How to stop increasing development costs?

[disolitude]

NJ5 said:

disolitude said:
I don't see why high development costs are a bad thing.

High development costs = more money spent in the industry = more people getting their hands on that money in the industry and feeding their families.

Lets do some math...
Invisible walls on gametrailers confirmed this week that average ps360 game is sold to Gamestop, Walmart...etc...for 48 dollars!
And the console licensing fee for consoles is 5-10 dollars depending on the game/console.
So that leaves 38 DOLLARS! per game that goes between the publisher and developer.

According to this math, an average game that sells 500,000 copies just made 19 million dollars. I sure would hope they would invest that money back in to gaming and spend it on the people in the industry making better games...rather than spend it on Ferrari's.

In reality, what happens is that high costs result in struggling publishers (even the big ones are struggling in this gen, like EA), which results in layoffs. A bankrupt company doesn't feed anyone.

 

That means that the company was expanding too fast, spending resources too quicky and employed more people that they could. Its unfortunate but most American companies have always had the mentality of..."can't remain neutral on the moving train".

Also, while this is pure speculation...I think that layoffs in the videogame industry are a lot less crippling to the people getting laid off...compared to, the auto industry lets say. People making games can usually find work in flash design, website development, animation studios...etc.