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HappySqurriel on 15 December 2012
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Squilliam said:
HappySqurriel said:
If developers are only motivated to work on the largest projects for the most advanced hardware available than why are there so many games produced for the iPhone/iPod or Nintendo DS/3DS?

The reality is that there are (maybe) a few developers at the top couple dozen studios in the world that truly get to pick and choose the projects they work on, for everyone else it is a job where you're told what to do, when to do it and for what price. Certainly, it is a cool job for those who have it but the average developer gets joy out of trying to get that extra "ounce of power" or producing the most detailed artwork on the platform they're working on; which (more often than not) is on mobile phones, handheld systems, previous generation systems, underpowered systems, or for low budget games.




The question of whether "next generation development" will hurt or help the Wii U largely depends on what publishers decide is the best strategy. I don't doubt that the studios that produced the top 50 best selling multi-platform games for the PS3 and XBox 360 will probably be directed to big budget games; but I also expect that the typical Wii developer will be pushed towards the Wii U, with the typical HD console developer (who didn't see 1+ million in sales) will receive a similar budget to what they had with the HD consoles and (probably) focus on games being released to the XBox 360, PS3, Wii U, PS4 and XBox 720.

We've seen with Bungie and Infinity Ward whole studios prepared to walk if they don't get their way. Publishers may own the studio but a company is in reality just a piece of paper, what they don't really own are the people. So what about the rest? We're getting to the point where the games industry is becoming a dumbell shape with a lot of big expensive games on one end and a lot of cheap/next to nothing games on the other and very little in between. If you're not a 'big studio' then you're more likely to be a little studio chasing the growth potential of F2P, Fremium and cheap mobile games. Essentially you're either trying to be the next Call of Duty or you're trying to be the next League of Legends/Angry Birds.


The industry is not becoming dumbell shaped ... It moved from a relatively flat structure in the early days to a several tiered structure, and is now becoming a pyramid.

According to Wikipedia, there were (roughly) 1100 games released for the HD consoles last generation, 1220 Wii games, 770 PSP games, 1150 DS games, and thousands of iPod/Android/Flash games; although the information does seem to be out of date. For each of these platforms there are games produced for budgets that range from low budget to high budget for each of the platforms, but (for the most part) a low budget HD console game had a larger budget than big budget Wii or PSP games, and a low budget Wii or PSP game tended to have a bigger budget than most DS (or iPod/iPhone) games.

Ultimately, the studios that sold 5+ million copies of games on the HD consoles last generation will (probably) be able to pick and choose what they develop, but the bulk of studios that sold less than 2 million copies will on the HD consoles will (probably) have far less choice. In many cases their choice may become to develop licensed shovelware for high end consoles, mid-range original content for the Wii U, or high end projects for the 3DS; and not all would rather make a Spongebob game for the "PS4" ...