly when Disney wants, and not a day early.
It's an unusual clause, both in its duration (two weeks is more common for hit Disney movies) and its level of punishment — 5 percent of the Last Jedi gross could make the difference between profit and loss for many theaters.
Other blockbuster movies might give at most a 60 percent take to the studio, and even then the theater would usually get more after the first week or so. Internationally, a 40 percent cut is more common.
The Mouse House can issue these demands, of course, because it's holding all the cards. While ticket sales for most movies are down across the board this year, Disney subsidiaries Marvel and Lucasfilm are turning out reliable hit after reliable hit.
And this isn't the first time the promise of a Star Wars movie has been used as leverage with theaters. In 2002, George Lucas insisted theaters would have to install digital projectors if they wanted to screen Episode II. When 20th Century Fox distributed the original movie in 1977, theaters were forced to screen another Fox film, The Other Side of Midnight, if they wanted Star Wars. (Before the movie became a surprise hit, Fox insisted on the same deal in reverse: If theaters wanted Midnight, they had to agree to screen Star Wars.)
But in particular, The Last Jedi is likely to be a tentpole movie that makes other blockbusters look like a tiny kids' tent. Its predecessor, The Force Awakens, became the top grossing film of all time in the U.S. within the first three weeks of its release.
By the end of its run, The Force Awakens had grossed an incredible $937 million in American theaters and another $1.1 billion around the world. It was seen on more than 4,000 screens in the U.S., and some theaters kept showing the film until June 2016. Not bad, considering it opened in December 2015. If The Last Jedi does that kind of business, it will change a lot of bottom lines for a lot of multiplexes.
Put it like that, and Disney's terms seem a little less onerous. Still, the Journal spoke to theater owners in smaller markets who said the economics of the deal just didn't make sense for them, and they would not sign on for The Last Jedi. Why screen a movie for four weeks if everyone in your tiny town will have already seen it after week 2?
These are the breaks when you deal with an empire the size of Disney. They have altered the bargain, theater owners. Pray they do not alter it any further.
Our society is becoming obsessive about perfection. I don't recall a perfect Star Wars game ever being made.
A number of people around here will tell you that Star Wars Galaxies was perfect before this the New Game Experience wrecked it.
More seriously, EA does all sorts of obnoxious stuff all the time. If you hear about some big, well-known game publisher having done something scandalous, EA is the culprit more often than not. I've got a simple solution for this: don't buy anything from EA. I've been boycotting them for over 20 years now, and in that time, they've given me plenty of additional reasons to justify that and none to reconsider that stance. There are many other publishers and developers who are far more customer-friendly.
It is a business and it is managed like one. You know what your boycott resulted in? You missed a hell of a lot of fantastic games over the last 20 years: Mass Effect trilogy, Dragon Age series just to name a few. What did EA lose? A few hundred dollars?
Name a developer that is publically traded that is more "customer-friendly" than EA. I get the EA-hate. There is significant evidence that their employee satisfaction isn't where it could be. They buy out publishers and force them to churn out games at break-neck speeds, they make missteps in popular IPs and franchises (Star Wars, Call of Duty etc.), and they slap years on nearly identical games and charge you the retail value of a new game. What does this all add up to? They manage their company. Wow, surprising, I can't imagine we would do anything different in the place of any executive at EA. Why? Because shareholders. Because performance. Because being a company, a good company, is sort of like playing a game and guess what: they are winning.
Stop being naive.
@Scorchien I think you need to check your facts: Activision-Blizzard currently has a market cap of 48B while EA is at 33B. Activision-Blizzard also pulls in nearly 2B more in revenue.
Disney has an impressive list of demands for theaters who want to show 'The Last Jedi
"This deal is getting worse all the time."
Lando Calrissian's statement about his arrangement with Darth Vader could well be on the minds of theater owners, given that they reportedly have to hand over a record 65 percent of the ticket take from The Last Jedi to Disney.
The contract to run the latest Star Wars film, which lands everywhere in just six weeks, also ups Disney's take to 70 percent if the theater puts a foot wrong on a number of counts, according to a Wall Street Journalreport.
U.S. theater owners are required to run the movie for four weeks without skipping a single screening if they want to avoid that penalty. They also have to run specific marketing promotions for the film exactly when Disney wants, and not a day early.
It's an unusual clause, both in its duration (two weeks is more common for hit Disney movies) and its level of punishment — 5 percent of the Last Jedi gross could make the difference between profit and loss for many theaters.
Other blockbuster movies might give at most a 60 percent take to the studio, and even then the theater would usually get more after the first week or so. Internationally, a 40 percent cut is more common.
The Mouse House can issue these demands, of course, because it's holding all the cards. While ticket sales for most movies are down across the board this year, Disney subsidiaries Marvel and Lucasfilm are turning out reliable hit after reliable hit.
And this isn't the first time the promise of a Star Wars movie has been used as leverage with theaters. In 2002, George Lucas insisted theaters would have to install digital projectors if they wanted to screen Episode II. When 20th Century Fox distributed the original movie in 1977, theaters were forced to screen another Fox film, The Other Side of Midnight, if they wanted Star Wars. (Before the movie became a surprise hit, Fox insisted on the same deal in reverse: If theaters wanted Midnight, they had to agree to screen Star Wars.)
But in particular, The Last Jedi is likely to be a tentpole movie that makes other blockbusters look like a tiny kids' tent. Its predecessor, The Force Awakens, became the top grossing film of all time in the U.S. within the first three weeks of its release.
By the end of its run, The Force Awakens had grossed an incredible $937 million in American theaters and another $1.1 billion around the world. It was seen on more than 4,000 screens in the U.S., and some theaters kept showing the film until June 2016. Not bad, considering it opened in December 2015. If The Last Jedi does that kind of business, it will change a lot of bottom lines for a lot of multiplexes.
Put it like that, and Disney's terms seem a little less onerous. Still, the Journal spoke to theater owners in smaller markets who said the economics of the deal just didn't make sense for them, and they would not sign on for The Last Jedi. Why screen a movie for four weeks if everyone in your tiny town will have already seen it after week 2?
These are the breaks when you deal with an empire the size of Disney. They have altered the bargain, theater owners. Pray they do not alter it any further.
This makes me wonder what the list of demands for Gaz was for Marvel Heroes.
Indeed as much as we like to stick it to EA for some of their choices seems to me Disney is being a greedy little bugger and like some others have posted it makes you wonder what the deal is they have with some others like Gaz...
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Do petitions ever work? Im not being sarcastic , I would seriously like to know if anyone has any real proof that any of these change org petitions actually doing something
Do petitions ever work? Im not being sarcastic , I would seriously like to know if anyone has any real proof that any of these change org petitions actually doing something
Sometimes.
I've signed a number of change.org petitions that "did" work. Or at least whatever it was that I wanted to happen "happened". Whether or not the petition was instrumental in helping the cause is something I do not know.
However, these were "Real things", actual social causes where in some cases lives were on the line or there was an environmental issue.
Not video games.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
EA should lose every license, stop making games and disappear from the game industry forever. Who knows how many more great games and gaming memories we'd have today if EA hadn't destroyed some of the greatest game development studios. They're basically a cancer on the entire industry.
hmmm, those development studios didn't have to sell to EA.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
EA should lose every license, stop making games and disappear from the game industry forever. Who knows how many more great games and gaming memories we'd have today if EA hadn't destroyed some of the greatest game development studios. They're basically a cancer on the entire industry.
hmmm, those development studios didn't have to sell to EA.
Yeah but it just feels great when you succumb to the darkness' warm embrace. Come now, give us a hug.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Overall, the success or failure of SW:BF2 won't affect EA's long term finances, what it will do however, at least i am hoping it will, is affect how developers/publishers implement loot box mechanics into games, i can only hope that this whole EA fiasco will begin the move away from Loot Boxes, even if it means having cash shops selling even more cosmetic items, or whatever. If EA is going to have P2W mechanics in their games, which for SW:BF2 it most certainly did, then at least don't try and hide it behind gamble boxes that exploits those players who literally can't help themselves because they have addictive personalities, that these tend to be children rather than adults is especially egregious. Modern gaming is becoming something of a morass of immoral practices, its why i have ultimately decided to dodge the bullet for Destiny 2, SW:BF2 and ME:Andromeda to name just a few, is it really so hard for developers to bring out a game that isn't mired in controversial practices? why are so many games these days either cash grabs or thinly veiled political statements. If developers/publishers want my money then they are going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than they are now, but on the bonus side, 'ding' Hype Resistance (78). Everquest, still a source of meme's decades later
I have watched this site's popular topic dicussions move from discussing game development to discussing business models...........Why the hell do I want to talk about business models? Why do we even have to?
Given that the decision to make a new trilogy is almost certainly a result of poor earnings for Disney as a whole,...
What?
You do realize that Disney is one of the largest, most profitable media companies in the world today?
The decision to make a new trilogy is because it prints money for them.
Where in the world did you get this ridiculous idea?
I also recall seeing something reported that Disney was in part to blame for the BF2 fiasco. Are you assuming that the license that EA has doesn't have revenue sharing with Disney in it? Because I'm betting it does and it would benefit Disney as much as EA to nickel and dime customers.
And @Rosenborg EA saw a stock dip from the BF2 fiasco, I don't recall seeing any stock fall for Disney. The bad publicity was literally bad for EA, not Disney.
The license doesn't really need to go anywhere, mostly because there's a lot of assuming that it's all EA and Disney doesn't have any hand in anything and I think that's wrong. The thing that would fix things for this franchise, as well as games as a whole, would be to let the developers make games and the executives get out of the way and stop trying to nickel dime consumers to death. These people aren't making games for gamers, they're making games for stock holders who want to see the stock go up by any means necessary, because that's the job of the executives behind the games, and that's who decides what gets made.
"We The People" need stronger consumer protection laws, or a serious investigation into predatory practices of online game companies.
EA as a company has to be revamped, to provide adult gamers an adult service and an adult gaming platforms. 13 year olds are not buying these Xbox systems, or building PCs. There is a massive gap and omission from EA's CEO in marketing & demographics. EA treats each consumers as a teenager or kid. When legally, only people over 18 can play online games.
EA needs to grow up and learn to respect their customers like Blizzard & others do. Otherwise they are going to fall into a death spiral chasing these little kid's pocket change.
Yup people bitch about EA but give them butt loads of money in swtor.
I don't give EA any money. I've actually never given EA any money. The only two EA games that I have are one that was given to me for my birthday or Christmas about 25 years ago that I hadn't asked for, and one that was included used with an SNES that was a replacement for my own SNES console that died.
What's really going on here is that some people are boycotting EA while others don't see anything wrong with EA's shenanigans and buy their games. That's a difference of opinion on what behavior is acceptable from game companies, and not hypocrisy on the part of either side.
Name a developer that is publically traded that is more "customer-friendly" than EA.
Why should I care about publicly traded? Without even leaving MMORPGs, there is Blizzard, Square Enix, NCSoft, En Masse, and Trion, for starters, and that's just among the big ones. There are plenty of smaller developers with behavior more to my liking than EA as well, especially if you're not just talking MMORPGs anymore. Some but not all of those are either publicly traded or a subsidiary of a company that is.
What do you plan to have done with the Star Wars license? There are have been two MMORPGs. The only place I'd like to see it used is in single player games, but I'm not a huge fan of the new movies and that would make playing through the single player games pointless for me. If they had another KOTOR single player game I'd probably give it a try.
Disney just need to be more involved than just letting EA do whatever they want is what i wish for. Stop charging money for basic mmo things like races UI elements and any character restrictions like titles and looks. Also gear use. Its the worse business model in mmo history and we have no one to blame but our selves for letting then screw us.
What do you plan to have done with the Star Wars license? There are have been two MMORPGs. The only place I'd like to see it used is in single player games, but I'm not a huge fan of the new movies and that would make playing through the single player games pointless for me. If they had another KOTOR single player game I'd probably give it a try.
Disney just need to be more involved than just letting EA do whatever they want is what i wish for. Stop charging money for basic mmo things like races UI elements and any character restrictions like titles and looks. Also gear use. Its the worse business model in mmo history and we have no one to blame but our selves for letting then screw us.
Thankfully they are not screwing me as I stopped playing MMOs when they went Free to Play. Buying items in games has unfortunately become a standard practice for all companies. I'm sure Disney would do the same thing.
Obsidian would be a good company to have a Star Wars license I believe. I believe they could make another good KOTOR indie style game with it.
What do you plan to have done with the Star Wars license? There are have been two MMORPGs. The only place I'd like to see it used is in single player games, but I'm not a huge fan of the new movies and that would make playing through the single player games pointless for me. If they had another KOTOR single player game I'd probably give it a try.
Disney just need to be more involved than just letting EA do whatever they want is what i wish for. Stop charging money for basic mmo things like races UI elements and any character restrictions like titles and looks. Also gear use. Its the worse business model in mmo history and we have no one to blame but our selves for letting then screw us.
I dunno if that is a good idea. Lucasarts did not exactly help SWG with their decisions, it is probably best to leave game decisions to the game companies.
They could get someone better then EA though, EA and Activision both have gotten very greedy and seems more interested in selling lootboxes, DLCs and other items then making good games. Any company want to make a profit but the surefire way to do that and keep on doing it is by making good games.
When you make mediocre games and live on whales instead people will eventually get it and stop buying your games and buy from companies that still make good games (yes, those exist).
Battlefront 2 is an amazing game. I am not sure why everyone is so angry. As long as everything from lotto boxes can be gained in game it should be no issue. It is literally just like any other F2P game out there with lotto boxes.
Comments
That's true, but the contract wasn't written to allow EA to suck and drag down the IP. Disney wrote in the proper escape pods I'm sure.
CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red, CD Projekt Red
It is a free world. Theater owners do not have to screen the Last Jedi, and as many of them chose not to.
We are not talking about withholding medicine or necessities like food & water here.
Overblown story...
Name a developer that is publically traded that is more "customer-friendly" than EA. I get the EA-hate. There is significant evidence that their employee satisfaction isn't where it could be. They buy out publishers and force them to churn out games at break-neck speeds, they make missteps in popular IPs and franchises (Star Wars, Call of Duty etc.), and they slap years on nearly identical games and charge you the retail value of a new game. What does this all add up to? They manage their company. Wow, surprising, I can't imagine we would do anything different in the place of any executive at EA. Why? Because shareholders. Because performance. Because being a company, a good company, is sort of like playing a game and guess what: they are winning.
Stop being naive.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
https://www.change.org/p/lucasfilm-revoke-ea-s-star-wars-license
Aloha Mr Hand !
Aloha Mr Hand !
I've signed a number of change.org petitions that "did" work. Or at least whatever it was that I wanted to happen "happened". Whether or not the petition was instrumental in helping the cause is something I do not know.
However, these were "Real things", actual social causes where in some cases lives were on the line or there was an environmental issue.
Not video games.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I couldn't even sit through Rogue 1. Force Awakened was more like Farce Awakened.
You do realize that Disney is one of the largest, most profitable media companies in the world today?
The decision to make a new trilogy is because it prints money for them.
Where in the world did you get this ridiculous idea?
I also recall seeing something reported that Disney was in part to blame for the BF2 fiasco. Are you assuming that the license that EA has doesn't have revenue sharing with Disney in it? Because I'm betting it does and it would benefit Disney as much as EA to nickel and dime customers.
And @Rosenborg EA saw a stock dip from the BF2 fiasco, I don't recall seeing any stock fall for Disney. The bad publicity was literally bad for EA, not Disney.
The license doesn't really need to go anywhere, mostly because there's a lot of assuming that it's all EA and Disney doesn't have any hand in anything and I think that's wrong. The thing that would fix things for this franchise, as well as games as a whole, would be to let the developers make games and the executives get out of the way and stop trying to nickel dime consumers to death. These people aren't making games for gamers, they're making games for stock holders who want to see the stock go up by any means necessary, because that's the job of the executives behind the games, and that's who decides what gets made.
EA as a company has to be revamped, to provide adult gamers an adult service and an adult gaming platforms. 13 year olds are not buying these Xbox systems, or building PCs. There is a massive gap and omission from EA's CEO in marketing & demographics. EA treats each consumers as a teenager or kid. When legally, only people over 18 can play online games.
EA needs to grow up and learn to respect their customers like Blizzard & others do. Otherwise they are going to fall into a death spiral chasing these little kid's pocket change.
What's really going on here is that some people are boycotting EA while others don't see anything wrong with EA's shenanigans and buy their games. That's a difference of opinion on what behavior is acceptable from game companies, and not hypocrisy on the part of either side.
Obsidian would be a good company to have a Star Wars license I believe. I believe they could make another good KOTOR indie style game with it.
They could get someone better then EA though, EA and Activision both have gotten very greedy and seems more interested in selling lootboxes, DLCs and other items then making good games. Any company want to make a profit but the surefire way to do that and keep on doing it is by making good games.
When you make mediocre games and live on whales instead people will eventually get it and stop buying your games and buy from companies that still make good games (yes, those exist).