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wfz on 15 June 2012
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zarx said:


that is just part of the industry maturing, we are in an age where a game has to be exellent in every area to be a blockbuster and most publishers want every game to be a blockbuster. Studios closing is not a new phenomenon anyway there are dozzens that closed down last gen as well. And there are more game studios today then there ever has been. 

Raising dev costs is not because of better hardware running the game in a higher res, with better AA, shadows, motion blur and dozzens of other effects that come with every major game engine doesn't make the game more expensive to make. Professional vocie acting, licenced music, motion capture, dozzens of different NPC, varied game worlds, game areas, testing, advertising and any peice of content all do. Yes more powerful hardware does allow more of some of these things but it doesn't make games more expensive to make. Some of the most expensive games arround are still last gen games things like Final Fantasy VII which cost $45 million (plus $100m for marketing) which ajusted for inflation is $64 million meaning it cost almost 3x as much to make as Assassin's Creed 2 at $24m or Crysis at $22m. Huge game budgets have been a part of the industry for years, it's just now all the major developers want blockbusters so they spare no expense. And average game budgets will keep going up even without new hardware.

And there is nothing stoping devs making games on the cheap, it's just they think that customers don't want it. Which is totally wrong but what can you do, some devs have figured it out that not every game has to be a AAA game and they are very successful for it. And others have found a way to make a AAA game without breaking the bank like CDProjekt RED who made The Witcher 2 for $8 million and that game has some of the best graphics of any RPG and also had a tonne of content, so much content that they did something that almost no one else would ever do they made 2 different versions of the 2nd chapter that were in different areas with different quests depending on your decisons and still managed to offer more play time in a single play though than many other ARPGs.

Besides we live in an age where 2 people can make this 

from scratch including their own engine 


I appreciate the response! I saw that trailer and it is indeed beautiful. But it IS just a trailer... 

 

Anyways, if you read through my later posts in this thread I ended up opening the topic to more than just dev cost. I've been posting in a number of threads this evening about NPD and In light of trying to not post the exact same comment in each one, I mixed them up a bit and now I realize I should have just made them all inclusive of my points.

"And there is nothing stoping devs making games on the cheap, it's just they think that customers don't want it"

I'm glad we-- what the hell happened to my font? Anyways, I'm glad you see similarly to how I do! Aside from a few phenomenons, the middle market for consoles is entirely falling out and gaming appears to be taking a huge split as things shift to mobile/tablet and consoles rely more heavily each year on the handful of extremely top tier AAA titles. It's a problem for the console industry that either needs to be grown out of with growing pains or a major shift in the business.