I wonder if there are any websites out there that keep a running total of leaked games? (Well, major game releases anyways.)
Here are the big ones I can remember, including these 2 most recent ones:
Killzone 3 (PS3) - Feb 12, 2011
Crysis 2 (PC) - Feb 11, 2011
COD Black Ops (X360) - Oct 18, 2010
Halo: Reach (X360) - Aug 20, 2010
Halo 3 ODST (X360) - Aug 28, 2009
The Sims 3 (PC) - May 18, 2009
Spore (PC) - Aug 31, 2008
GTA IV (X360) - Apr 23, 2008
Halo 3 (X360) - Sep 21, 2007
GTA San Andreas (PS2) - Oct 20, 2004
Halo 2 (XBOX) - Oct 13, 2004
World of Warcraft (PC) - Jan 4, 2004
Gran Turismo 4 (PS2) - Nov 2, 2003
DOOM 3 (PC) - Nov 3, 2002
Half-Life 2 (PC) - Oct 2, 2003
Crytek is blaming pirates for the leak. Which is weird.. wasn't it leaked by an internal (possibly disgruntled) employee? Pirates can be blamed for spreading the game, but not for leaking it in the first place.
Did Blizzard blame piracy when a member of their senior management team leaked confidential subscriber data, financials, and product release slates? Even Carmack had it right when the DOOM 3 leak happened, he blamed ATI for the leak - not pirates.
Did you noticed something else about these leaked games by the way?
They went on to experience HUGE commercial success and awards. These were top selling games worldwide! Even after the GTA IV console version was leaked, it still went on to sell what.. over 19 million copies by now? Doom 3, GT4, The Sims, Half-life 2, Halo.. these are the best selling games in the world.
The only trend I see here is that leaked games go on to become hugely popular and financially successful games.
If the game is bad, though, you can just blame piracy for the bad sales. Right, Crytek?
Game leaks, and other forms of media, have been pretty common for decades actually. I'm sure some news sites may try to link the current popularity of Wikileaks to leaks like this.. "the reason for these leaks is because we live in a Wikileaks generation." Even though that has nothing to do with it.
Now that I'm thinking back, what other kind of stuff has been leaked? I remember the X-Men/Hulk/Harry Potter films being leaked.. DVD screeners, tons of TV series leaked months in advance. Haha.. ah yes, I remember when the pilot episode of Doctor Who was leaked back in 2005 and BBC spokeswoman Annie Frederick claimed that it wasn't a publicity stunt and that the leaked version was completely different from their final version - apparently, the leaked version was unfinished and an incomplete rough cut. After the "real" version came out, it was discovered that the only real difference between the two was the intro music. Good one Annie. Since viral marketing was all the rage back in '05, her claims led me to believe that it probably WAS a publicity stunt after all.
Anyways.. for other (real) internal leaks, it just goes to show that employers need to improve their hiring standards and screening processes, and once they get good employees, they need to treat them very well. There's nothing worse than a disgruntled employee, they'll end up costing you more than any possible revenue they could have made for you. (Things like weak performance, theft, sabotage, influencing other employees, complaining about your company and changing perceptions, creating hostile work environments, security issues, being a bottleneck, and vandalism tend to cost companies a lot of money.)
* UPDATE:
Here were some other games that leaked. If I find any others, I'll keep updating. (If you know of any, just leave a comment and I'll update/change dates too if I got one wrong.)
Assassin's Creed (PC) - Feb 24, 2008 (Ubisoft blamed the disc-replication firm Optical Experts Manufacturing for the leak.)
Fable 2 (X360) - Oct 16, 2008
Fallout 3 (X360) - Oct 8, 2008 (Bethesda blamed the press for leaking a review copy.)
Far Cry 2 (X360) - Oct 16, 2008
Manhunt 2 - Sep 7, 2007 (Sony Europe employee was blamed and later fired.)
Painkiller (PC) - Dec 31, 2003
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (PC) - Dec 30, 2003
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat (PC) - Sep 28, 2009
World of Warcraft Expansion Packs (Alpha TBC, WOTLK, CATA months before release.)
I think Manhunt 2 is proof alone that controversy and game-leaks can sell even bad games well. Manhunt 2 sold 500,000 more copies than they should have. =]
* UPDATE (02/18/2011):
Bulletstorm (X360) has apparently been "leaked", but in fact the street date was just broken by a retailer. So it's not really considered a leak, but it has been out for 4 days before retail.
* UPDATE (03/06/2011):
Homefront (PC) - Mar 6, 2011 (Kaos Studios indirectly blamed Steam)
* UPDATE (11/07/2011):
Battlefield 3 (PC) - Leaked Oct 16, Release Date: Oct 28
Gears of War 3 (XBOX360) - Leaked Jul 2, Release Date: Sep 20
Batman: Arkham City (XBOX360) - Leaked Oct 13, Release Date: Nov 21
RAGE (XBOX360 / PS3) - Leaked Sep 30, Release Date: Oct 4
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (X360 / PS3) - Leaked Aug 18, Release Date: Aug 23 (Retailer broke street date.)
Resistance 3 (PS3) - Leaked Aug 20, Release Date: Sep 6
The Witcher 2 (PC) - Leaked May 8, Release Date: May 17
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (X360) - Leaked Oct 25, Release Date: Nov 8
Mass Effect 3 (X360) - Leaked Nov 5 2011, Release Date: Mar 6, 2012 (Bioware blames MS XBOX Live "Human Error")
An interesting read on 1UP following those most recent Take Two announcements.
Oh! A while back, Pachter also predicted GTA 5 would be released in 2010. =]
Here were some of his other past predictions/comments:
1. Mafia II unlikely to be profitable and would not recoup the cost of game development. (Source)
Take Two still has DLC development underway for Mafia II this year. On Steam, it was in the Top 10 of best selling games for 2010 (even though Mafia II came out just 4 months before the end of the year.)
2. Starcraft 2 would sell 6 million units on opening day, however it ended up being 1.5 million instead. (By the end of the first month, they sold 3 million units worldwide and by end of February they sold 4.5 million units.)
After first day sales were released by Blizzard, he adjusted his prediction and made it 5 million total copies within 2-3 months. However, it took 7 months before it reached 4.5 million units. =]
I didn't think it was really fair though, making such a big change after seeing all of the sales details. Not that it helped either though..
3. He was highly skeptical of Red Dead Redemption, and stated that it was not blockbuster material.
4. On a related note, he's predicting that LA Noire will be comparable in sales and just as successful as Red Dead Redemption (after he apologized for underestimating RDR in the first place.)
Personally, I have my doubts about LA Noire though.. it looks like a great game, but it's like releasing a natural disaster movie in the middle of vampire film/TV season. I've been watching Google/Twitter trends and monitoring other various patterns, but there's very little interest in LA Noire so far (especially in comparison to other big name releases coming out during the same period).
I'm worried that the game might end up being too linear or storyline driven, with most of the game taking place with cut scenes and NPC interaction (after all, they spent a lot of time and money on voice acting and facial imaging). If there are too many NPC conversations and detective mini-games that are impossible to lose, it takes away from the freedom and excitement of exploring in RDR and GTA. What if there's little in the way of side quests (errr... "investigations") and everything in the game is based on one single storyline or one investigation after the other? Then it just becomes an interactive visual novel.
The other thing that worries me is that people are mostly talking about how "great it looks", but very little about the actual gameplay, story, characters or music. I still think first month's hypetastic sales will be very good mind you (I'm predicting ~2.5 million worldwide for the first month), but I don't think they will be as high as RDR in the long run. I also think Michael Pachter will be left disappointed with his own sales predictions. =] Hopefully, Team Bondi is developing a very stable game too.. this game is going to make or break them.
5. He thought that Ubisoft DRM was a good idea.
6. He said Borderlands would fail badly.
7. He's predicting that the Activision-Bungie game will sell 10-15 million on opening day. I'll have to come back to this one at a much later date.
His predictions, of course, have a lot of IF's and BUT's. IF it's as popular as Halo, IF it's released on multiple platforms, IF they have a good sales day.. blah blah blah. Come on, where's the hard science and figures?
From what I've seen online, he wasn't too bad going back 5-7+ years ago but things have gone very bad for him since late 2008. So, it's probably a good idea for him to leave his predictions more open ended like he did with the Activision/Bungie unannounced game.
Some mildly interesting stuff:
- Cataclysm sales were supposed to push them over $600 million in revenue (for Cataclysm sales alone, excluding new subs and older WoW game purchases), but they earned $544 million instead. GAAP Revenue was $340 million for this most recent quarter, but they're deferring $204 million to next quarter. Nice way to show a constant revenue growth each quarter. =]
- Earnings basically showed those 4.7 million Cataclysm sales over 3 months as detailed earlier. Since they were expecting to earn about $320 million (if Cataclysm never launched) for the quarter, and that $544 million included all new WoW/TBC/WOTLK sales as well, there doesn't appear to be much of an increase in new subscriptions at all. Cataclysm was supposed to be the expansion pack to bring back all of the old players, but the impact has been minimal.
- That's actually good news for their next expansion pack really. Since the shattering experiment failed, they'll need to do something really big for the next expansion pack to get player's interest back: tons of new dungeons, a couple new professions, and at least two new hero classes would be nice. Maybe a third faction? =] It's going to have to be something very impressive to bring back the masses.
- The new "Project Beachhead" digital platform for Call of Duty.. paid services, communication, online community, exclusive content, digital downloads, and such. It'll basically be Battle.net for the CoD franchise - remember how they eventually wanted to bring everything together as one gigantic "Battle.net"?
- They're discontinuing Guitar Hero and disbanding associated business units (e.g. laying people off, closing studios). They're also killing off True Crime: Hong Kong.
- Activision Blizzard will be announcing an "innovative new universe with broad appeal that will be revealed at Toy Fair later this week and will bring the world of toys, video games and the Internet together in an unprecedented way." This is the first time Activision will be exhibiting at Toy Fair and this isn't for Blizzard related games, so I'm not really interested. It will probably be about their LEGO series or Zhu Zhu Pets or something.. meh.
- Outlook not so good for Blizzard titles in 2011, but they promised at least 2 major releases in 2012. Those would most likely be Diablo 3 and their next SC2 Expansion Pack (Heart of the Swarm) though. Their next-gen MMO is still years away.
- NetEase will be doing their Starcraft 2 launch in China. I wonder how it's going to be received in China..
- Heart of the Swarm will have more details (e.g. release date?) in the "coming months". Diablo 3 beta will be starting soon too (they're playing it cool with Diablo 3, as usual, they don't want to make any announcements yet and want to make sure the game is perfected before release).
The call is over now.. I was hoping for more, but not surprised at all.
FYI.. their stock is falling rapidly as a result of this call too. Mostly because of their statement on low revenue/guidance this year. 2011's going to really suck for both Activision and their customers. =[
* UPDATE:
Confirmation regarding lay-offs. Both Vicarious Visions and Freestyle Games have been hit with notices shortly after the meeting. According to Activision Blizzard's 8-K, they'll be getting rid of approx. 500 employees. The decision was made Feb. 3, and will be taking place on March 31 for the staff.
This same time last year, they laid off approx. 200 people. Apparently, February is the time of month when the non-performing studios need to start worrying.