3DS & NGP game budgets are “two-to-three times” that of predecessors

[JEMC]

Degausser said:

JEMC said:

I have 2 silly questions:

1-He only speaks of the DS/3DS budgets. Do we have to assume that NGP budgets will also be 2-3 times those of the PSP? 

2-How big are the budgets for AAA games on the DS and PSP? It's not the same thing going from 500k to 1.5 millions than going  from 1 to 3 millions.

1) It's a safe assumption to say that NGP dev costs will be going up around a similiar amount. You could argue that it'll be more then 3x as the new hardware appears to be a bigger 'jump' comparable to 360/PS3 development. On the other hand it might be less as alot of resources / tech can be shared between HD console, and developer feedback has been positive thus far. IT's all speculative, but x3 is probably a safe bet if 3DS is also around that mark.

2) There's very little information out there on the cost of handheld developement, but it's definitely cheaper then AAA developement on console. This is mainly due to the nature of the games and the smaller screen meaning less money being pumped in graphics. Something like Pokemon has a new game made every 4 years (with remakes being worked in the gap) which is I guess a pretty large budget type game, but very little else reaches that type of scale.

 With alot of DS games on the past their biggest expense has always been marketing anyway. Like, the Petz games, or drawn to life games would have been relatively cheap to make. The challenge with the handheld space has always been getting the marketing right to sell enough copies to make any real money, and the marketing cost can quickly exceed the cost of developement. Sounds like both will be going up with the next round of handhelds though...

Thanks.

So with the increased price of the games (5-10€), things won't change that much. If they sell 150k-200k they will still make profit, although big franchises with big budgets will still require twice o 3 times those sales.