Over 200 devs working on MGS4...

[jman8]

Pk9394 said:

jman8 said:
I think that article title is a bit deceiving simply because budgets can vary so much between any two games. While costs are definitely a lot higher now than in the last generation, I think there are ways to keep them from spiraling out of control like some people fear. The biggest thing developers will have to do be diligent about is recycling game engines. These days I don't think you can just build a single full game from the ground up and plan on keeping a tight budget. You have to either pick an engine off the shelf like the Unreal Engine, or when you're building a game, you have to have plans for sequels and build your engine so that it is versatile enough for use in other unrelated potential titles. Also, the more and more familiar devs become with the hardware the less manpower they'll need to pull off a game. So I don't think we have to worry too much.

I'm sure the thing you suggested, everyone of those company already hired someone to manage the budget with license middle ware. company are not run by dummies, management level will find every possible way to keep cost low.

 

Yeah I totally agree with you. But at the time that article was written one year ago, i'm not so sure that was the case. If it really took 500,000 copies to break even, there would be so many companies that have fallen so short of that goal that they would probably be in dire straits right now. And as far as I can tell, there have been very few companies that are in trouble. The only ones I can think of are Atari and SCI. Both of which are in trouble mostly because they have been making consistently crappy games (except for maybe Tomb Raider Legends)