Saber Interactive chief creative officer Tim Willits came to Cologne, Germany, to show off his company’s games.
The lot included Stuntman: Hollywood, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, Turok: Origins and Road Kings. But we took a pass on talking about games and, in our brief time, we talked about how crowded the September schedule for game launches has become because of the need to avoid the November 19 launch of Grand Theft Auto VI.
In our conversation, we touched on the ideal release dates, game pricing, the planning for physical media, the high cost of PC gaming machines, and the need to remember that consumers only have so many dollars each month to spend on a game.
Saber has a lot of irons in the fire. It owns 13 game studios and it has 3,500 game developers. And believe it or not, this is not a big game company. In fact, not so long ago, Saber was part of Embracer Group, which amassed nearly 200 game studios from 2019 to 2022.
Then the game industry hit hard times and Embracer went thud. It shed many of its studios and Saber cofounder Matthew Karch bought back Saber for $247 million in 2024. Now Saber has private equity backers, it’s cooking games on its own, and it has had hits like Space Marine 2. Its franchises include Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, World War Z, and John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando.
I’ve followed Willits’ career ever since the 1990s, when he was one of the leaders at id Software and eventually became studio director. For the record, Hellraiser: Revival is coming on October 8, logically ahead of Halloween; Turok: Origins is coming in the spring of 2027, but Stuntman: Hollywood doesn’t have a date. And Road Kings is coming March 11, 2027.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: There’s a flood of games coming out now. How do you figure out exactly when the right time is to launch a game, particularly at a time when a title like Grand Theft Auto VI is coming out on November 19? Especially when there is physical media.
Tim Willits: In the old days, when physical media–I’ll talk about physical media. In the old days, when most video games were physical, after Black Friday you couldn’t get shelf space. Trucks would not deliver your product. A lot of the endcaps were purchased for Black Friday, and then they’d hold over through Christmas. If you were not going to release a video game before Black Friday, you could not physically get it into the stores until the middle of January. Even the first week of January, there are holidays around the world, different holidays. Orthodox Christmas is in early January. Even November was tricky for retail.
As we moved to digital, December was not as much of an issue. For me it meant–I actually like shipping in early January now. You get your new console or PC for Christmas. You play everything that came with it, and then the first week you’re like, “What do I buy?” I always feel that the middle of January is good. But now you can ship a game in December. Same with the summer. Historically June and July were killer months. Bad months. If you released a game in June or July, you might as well not tell anyone. No one would buy it. I always felt, though–kids are home from school. What else are they gonna do? But it’s true. June and July were bad months to ship a game.
It’s gotten better. You can still do okay with a June or July date. But you need to have a big enough title. Then you get into–school starts in August. Call of Duty comes out in September. You gotta watch out for that every year. It creates these windows that you have to plan around.
GamesBeat: There’s a lot of strategy.
Willits: Right. If you miss May, you might as well ship in August.
GamesBeat: The rules that exist are interesting. For mobile–I never used to be busy in December. I’d be playing games and reviewing them, but that’s all. But all the way up to December 25, the mobile guys will release games. They release games during the holidays to catch people instantly when they’re ready and available to play. That works for them.
Willits: My kids, as soon as they get out of school on December 20, they’re active customers. But I do think–I’ve seen this. Players get information differently than they did back when it was all magazines. Retail is not an issue anymore. The months are more flexible.
GamesBeat: For your games, are there months that matter to any one of them. “It has to ship this month”? Or is it just driven by when you finish it?
Willits: In my career, yes. DOOM 3, we pushed like hell – no pun intended – to get that out in the fall. Quake came out in August. Early August. People at the time said, “This is a bad time.” Back then September was the only month, not August. Now August is fine. But back in the old id Software days, we really worked hard. We have more flexibility now.
GamesBeat: Is physical detached from some of the digital launch dates now? You might get the digital version out in December and let the physical wait until January. It’s a smaller part of the market now.
Willits: Yeah, it’s a smaller part. If you see Todd, you can ask him, because he deals with this a lot. Even today, our physical distribution partners basically insist that we launch day and date. Because they give us minimum guarantees. They have inventory that they commit to. They want to piggyback on all the press. If December 1 is our launch date and everyone online gets it, the people that sell the copies in Wal-Mart or Target or wherever, they insist that someone can walk into the store and buy the game that day. That’s why, in the old days, games would leak, because the inventory showed up at the store in advance. It would say DON’T SELL UNTIL TUESDAY and dudes would steal them from the warehouse. Now it’s not as bad. But I can’t think of anything that we separated. Even now it’s important for us to hit that day.
GamesBeat: When it comes to releasing near a competitor, how much space do you have to give them?
Willits: That’s a good question. In my history, Rage landed on top of some other game. I can’t remember what it was. Or it was Rage 2. Either way we were like, “Oh my God.” If you get within two weeks of a major game, you’re going to have a problem.
GamesBeat: Even if you’re before them?
Willits: Yeah, because people are saving their money for it. Remember in the old days at GameStop, when you would go in to buy a game? They’d say, “Oh, you can take this $5 and we can put it down toward your next game. You can pre-order this with the same deposit.” That was a huge motivator for when games could release, certain times. You needed to be the biggest fish in the pond in order to own a date. A lot of times developers would wait until a big event to see where people were announcing their dates, and then they’d pick a date around it. For Turok, we’ll put a flag down soon. That’s a big enough game that people will say, “Okay, maybe I’ll ship around Turok.” It may work for Barbie and Oppenheimer, but it doesn’t work for Call of Duty and Battlefield 6. You can’t have major games on the same day.
GamesBeat: That was an interesting case, because they were a month apart, but then ARC Raiders came in right between them and did well.
Willits: Normally that would be crazy. But that was a really good game. That was a sleeper hit. You’re right, though. That took some guts. They were brave. Other games, action games, no one would even think about trying that. Games are expensive. Let’s not forget that some games are $80 now. That’s why we try to price our games well. Space Marine was cheaper. The PC version was $10 cheaper. We haven’t announced our pricing yet for Turok, but I can tell you right now that it’s not going to be $80. We’ve gotten feedback from our players that they appreciate that. We don’t try to sell our games too high.
GamesBeat: Meccha Chameleon came out at $5. I can’t remember when a huge hit game came out at $5.
Willits: We call that Starbucks pricing. There are co-op-centric games. If you can make something that costs the same as a frappuccino and it’s fun to play with your friends, there’s a good chance it can do well. When someone says, “Hey, I could buy a frappuccino, or I could buy a video game,” they’ll buy the video game.
GamesBeat: The interesting thing I start to detect here–game makers pay a lot of attention to how many dollars the consumer has in a given month. December you spend all your money on Christmas. There’s an awareness of price sensitivity. On the console side, though, the consoles we see right now, we’re moving into the pricing for elite customs. We’re getting $800 and probably $1,000–
Willits: I pre-ordered the $100 version of GTA, just so’s you know.
GamesBeat: There’s also $4,000 gaming PCs out there that are becoming the norm, because there’s a $3,000 graphics card in it. Do you worry that there’s a mismatch here between hardware and software?
Willits: Yes. Another journalist asked the same question. You are correct. I don’t know if there’s a reckoning coming up, but I do believe that talented video game developers can make amazing games on everything from your cell phone up to your $4,000 PC. There will be a market, if you’re smart, for megahits that are expensive, that run on these high-end machines, but you can see a lot of success–like you said, Chameleon is a megahit, and it’s the price of a frappuccino. It’s the team size, too.
GamesBeat: One thing I’ve said about ARC Raiders–I think I detect a contradiction. They went for a $40 price, and yet they thought enough of the game that they put it right between Battlefield and Call of Duty.
Willits: Which were both $70.
GamesBeat: Maybe they thought they had to be $40 to survive in that slot, or maybe there was just a mismatch in their thinking.
Willits: No, that’s how we think, too. Have we announced pricing on Hellraiser? I don’t think so. But Toxic Commando was not $70. Space Marine II was not $70. And look how many we sold, 12 million or 13 million units. It’s ridiculous. Gamers feel like it’s a fair price, a fair amount of money for that game. Even though we could have sold it for more. Hellraiser is going to be in that price range.
GamesBeat: From what you know or what you’ve already disclosed, what is some of the thinking going into pricing and dates for these four games?
Willits: Hellraiser is Halloween. The clearest date in October was October 8. We looked at–there’s a big game coming up at the end of October. Can’t remember what it is now. But we looked and that was the safest date.
GamesBeat: October 23 is Call of Duty.
Willits: That was probably it. We totally do that. When we put our flag in the ground for Turok–yesterday we learned some big game release dates. Hopefully things work out well. We can throw a date out soon. But we’re looking. Turok is also not going to be an $80 game.
GamesBeat: I spoke to Glen Schofield recently. I’d never thought about it this way, but he said that there used to be 30 games a year that were triple-A releases. What we got ourselves into was a situation where there are 50 of them a year. That means some of them are going to be total losers. No player on earth wants to buy a full price game every week.
Willits: Another problem we have, which Saber deals with like everyone else–we make more reasonably priced, reasonably sized, and reasonably budgeted games. You can see. Stuntman is not going to be as big as Space Marine II. But it’ll take someone’s time and attention and money for a period of time. We have Hellraiser. We have Stuntman. Docked just came out. We have these smaller titles that are more economically friendly, but they take time. That’s one thing that consumers wrestle with.
GamesBeat: Did you make it back to QuakeCon?
Willits: No, I was not able to make it back. Which is ironic, because that was the 30th year. I was Mr. QuakeCon.
GamesBeat: It’s so unusual to see them all together, because they all fired each other.
Willits: It’s so funny you said that, because I was like–that guy fired that guy. That guy sued us. That guy used to make fun of–dude, I thought the same thing. You’re the only person that’s said that to me. But I wish them all good luck. I like all those guys.
GamesBeat: If the schedule is more crowded, how do you adjust?
Willits: You don’t overspend on a game. I’ve seen, just like you said–there can’t be 50 megahits a year. As a developer you need to focus on what’s good, focus on what’s unique and key in your game, and don’t over-bloat your game. Oh my God. I see some of these games and I can just see how much money they spent making it. You’re not gonna make that money back.
Sometimes that’s worth saying is, yes, we make art. But it’s also the video game business. When you’re in business you need to make money to stay in business. If your games aren’t making money, you’re not going to be in business. You have to think right. You have to plan. You have to scope. You have to balance.
GamesBeat: It feels like some kind of reckoning is coming related to consumers who are hit with economic shocks. They’re complaining about high prices, both on the hardware side and on the game side.
Willits: Look at GTA. It’s not a cheap game. It’s going to be amazing, though.
GamesBeat: The interesting thing is that everyone is choosing the expensive one.
Willits: I bought the special edition. I did. I’m sorry. But I heard like 70% of people did.
GamesBeat: It’s 90%.
Willits: My God. Really?
GamesBeat: Yeah, it’s 89%, something like that.
Willits: Oh my Lord. The thing is, if you make something amazing, people will come. Trust me, I know what I’m doing that week. I already told the kids. What’s smart about it, they’re releasing it at the beginning of the week. You know no one has work and school that week. You can spend the entire week in that world. It’s going to be awesome.