I agree. I thought Rugby 08 was ok, but not more. If I compare that to the various FIFA, Pro Evo, NHL and NBA games (not to mention other sports games) I've played over the years, it was seriously lacking in everything, but since it still was better than everything else at the time, people somehow liked it. Just compare it to what the big sports get and you notice the difference.
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- Thread starter ScottishCannon
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Well yes of course, but sadly that's simply a classic reflection of the economies of scale at play here; Rugby's gaming economy simply isn't large enough to support the allocation of resources necessary to produce something of the standard of soccer or the sports popular in the US.
It makes sense when you think of it - the US has a population of 300 million people with which to support very high quality products in sports like American Football, Ice Hockey and Basketball, while soccer has Europe and South America (but Europe is where the bulk of the money is made obviously).
What does Rugby have? National sport status in a country with 4 million and a couple other islands with a few hundred thousand and not entirely developed economies. It has second sport status in places like England and South Africa, but even their combined populations are still only a third of the US. Meanwhile in Australia the sport actually would more be accurately described as "niche". It's not a "second most popular" like England and South Africa; in reality it sits about 3rd or even 4th, meaning the number of people likely to buy a rugby game here isn't that appealingly high.
Saints1
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A lot of people left HB after RWC2011 and I am 99.99% sure he was one of them.
I know, I know. It's also tough for us rugby gamers: If we buy the games even when they're not that great, we give the impression that we're satisfied with what we get, if we don't buy them, the market looks even smaller than it is. So we tend to be pleased relatively easily (even more so in rugby's developing countries) and we don't see any real improvements. You can also see that how e.g. us German rugby fans react to rugby coverage in the German media: We're already happy when there's something and it's not portrayed as violent and brutal, so we don't mind basic mistakes.
Other sports actually have it worse for games. The last decent (beach?) volleyball game was released for the GameCube, I think, and I think for handball, it's even worse.
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Well I'd hope rugby would get better games than sports like bloody handball and volleyball. I mean sure they're played a bit recreationally, but they're not pro sports that offer millions of dollars to their best athletes like Rugby, so it's not hard to imagine the market for those games would be negligible.
Interesting points on German media though - from an Australian perspective we almost have the inverse with soccer, where for the longest time the sport had to fight against images it was for the timid and wasn't really a game for real men.
It's gained some traction now, but even still every time a player dives the ridicule in the Australian media is quite intense.
I've always wondered about Germany and soccer though - why did your county embrace the arguably more intrinsically British sport of soccer but shun rugby so much?
Interesting points on German media though - from an Australian perspective we almost have the inverse with soccer, where for the longest time the sport had to fight against images it was for the timid and wasn't really a game for real men.
It's gained some traction now, but even still every time a player dives the ridicule in the Australian media is quite intense.
I've always wondered about Germany and soccer though - why did your county embrace the arguably more intrinsically British sport of soccer but shun rugby so much?
Both sports are pro sports, if I'm not mistaken, I know handball definitely is. With its popularity in Germany, France and the Nordics among others, you'd think handball would offer more than that.
I'm not too sure either. Rugby came here earlier than to France, after all. I read somewhere that rugby simply had a harder time after the World Wars since it's easier to find 2x11 than 2x15 players. When soccer first came here as part of the so-called "English sports", it also had a hard time with the attitudes at the time, gymnastics was seen as a "proper" sport for Germans. Some say the nazis didn't like rugby for some reason, but they definitely used soccer for their propaganda, that hurt the game a lot. Rugby also didn't make it into schools here, unlike in other countries.
Nowadays, it certainly is a problem that you're unlikely to find rugby outside of Heidelberg and Hannover (plus maybe Berlin). Both cities historically had strong ties to the UK (albeit for different reasons) and in both cities you can find rugby without searching for it, but outside of these two, it's different. Lack of regular TV coverage doesn't help either.
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Is Handball really a pro sport? Wow... I've always thought it was one of those amateur sports that pops up on the odd uni campus. Weird to think it's pro. It just looks so lame - like it can't work out whether it wants to be basketball or soccer and isn't as interesting as either.
But in any case, I think the fact that it's only really big in the Nordic countries and Germany (and even then it'd be niche after soccer and ice hockey) wouldn't make it easy for a viable games market to develop for it. Half my family are from Sweden, so I might ask them about it though out of interest, but none have ever mentioned the sport to me (usually they're mad about Ice Hockey up there).
As for Volleyball - who really wants to play a video game of that? Sure it's fun on holiday at the beach, but thinking about the way the sport is played doesn't make for an appealing sounding video game.
It's a funny situation that the Nazis would have used soccer for propaganda and the sport would still thrive afterwards.
In any case, it's something of a shame Germany never embraced any of the contact football codes like Rugby Union or even League... I have a feeling Germany would be very good at the game if you were into it. Although somehow I imagine that a top line pro German team would play a game much like the Springboks; very physical and technically well executed, but not necessarily with much flair.
The best paid player in the German league (apparently the best league in the world with lots of foreign stars) earns 45,000 euros gross per MONTH. The best paid German player still gets 29,000 euros gross per month. Sure, you also have German national players who "only" get 6,000 gross/month, but even that's far from amateur sports. Any
I would.
They surely earn well, too:
http://www.volleywood.net/volleybal...hest-paid-european-female-volleyball-players/
http://inside.volleycountry.com/boa...and-female-volley-player/?d7edac85#post129510
http://volleytalk.proboards.com/thread/40047/average-salary-pro-players?page=2
They helped it stay popular. Although clubs and national teams have learnt do analyse it critically.
Not necessarily if you look at the change in style the soccer teams went through. American football has become pretty popular here (Germany was the only country where the NFL Europe actually worked), last season, there were four Germans in the NFL.
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Interesting. But in a way that does kinda show how small it is... In Europe and Japan Rugby players can earn millions of dollars now, and even our football codes of rugby league and Australian football, which are almost entirely limited to Australia have players earning around the $1.6 million mark per season at the higher end.
Fair enough I suppose. I guess we just don't view sports like volleyball as being spectator sports here - more just fun social distractions. Perhaps they work better in Europe though.
That's interesting. Is there still a pro league in Germany?
Just out of curiosity though, if rugby is considered too rough in Germany, how did American Football take off? It's a more dangerous sport after all.
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Kapa O Pango
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Why don't they just get Rugby 08 and it build on. It's pretty simple Rugby 08 is still the best rugby union game out there, also had like 80% of the licensing which was still pretty good.
I hope this game is not going to be trash like Rugby 15.
I hope this game is not going to be trash like Rugby 15.
jmmontoro
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My point exactly, with the bar set on a 15 year old game, you get games like Rugby 15.
In Germany, handball was traditionally considered the sport of the countrysides, although many teams have moved to bigger cities in recent years.
No.
Marketing, I think. There was plenty of hype around the NFL Europe, they also used former soccer players and since it's so huge in the US and things from the US are all over the media and get hyped so much, it simply was easier for American football.
But we really have gone too far off topic indeed.
I read somewhere that it might be a good idea to use one of the NFL games as a basis for a rugby game, do you think that would actually work and lead to better results?
The EA series of rugby 2005, 06, 08 all used a FIFA engine or something along the lines. Whilst the game was developed by HB studios, perhaps the technology wasn't theirs hence they cannot easily replicate what they produced so many years ago.
NamWarrior
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i have no doubt that rugby union must be a tricky game to replicate with rucks, mauls, scrums and so many players on the park etc but i wonder if trying to keep it simple is the best option, like the original Jonah Lomu Rugby for the PS2. there was nothing complicated about it yet it was really addictive.
any other game that i have tried has just been a mess.
any other game that i have tried has just been a mess.
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Posting here (the "new" rugby game announced's topic) is a quite desperate move, but this is still the best way to be read by some community manager from an editor / developper... For me they all put the problem in the wrong way, and rugby video gamers seem to support that way, which tells that because rugby union game is a "niche" target, the video game will be poorly founded / developped. This though means the (poor) demand commands the (poor) offer. EA is disengaged cause of this argument, and Sidhe too. HB tells us they have to deal with that, and use the very-low cost Unity Engine...
I completely disagree, economicaly and culturaly, with this for 2 reasons:
First of all, the rugby fans "niche" is quite a huge niche (6 northern nations ( moreless 200M people) + 4 southern nations (moreless 100M people)= a pool of 300 M people and almost 6/7M potential customers). 6/7M is a very good score for a video game! Most of editors dreams to reach such a sells target! But it's not gainable with medium or poor quality products
A (good) offer can create a (good) demand! That's one of the biggest mistakes of the marketting's philosophy. This peoples always reduct the behaviour to adopt to a "target" which they try to see precisely. That's WRONG!!! A good product can perform a massive overflow of his supposed target. For example, FF VII - a j-rpg with menus and texts- wasn't supposed to hit so hard the european market. Madden is played by people who doesn't care about US football... and so on. A rugby video game is, above rugby, a video game! And it could be such a way to touch people non called "rugby fans". (Rugby federation should also consider that fact...)
To conclude: PLEASE TRY TO DO THE STUFF WELL, YOU COULD BE SURPRISED BY THE (ECONOMIC) RESULT!
PS: I apologize for my approximative english. I'm french
I completely disagree, economicaly and culturaly, with this for 2 reasons:
First of all, the rugby fans "niche" is quite a huge niche (6 northern nations ( moreless 200M people) + 4 southern nations (moreless 100M people)= a pool of 300 M people and almost 6/7M potential customers). 6/7M is a very good score for a video game! Most of editors dreams to reach such a sells target! But it's not gainable with medium or poor quality products
A (good) offer can create a (good) demand! That's one of the biggest mistakes of the marketting's philosophy. This peoples always reduct the behaviour to adopt to a "target" which they try to see precisely. That's WRONG!!! A good product can perform a massive overflow of his supposed target. For example, FF VII - a j-rpg with menus and texts- wasn't supposed to hit so hard the european market. Madden is played by people who doesn't care about US football... and so on. A rugby video game is, above rugby, a video game! And it could be such a way to touch people non called "rugby fans". (Rugby federation should also consider that fact...)
To conclude: PLEASE TRY TO DO THE STUFF WELL, YOU COULD BE SURPRISED BY THE (ECONOMIC) RESULT!
PS: I apologize for my approximative english. I'm french
chippieolamus
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Did no-one like RC2? I thought that was a great game, best graphics so far, easy to navigate menus, enough licensing (apart from the transfer restrictions) and pretty fun and realistic gameplay. Sure, it was a little buggy, but I felt like with another couple of instalments it would have become a really great game.
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Some fair points Kervern, but the stats you offer on raw population statistics aren't actually a true reflection of the rugby market. In only one country in the North rugby is the national sport, and that's Wales, which has a population smaller than New Zealand at 3 million. England has 50 million, but over there the game is a distant second after soccer, meaning the actual size of the rugby market is really limited to a portion of the middle to upper classes. In France I'm sure you'd be able to give us better stats, but from my understanding the popularity of rugby is more limited to the South and in Italy the game is very much an after thought.
Even in countries like South Africa, which also has about 53 million people the middle class is only about 10 million and not al of them are engaged with rugby.
Superficially it looks like we should have a big rugby market on the basis of the size of the countries that are strong in the sport, but the fact that rugby games haven't generated significant revenues to justify larger future investment is a reflection of both the nature of our market (being not necessarily as interested in simulation games) and its real size.
