Modern Times - Budget Analysis ...

[Pristine20]

jammy2211 said:

Pristine20 said:
I'm gald no one has claimed that nintendo came to save the day on this thread because if you ask me, they did what was best for themselves not because they had any particularly altruistic intentions for the gaming industry as a whole.

 The article is more explaining a trend of what has happend in the industry for many years. What it's saying is collective to the whole industry.

 The Wii has helped keep costs low but ultimately it'll succumb to this trend, marketing budgets will go up, games will get more ambitious etc. In some ways I think Nintendo are encouraging this, Wii Fit's marketing budget is beleived to be ~ $40 million in the USA alone (Can dig up a source if you want), I'm sure they're not marketing any other games that high but you can bet Wii Sports and Wii Music and Mario Galaxy etc were huge investments.

 I'd say it's only a matter of time until EA or Activision or someone start trying to out-do Nintendo, push the budgets higher, market it even further etc, and then the trend continues and costs go higher, risks are more dangerous and most of what was detailed happens.

 I don't think any console will change this unless we saw a revolution to the entire video games model (Digital Distribution could be that revolution) but for now the trend will continue on and on.

Thanks for pointing that out because the word I seem to keep hearing is that Nintendo was the only one who tried to save gaming by keeping costs down when in reality wii fit probably cost as much as Killzone 2.

I do also agree that costs are only headed up until a revolution or crash, whichever comes first. Or until we have a monopoly where a single company or two companies dictate everything...similar to the OS market.