I think it would be good to clarify this; 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.

I have spoken to other developers too who have very similar stories, and some of whom didn’t make it through.

Nintendo pretty much follow the same rules themselves. Mario Kart and others always retains their price for years. If a game is worth 10 dollars on day 1 then it should still be worth 10 dollars 1 year later and this is especially true with digital titles as there is no such thing as shelf space or physical media distribution effectively forcing older titles to be withdrawn freeing up space for newer ones.

Maybe you just priced your games a bit too high?

As for your main point regarding sales figures. Apples and Oranges, I could make a game that looks and plays like Angry Birds but I suspect it’s not going to sell 100s of millions of copies, nor do I think a funder would think so either I know I’m using an extreme case but as a developer and a gamer you should have a notion of how well your game will do, sales data is interesting and I agree funders do like that kind of information but ultimately it comes down to quality and they’ll also like to see evidence of that as well (even if it means getting their kids to play it).

Basically It’s not the platform (except for the lack of deals etc) e.g. I suspect that Pullblox on the 3DS will do very well although I suppose we’ll never know

G.

Sony has gone on the record to state that Nintendo’s knack for cutting out indie developers is a huge mistake. For once, Nintendo, take their advice.

Nintendo’s made a long list of bad decisions which I don’t agree with, and this only adds to it. It’s because of decisions like these that I myself am resistant to even purchasing a Nintendo platform ever again.