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largedarryl on 18 December 2008
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mrstickball said:
Gamerace said:
I agree it would have been better for developers if all systems had comparible specs.

But the fact remains the HD consoles have raised development costs 3-4 times the amount of last gen games without any way for developers to reap 3-4 times the revenue and profit.

I don't think sticking all FPS on Wii is the answer, I think developers need to diversify their product offerings (like Ubisoft) so they are no longer dependant on having a blockbuster hit to be profitable.

I think most of us (should) agree this is what's causing the issue. It's an all-or-nothing mentality among developers. Instead of getting diverse products that range in budget, we're getting one size fits all going both ways - casual-fests for the Wii, and blockbuster AAA's on the X360/PS3. Systems need a good mix of both. I'd argue that Lego: Indiana Jones or Batman have made more money for LucasArts than most games have....Why? They didn't need mega budgets, even on the PS3/X360 and did well.

It's kind of like the pre-crash mentality of games, but in the opposite: The markets were flooded with utter trash for games, which caused consumers to react negatively to the products at hand. Now, we're having developers only put out mega-budget AAA games with mega-budget AAA titles, and that's not a viable strategy.

In the movie industry (a good example), there are AAA movies that cost $200,000,000 to make. But there are also the indies that are put out by the big studios. Developers need balance that just isn't there, it seems.

I think this is the mentality of more than just the devs, this seems to be what fanboys (HD and Wii both), industry analysts, publishers, etc.  Like I said before, there is tons of room for new development on all the platforms, the problem is everyone is trying to get into the FPS on HD consoles and casual games on the Wii.  This trend seems to be the absolute wrong direction for the gaming industry and will result in some serious repercussions if something isn't done.

Your Lego examples are perfect, those were games that are not great, but good, and the budgets used to develop such games reflect it.  This was the same for the previous generation, and the gen before, etc. the only problem is in this gen there seems to be this idea that the market is as severly fragmented as ever before.  My belief is that this is a misconception that is hurting many of the western devs, because they follow this all-or-nothing mentality.