| Oyvoyvoyv said: I'm wondering, how high are the development costs for the Prime series? I mean, MP2 and MP3 (didn't play 1) both seemed to be relatively low-cost production (doesn't mean they're bad, far from it!) The entire Retro Studios has around 50 employees (for a comparison, Bungie has ~ 150), which isn't a lot. |
Why do you say they seem to be low-cost production? Technically Metroid Prime 1 and 2 are pretty much the most complex games you can get on the gamecube, the graphics were state-of-the-art for their time, the music and sound the same, and the size of the gameworld and all the ways you can interact with it means Quality Assurance must have been very costly.
True, no prerendered FMV crap (which is a waste of money), but certainly Prime 1 must have been a huge investment. Prime 2 and 3 less so of course, since they could use the same game engine, just tweak and optimize it.
50 employees are pretty big when you only work on 1 game.
It would be great if someone could get figures on this though, I would really like to know how the production costs of Metroid Prime 1 compare to, say, Zelda: Wind Waker. I imagine the scripting of all the different events and NPC interactions in Zelda makes it more difficult to program, but hard numbers or even just man-hours spent on each of the titles would give some pinpoint.
On another note; I think a lot of the reason why Nintendo are accused of abandoning the hardcore is that they didn't show Metroid Prime 3 enough love. I am sure a lot of the guys working at Retro were pretty disappointed with that, they are obviously extremely talented people and one of Nintendo's strongest studios right now.
Speaking of Retro, does anyone have any idea what they are working on now? New IP?
