The new "Warhammer Online" is going after a piece of the market.
DateTime:7/8/2009 5:21:12 PM

"I don't think there's any other field where you can find a failure rate this high and still find people willing to invest," said Mark Jacobs, general manager of game studio EA Mythic. "The failure rate is unbelievable."

Jacobs was talking about his section of the video-game industry, the realm of online games where players pay a monthly fee to participate as characters in a virtual world. In the past 11 years, by his count, fewer than 10 titles have met some level of financial success. The number of expensive flops is a lot larger.

Jacobs declined to specify the size of the investment in the game but said, "you have to spend $50 million these days if you want to compete with the big guys." From talking to Jacobs and his boss at EA Games, it seems clear that Mythic is indeed aiming to compete with the big guys.