This article would have been more appropriate at the beginning of the current gen consoles, and would actually reflect the PS3/360/PC situation that we currently have now. So Jake Weston is 6 years late with his article.
Now looking at this generation, we've had allot of fantastic games which no one would dare say are not worth the $70 price tag and I have deffinetley bought many great gmes at that price, but one must also acknowledge that back in the snes/sega days, there existed games much much shorter than we have today, the key differences were that today games base them selves on story, multiplayer, and the experience as apposed to ridiculous difficulty old school games used in order to pad the length of the game, but back then it was acceptable as it was the standard, of course the standards have changed as the media has evolved and we now have many different experiences with many different hours of play depending on genre.
In anycase, moving forward to the PS4/720, both Microsoft and Sony will ensure that their console is even easier to develop for than the previous consoles but at the same time pack as much processing power as they can, this will ensure that development cost stay relativity the same as this generation with better dev tools that will inevitably come with the dev kits, it will also mean that it will be easier on the developers who can then focus on creating content as apposed to trying to get PC ports to work on the consoles, which is a costly endevour and something Sony more than Microsoft knows to well.
As for the Wii U, its only caught up to the PS3/360 in development costs, even Nintendo have admitted that their 1st party development cost will increase, but this does not reflect the whole of next generation consoles, remember that Nintendo stayed in gamecube land with the wii which kept costs down significantly when compared to Sony and Microsoft, right now with the Wii U, Nintendo is going through the same phase Sony/Microsoft went through 6 years ago, just Like the Jake Weston, Nintnedo is 6 years late to the game....Uhh burn....
But I digress, it will be more interesting when the PS4/720 are released because then we'll know if dev cost have shot up exponentially again, or weather they stayed relativity the same. Judging by what PC devs are doing these day with the witcher, metro 2033, Crysis 2 DX11 pack, and Battlefield 3 we see that graphics can really be pushed with a controlled budget, so from this perspective one could argue that PS4/720 games will look stunning but dev cost will stay some what the same.
In anycase, this is my favorite time of the console cycle, the time when new hardware is announced. I can not wait to see what Sony and Microsoft have to offer, only time will tell cliche as that may be XD
