Fair Price For Cross Platform Video Solution? VOTE To make a change...

[orenk 178]

Hi all

i'm working full power on publishing cross platform video solution.
first stage it will be:
1. pc
2. linux
3. mac
second stage will depend on sells so eventually i will add top consoles:
1. xbox 360 (future 720)
2. ps3
more platforms will be added based on customers requirements...

now for the important stuff: Pricing
as you already know or not, its a pain in the butt to create such a solution and at the same time making it fast enough to run multiple hd videos at 30 fps game...

i'v added a poll at the top left corner of my blog: http://orenk2k.blogspot.com/ so i could know what do you think:
YOUR VOTE COUNTS!
believe it or not, but your vote will have a HUGE influence on the price.
pool keywords:
indie = independence/independent
comm = commercial

so... if you have friends, colleague or people who might consider buying such a solution, tell them to vote...

thanks and cya.

[Ashaman73 13715]

IMHO it doesn't matter. The issue is, that the costs of a video playback software, even if is costs several $1000, is dwafed by the cost of creating actually a video for your game.

[orenk 178]

Thanks for your replay
most of the videos could be created via engine cut scene editor or video grabbers like fraps, some videos is third party related such as nvidia, intel, havok etc...

[Hodgman 51864]

Are those prices per platform, per game? Or just per game? [edit] You might want to clarify this on your blog/poll. Edited August 8, 2012 by Hodgman

[orenk 178]

Hi Hodgman
Per platform, per game...
if you will need few platforms for the same game then you will talk with me and you'll get discount depends on platforms and future deals.
keep in mind that i want to get approx price for the standart per platform per game and not prices for all types of licenses (such multi platform, bundle, bulk/publisher deal etc...) that's why i only put 6 choices (3-indie, 3 -commercial) to make it simple.

[Hodgman 51864]

[quote name='Ashaman73' timestamp='1344417972' post='4967312']The issue is, that the costs of a video playback software, is dwafed by the cost of creating actually a video for your game

most of the videos could be created via engine cut scene editor or video grabbers like fraps[/quote]I think what Ashaman meant is that the cost of making content is much more expensive than video-player licensing fees (at least on large commercial projects).

e.g. The last game cutscene that I worked on took 6 weeks and had 1 art-director, 3 animators, 1 lead-artist, 1 texture-artist, 1 lighting-artist, 1 effects-artist, a few 3d environment artists, and me as a graphics programmer, which adds up to somewhere between $60k to 100k -- to make about 45 seconds of footage.
So large commercial game companies can definitely afford Bink's expensive license fees, when compared to these costs!

Meanwhile, let's say that integrating an open source video playback library might take a programmer a week on PC -- $30/hour * 40hour week = $1,200 to create the most basic playback software... which is dwarfed by the above costs of content production. Edited August 8, 2012 by Hodgman

[orenk 178]

you are right that commercial can afford expensive video player fees but still, lets says is a game running on 5 platforms, and pay lets say 40 K for all, i think they would be happy to know that they can pay only 15 K - though it won't hurt them to pay the 40 K.

you mentioned bink so open source solutions are out of the question as they are not close to what binks gives you in terms of speed and features.

think like if you had only NVIDIA or AMD/ATI, they could take every price and you would pay because you don't have any choice, but today, you have a choice, you can choose based on price and features and buy AMD/ATI or NVIDIA.

what i'm trying to do, is to give people a choice, and choose based on price and features.