Thoughts And Opinions, Game Costs

[kn]

I think all the games are overpriced in my opinion. 60 bucks is too much money. The problem is that games have become such big budget adventures and there are so many hands in the pot, it takes that much to profit... All the hands that take a cut...

Developer
Publisher
Hardware Maker (license fee)
Distributor
Retailer

Add to that the enormous budgets added to games for the graphics component and you can see where we are headed with the next generation... We keep hearing about these development teams totaling 140+ people to develop the game over 2-3 years... We are now talking hollywood budgets... 150 people at an average of 50K/year plus benefits and such for 2 years is right at $10 million per year... 2 years... $20 million... 3 years... $30 million... and so on...

We either have to accept the cost of $60 games (or higher in the future) or throttle back our expectations that every game have a level of graphical detail approaching complete realism...

I've come to the conclusion that if we take a step back, graphically, even to Wii standards, but turn out incredibly well put together games from a control, story, and presentation standpoint, I'm cool with that as it keeps the cost of the media down...