Next-Gen Development Costs

[Kwaad]

kars said: 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...

First of all. Your saying the PS3/360 have no more power than the Wii... I'm not even gonna laugh... That is pathetic sad. a 10x bigger CPU, clocked at a higher clock speed... = not any better really. a 10x bigger GPU, clocked at a higher clock speed... = not any better really. Your logic is flawed, because that's what you said comes across to me. A highly optimized 3D model and great textures looks good. a Massive poly/texture model looks great. Basically either way they look the same. One uses 4x more power to do tho. Considering the PS3/360 have roughly 10-20x more power... they can easily brute-force 4x better graphics. fooflexible - I'm not saying that is the way all games are made. Some are, some arent. A prime example of what I meant, was motorstorm, is using medium quality models, with KILLER textures. I dont think Motorstorm looks that great. Everyone says how beautiful it is. Their full of it. A simple bump-mapping texture. (think track mark, but useing bump-maps) is how they do the mud. Then add a path diffrence to allow the wheels to go down into the 'bump-mapped' ditch. The vegation looks bland, flat, and Seriously last gen. The Vehicles look great, but compared to GT4... I'd say that Motorstorm looks about 2x better. GT:HD Concept looks MUCH better than motorstorm. I think motorstorm was more of a physics demo, than a eye-candy toy. I mean, motorstorm has AMAZING textures. Infact, their photo's slapped on a 3D model. Cheap, Efficent, Looks great. But I have never played a game where you have that kind of physics/drivetrain.