BCB Episode 10 Halloween with Ben Judd 2

Someone asked me today exactly what Ben Judd said about the Switch and Bloodstained when I had him on the show last October. I decided to type it all out. Here you go:

XM: In the IGN article, it said, “As time lines move on, certain pieces of hardware become irrelevant. Sometimes new pieces of hardware come out and make you think about what’s the right strategy. However, this is a game that was backed by people, and we made promises to listen to them. Any sort of changes that we do or consider that are outside the scope of the promises we’ve made must be done with lots of explanation, lots of care, and must be done with lots of back and forth with the backers to see what options we have. We must listen to them at the end of the day, and we’ve made promises. Unfortunately some of those don’t make as much sense as they did before. If you’re going in one certain direction you want to make sure you have the backers. If there’s going to be a difficult decision some day and we don’t know which way to go, I’m hoping that we’re able to have a conversation. If they say they don’t get it, that’s where we’re at. If they say they do get it, well then we’re able to do some things that may be more interesting.”

So I’m assuming that a lot of that was kinda quoting you directly since you translated.

BJ: No, not necessarily, no. Some of that was from IGA for sure.

XM: So what is your take on where the Wii U stands at this point? Especially with the Nintendo Switch announced.

BJ: Traditionally any first party that’s been in third place in sales that releases another console usually will support their old console for another year. Usually you’re not going to see any new titles coming out two years, etc. after that new console’s launched. Largely that doesn’t even come from the first party. That comes from retail saying were not going to carry your stuff, ya know? That’s less of an issue because there’s a lot of digital content, but it’s still an issue, it still matters. 50% of sales are retail sales. So if I said, “Hey if you want to talk half as much profit?” nobody would say yes. That’s just an objective view of what happens when a new hardware piece is announced.

Everything thing that I say from here out is my opinion, but I’ll say this. What do people want? If they want a Wii U version because they have every other Wii U game and they want to fill out their library, fine I get that. But, they need to realize that it’s never as simple as just what they want. It’s all connected. Let’s take our view and zoom up to satellite mode and we think about what can happen. Let’s say that if IGA talks to the backers and the backers say NO we absolutely must have a Wii U version, you promised. And he says OK, you know. I promised. We’re gonna do it. Which, FYI is still totally a scenario, matter of fact. I know IGA says he’s gotta listen to the backers. He’s constantly told me that. So it’s totally something that can definitely still happen. Until that discussion happens, nobody knows what’s gonna happen. Unfortunately it’s not just about the backers. I mean the backers helped us make the game initially, but it needs to be sold as it’s own product. So there needs to be additional revenue that comes in beyond just the money we got from the Kickstarter. Because just the money we got from the Kickstarter is not a profitable game at all. It’s just enough to make the game. You still have to sell it, market it and all the other things that need to happen. So if we were to release the Wii U game and at the time we try to release it all the retail chains say, “Nope you can’t release a Wii U game. We don’t have any shelf space for that. Were only gonna put out PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch.” That means now we only have 50% of potential profit that we could have gotten. That’s on a console that only the third most popular at the current time. So how many unit sales can we look to? Is it 100? How many dollars will be on each sale? I don’t know, 30? So we made like $3,000, ya know? Is it $1,000, ok we made $30,000. Is it 10,000 units? Ok, we made $300,000. So the reality of us actually selling a Wii U title in 2018, which potentially might not even be in retail, I would be shocked. I’d be shocked if we got 100,000 units. I would be absolutely shocked.

XM: Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. It would be just the backers, basically and that’s it.

BJ: That’s right, and the backers have already given us their support. So, non backers getting a digital Wii U version compared to all the other versions, you know I’m thinking maybe its 1000 people, and if its 1000 people we make $30,000 I’m sorry, but the reality is it’s not going to cover the port and stuff. So, IGA will probably lose money in that scenario.

XM: Well, we had a backer goal to pay just for that.

BJ: Exactly, but you pay for that and what that means then is you won’t get a Switch version.

XM: Ok, so that’s a very important point. So can you have both, or is it one of the other only?

BJ: Well the current budget doesn’t support that. Where does this money come from? People are gonna want the new thing.

XM: With an added SKU and shipping, what are some of the road blocks that say it has to be one or the other?

BJ: Let’s say the porting is going to be $500,000 to do a Switch SKU, and again these are all just made up numbers, but let’s just say it’s R500,000. And we don’t have that money. If we were to forgo the Wii U version and we could do the Switch version well we would have potentially given up 1000 units of sales. But, of that 1000 units of sales, how many people are gonna buy the Switch and would have gotten it that way anyways if they are a hardcore Nintendo fan? Maybe 500, maybe 700, I don’t know. And of our backer pool, how many of those are only going to have a Wii U? And the’re not gonna have a Switch or any other console? That’s the one they absolutely must be on? I really don’t know. Nobody really knows the answer, but statistics say that you stand a much better chance of making more revenue by having a Switch version than you do a Wii U version. And, if you make more revenue then it’s going to allow IGA to take that money and put it towards a Bloodstained 2, ya know? At the end of the day, I’ve seen it with other Kickstarter projects. If you release it and you don’t make a certain amount of money then that’s where it ends. And as a fan, I don’t want to end. So when I look at it, I don’t think about what I want for the single platform. Sure I think of it a bit, but I want IGA to be able to keep making these games. As many as possible. So honestly the better business play is probably that, but back to IGA is as a person. He absolutely cares about his fans, he cares about the backers, he understands he wouldn’t be here without them. So, he is gonna honor what they say, and if we have this discussion and I think people say they must have a Wii U version even that means we’re not gonna have a Switch version, then that’s what it’ll be, I think.

XM: Yeah, I can see IGA doing that. So I guess the conversation just needs to happen. I expect to see some kind of survey from FanGamer. People are going to have to make that decision and make it clear to him, because if it’s not clear I think he’s gonna default to keep the promise and Switch just won’t happen.

BJ: It’s such a challenge. We obviously want everybody to know that we care about them. But, we still wanna make sure that this is a profitable game so that their can be future Bloodstained games. How we convey that message and how we get to hear people’s feedback and make sure they know were listening. That’s the thing that’s scariest. So there’s gonna be lots of discussions to find hopefully a way that everybody or most of the people can understand what were thinking, and they can give us their honest feedback. Then try to present them some options. But that’s all you can really do in this situation. Nobody knows when new hardware’s gonna be launched. Nobody knows when old hardware is gonna be defunct. When that happens, you try to react and you hope you can react in a way that the fan base accepts it and is ok with it.

(Then we talked about the Vita and Ben was confidant that there is no reason to think that the Vita version is in danger.)

Why didn't you just say "listen to the podcast, ya bum", Mike? I mean...unless they're hard of hearing or something lol. Good stuff typing it all out.

Thank you for writing the whole interview down, appreciate it!


The Nintendo Switch Dev Kit costs about 450 $ (since UE4 is natively supported on the switch, there are no additional costs - I THINK, i haven't found info about that)
www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/nintendo-switch-dev-kit/



I have upgraded my slacker-backer pledge from 60$ to 250$ and if a Switch Port comes, I'm definitely going for an extra backer-edition physical copy (yes, I'm stupid).
I guess I'm not the only one who upgraded the initial pledge, so the software costs alone should be easy in the bag. Since Wii U, Vita AND switch use touchscreens, I THINK - without having any actual game-programming knowledge - that a Port shouldn't be extremely time-consuming.


I say it as it is, Bloodstained on the Switch would really force me to buy the System, right now there are no real killer apps on that for me, but I dig the transformer-concept.