Did Haze kill Free Radical?

[LordTheNightKnight]

alpha_dk said:

Gnizmo said:

Riachu said:

Polishing a game doesn't require much resources.  Making the game does.  Polishing a game that was technically already finished doesn't really cost much to my knowledge.

 

 Cost is extremely relative. $10 is nothing if you have $1,000,000. $10 is a whole lot if you only have $15. The continued cost of employing everyone combined with development of new games can quickly drain any cash reserves that exist after developing a game for so long. It is not so much that polishing itself costs so much money as it is the need to have a steady flow of any money to keep from going under.

To further Gnizmo's point:

There's an adage among programmers that is applicable in many situations.  It goes:  The first 90% of the program takes the first 90% of the time.  The last 10% takes the second 90% of the time.  That extra layer of polish can be very expensive.  Once you've picked off all the low-hanging fruit in the initial development, every incremental improvement takes more and more time/effort for less and less return.  They could have easily doubled development time and released a game with all the same major problems, and slightly better graphics.  It would have gotten the same reviews, probably similar sales, only they would have spent approximately 2x as much on it.  There are severely diminished returns to applying polish to make a medium sellling game into a medium-large selling game.

 

And that shows why GTA IV is the most expensive game ever, and why Twilight Princess is probably Nintendo's most expensive game ever (unless Mario Galaxy is).

BTW, Microsoft should buy FR, and make them work with Rare to finally bring the Goldeneye team back together, and make the third Perfect Dark game totally awesome (as long as they focus on the game more than trying to impress people.