3DS dev costs roughly TRIPLE that of DS!

[HappySqurriel]

noname2200 said:

HappySqurriel said:

The 3DS having increased development costs isn't that much of a surprise, but I suspect a lot of developers will avoid having to deal with that by producing more traditional sprite based games rather than push the limit of the 3DS.

From what I understand sprites, especially detailed sprites, can actually be more expensive to produce than low-poly models.

Yes and no ...

If you're creating games with (relatively) simple graphics and limited number of animations using sprites can be an order of magnitude less expensive than producing 3D models. The benefit of 3D is that after you have the model produced adding animations, changing the size or lighting conditions, or countless other features or effects is far cheaper than producing sprites to do the same thing.

Or to put this another way, as you try to produce a more and more visually impressive game there hits a point where it becomes less expensive to produce the game in 3D; but if you're trying to make the least expensive game possible it usually will be a game that uses 2D sprites. This is the reason why so many iPhone games still use sprites.