Developers see costs double for Durango sequels to Xbox 360 titles

[JEMC]

mrstickball said:

JEMC said:

mrstickball said:
Honestly, the solution(s) should be rather simple.

1) Stop making every game in your library a AAA product. The next consoles will focus on on-line distribution more than ever, allowing for more sales of indie-type products with budgets to match. Even major publishers need to look at balancing their portfolios better between the $30 million dollar mega projects and the $1-5 million dollar experimental projects.

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I agree with you but

1) Publishers have the wrong idea that they need AAA games to earn money. To clarify, an Indie developer can launch a game for 20 $ and still gain 5 $ per game. Enough for them to subsist. But publishers need bigger margins (10-15 $) so they need to launch their games at a higher price. But we, the consumers, expect more of a game of a higher priced game and that forces the publisher to launch bigger games that cost more to develop and thus makes them even more pricier. And that's what leads to AAA games.

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1) Why exactly do publishers need bigger margins? Publishers like Paradox and 1C have proven that you can constantly drip out AA titles to the market and make a killing. They made Magicka, Hearts of Iron, and a lot of other sub-AAA games at various price points, most of which have done great. It'd be more profitable in the long run to develop unified engine and technology, and perimate your development teams with the technologies, allowing them to leverage better tech for less cost since there are less 3rd party fees involved.

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Publishers like EA, Activision, Take Two, etc. are HUGE. They have lots of people working for them and so they need lots of money just to keep running. Take a look at these 2 news here and here, and now think how much do the managers from EA and the like earn. How many games do they need to sell just to pay them? Lots of them and with as big as possible margins.

Paradox and 1C are smaller publishers focused mostly on 1 platform, PC (where they don't have to pay royalties), and therefore need less money to subsist and fund new projects.