eedar posts

When a game gets high review scores, publishers frequently use those scores and review quotes in a game's marketing campaign. But do those high scores and positive reviews affect how gamers perceive what a game is like before they play a title? A new study from EEDAR suggests the answer might be, "Yes."

Our sister site Joystiq got an advanced copy of the study which will be officially released next week. The study showed, in summary, that a group of gamers who played PopCap's tower defense game Plants Vs Zombies were far more likely to want a copy of the game if the group was shown high reviews of the title compared to groups of gamers who were shown low reviews and those who were shown no reviews at all (all of the reviews were created just for the study but were labeled as coming from well known media outlets).

EEDAR states that the study also seems to show that high game reviews, "have a strong positive impact on the likelihood of positive word-of-mouth recommendations." Of course this is not foolproof; we have seen many cases in the past where even high review scores for a PC game are not enough to boost sales.

It looks like you can't trust anybody anymore. This weekend Forbes.com posted up a story claiming that just four percent of games that are released are actually profitable. The story was based on talking with the Electronic Entertainment Design and Research organization.

As it turned out, Forbes.com got it wrong. Our sister site GameDaily reports that EEDAR has sent over a correction to the article, saying that while four percent of games that start production make a profit the number jumps way up for games that are actually released. EEDAR says that number is a much higher 20 percent. While that is a much bigger number it still means that 80 percent of games release either don't make a profit or break even.

The game industry has been growing by leaps and bounds for the most part but a research firm claims that only 4 percent of games that make it to store shelves actually end up being profitable. This info from a Forbes.com article comes from the research firm Electronic Entertainment Design and Research.

Founded in 2006, the firm says it has worked with a number of major game publishers to determine if their upcoming games will become profitable. It uses a database of 6,000 games and a number of variables to figure out sales of a game, including genre, rating, projected release dates, the quality of a game's development team and more. According to EEDAR president Geoffrey Zatkin, "About 60 (percent) of a game's budget is spent reworking or redesigning a game. Armed with all this data, companies can make those tough calls early in the development process."