Next-Gen Development Costs

[kars]

Kwaad said: johnsobas said: I feel the most expensive part on a game is the graphics. I have always felt that way. My point on a PS3/360 can brute force it. Is, today's "next-gen" Stuff is basically last gen stuff running higher quality models.

Sorry, but this is not as simple as you think. With brute force you won't achieve anything, because the processors are not as fast as you think. They have both SEVERE architectural constraints, that make them one hell of a ride. This is one of the reasons why so many companies now buy their engines. It is only one group that has to do most of the dirty work. The complexity you encounter leads to very complicated code and this to a very complicated testing. Not the initial development is the most expensive part, the testing and bugfixing is! Don't expect that the new engine will be as cheap as you think. Without a good and responsive support you won't achieve anything. I would expect that they don't want a bigger fixed amount but more a fraction of the price each game earns you. This has advantages for both sides. The game developer does not need so much money before he can even start to develop and it pays the support-calls. The engine developer will instead get more money than he could have asked, because every big title is also a big title for him. The Wii is a much simpler platform. You can develop the game engine easily yourself. While you wont earn money with the first title the next few titles are based on a slightly modified engine, that you get for nearly no costs at all. So it is simply wrong to calculate the complete development costs for one title. You can distribute these costs to several titles. What you miss in your comparison with the movie industry: you can reuse every set, every costume and even every actor. You only have to rewrite the roles of the actors and pay for changes. This can't work in reality. You can't put the sets away for later use and the actors really demand money for every time, they show up...