I beg to differ. I understand your theory behind the topic/ Idea but you left out one thing that affects the whole industry. Sales. Ok. You say that engineers and developers are in it for the love and not necessarily the money. Then why are the average salaries for these employees upwards of 80,000 dollars or more? I dont hear about too many of them cutting their own salaries for the company, as a whole, to finish a game that is financially strapped or over budget. They love what they do but im pretty sure they love their income too.
Speaking of which. What do you think the cost of a super console like the next gen is going to cost to develop for? How many studios or publishers do you think will have the financial coffers to even fund the pre-production of games for such systems? I mean if youve been keeping up with current events then you know a high number of studios have closed. Even Sony has closed certain studios in their whole restructuring move. A great number of studios who might have had one project that did not meet their financial projections have had to close. So this being the current case and environment of the industry, how many publishers and studios do you expect to take advantage of the next gen systems?
I think Nintendo is actually right on the money. Yes their tech is, once again, behind the times but this time its only by a liitle. Heres my prediction. Sony and Microsoft will put out their consoles by late 2013 (Microsoft), 2014 (Sony). But you will have the same amount of 1st day and 3 month launch titles as you did the previous gen which wasnt much in the beginning. I predict that both these systems will cost 400 to 550 depending on the bundle skus they come up with for retail. This cost will only appeal to the very hardcore crowd. The rest will stay away from those prices. Add in Ouya and the Apple market and you have a very dangerous spot for both consoles. The first year sales and attach rate will partly determine if studios will back and develop for both consoles and wether the programming environment will be friendly enough to streamline game developement to get things done efficiently. If not, these systems will have a hard time their first year on the market and wont see quality games for another 3 years. You could group the Wii U with this but given their price point and the somewhat added value of the gamepad, Nintendo is in a position to have their first 4 years of Wii U be highly profitable. If the cost of devving is to high for Sony Micro then devs will be more than happy to dev for the Wii U, especially if the system hits 3 mil by 2014.
Given the articles written over the last 2 years about gamings graphical peak, it would be hard to prove me incorrect.
