| Aquamarine said: snip |
Hmm, still blows my mind to see what small indie teams and smaller studios do, and yet Star Fox Zero which looks like something thrown together in an intern's basement on a shoestring budget actually took 140 people and two years. I guess this is that ballooning AAA budget rearing its ugly head, and I guess I just never really envisioned that applying to Nintendo for some reason. Where do these ballooning costs come from? I mean Gears of War 3 had 4-5x the budget of Gears of War 1 but felt similar in size, scope, polish, etc. Is it marketing? Increasing team size (but then wouldn't that make up for it by leading to them churning out games faster)? Regardless, glad to hear Star Fox Zero is a flop though, would hate to see a game like that succeed.
Do you have any insight on Dark Souls 3's budget and how it compares to other games in the series? I've always imagined Dark Souls 3 was a fairly low budget game, and despite being such a big seller (playing DeS back in 2009 never would I have imagined that a Souls game would top the charts), it doesn't have that AAA feel in the gameplay, graphics, and presentation. It's always nice to hear about a really great, low budget game doing really well for itself and doing AAA numbers despite its meager budget, and bucking the trend. But if Star Fox Zero cost in the ballpark of 30m USD as you say, I'd have to rethink how I look at these games' budgets, and Dark Souls 3 likely isn't as low-budget as I imagine.
