Next-Gen Development Costs

[mrstickball]

I think one of the arguments for this generation will be the use, and optimization of middleware techology. Most of the money goes to building an engine to use, then the rest goes to artists and then programers coding things into the engine. Gears of War is a prime example. It was made VERY cheaply by a studio that knew how to use an engine. Because of that, they made a game which has made probablly $100m in profit, for a tenth of that. The huge advantage the Wii has isn't in a better development space, or cheaper devkits (yes, the devkit might be $25k less, but you still have to pay the programers $50k a year to build the game), but in the fact the Wii's horsepower doesn't allow it to require *ON AVERAGE* a whole lot more money, as the textures and graphics will never be to the level of a PS3 or 360 game. Again, if studios can learn to live with valid middleware such as Havok, Unreal, new lighting & shader technology, the average price of a next-gen game could get close (but not quite) rival the Wii dev bugets - whilst having a large graphical edge. However, time will tell if companies really latch on to Unreal engine(s). However, MS has been making a big push for studios like Mistwaker to use it. Hopefully, the UE3 engine lowers the price of Lost Odyssey to lower than the $25m that Blue Dragon took.