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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Demands Take Down of Icon Games's Sales Numbers

« on: January 10, 2012, 08:05:10 AM »

http://www.tiga.org/news/press-releases/tiga-calls-on-nintendo-to-explain-its-position-on-publishing-games-data

TIGA, the trade association representing the UK games industry, today called on Nintendo to explain why it does not allow developers to publish the sales numbers of their self-published titles. TIGA made the comments following the news that Nintendo had refused to allow Icon Games Ltd to publish figures on the sales and free units downloaded for their WiiWare games.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Demands Take Down of Icon Games's Sales Numbers

« on: January 07, 2012, 06:24:40 AM »

@ejamer
"Access to Finance: he really doesn't see a difference between sharing information at a bank to secure future funding and posting them on a publicly-visible blog?"

I think it would be good to clarify this to avoid any further confusion.

I actually have first-hand experience of trying to obtain finance with no figures to show, and this highlights the point:

During 2010 we approached several banks to request some bridge finance to cover the gap between the release of the titles and the time when the sales thresholds were reached. On any other service this would not have been an issue as you earn revenue from sales straight away.

We showed them our own figures which showed promising early sales, but the thing is those figures are fairly meaningless - especially to a bank.

They wanted to get a view of the wider picture - how other games on the service had performed, how well games within specific genres perform, and so on. The sort of data any financial institution requires before providing funding - especially to a games company, as the games industry is perceived as being a high risk industry.

We couldn't show them any such numbers and their response was negative - in effect I was asking them to finance a business but providing them with none of the traditional market research data they expect.

It was impossible to secure the finance we needed and as a result we had to let one of the team go and were unable to pay wages to the rest of the team for a while. Fortunately the guys stood by us, and our Minis releases then turned things around a little.