The PSP and Wii were both flukes.

[disolitude]

Turkish said:

disolitude said:

Turkish said:

disolitude said:
Sony was the king when the console business model involved:
- introducing a new proprietary media format to drive sales
- selling console at a loss and undercutting the competition that can't/won't do the same
- getting 3rd parties to support your console more than the other guys

Sadly none of that can be applied anymore as media format doesn't matter, Microsoft will undercut Sony on price all night long and major 3rd party devs have to sell 1 million + copies of their game to break even so they have to put it on as many consoles as possible.

So yeah, get used to seeing more console flukes happening in the future.

No they won't. Microsoft will undercut Sony how? Its not a matter of "hey Sony announced they'll launch the ps4 at 400, lets launch nextbox at 350 lol!" I believe we had this discussion before. Do you have a source saying 3rd parties need to ship +1m units to break even? There was just a publisher who said nextgen costs will be around the same levels of current gen.

Ok if we pretend we have no clue how much AAA games cost and what kind of a financial state Sony and Microsoft are in:

- Microsoft will not undercut Sony on price if necessary.

- 3rd parties will go and develop PS4 exclusives just like they did in the PS2 days because they saw your animated gif in the signature and found it funny. 

What?

 

Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has revealed in an investor’s call that next generation game development on the PS4 and Xbox 720 will be similar in costs compared to current generation consoles i.e. the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

“We don’t have any reason to believe our development budgets will change significantly. If anything we have become group wide much tighter in terms of how we spend our money. We can’t say specifically, but no we don’t expect to see a meaningful change in what it costs us to release these top quality products.”

 

He also thinks that if next gen consoles do arrive, Take Two will have something extra-ordinary to offer.

“Assuming next-gen consoles are coming and some of us think they are, Take-Two will have extraordinary offerings when it comes,” he said. A current generation game costs around $60 on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It will be interesting to see how much they will cost on next gen consoles, whose specs are expected to be beefy.

http://gamingbolt.com/take-two-ps4-and-xbox-720-game-development-costs-to-be-similar-to-current-gen-consoles

 

So if devs, who have been working with devkits for quite some time, are expecting costs to be similar, what makes you think they will rise expxonentially? Ofcourse mismanagement can happen always and a company may go bankrupt, but thats not due to rising costs in development.

 

I quoted you current gen development costs...nothing is going to skyrocket next gen. It's already as high as it needs to be...

http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/1/3439738/the-state-of-games-state-of-aaa

"EA did slightly better for the year, posting total fiscal year profits of $76 million, versus a $276 million loss last year. But before we get all happy weepy over the turnaround, let's consider that $56 million of that profit came in the fourth quarter, and that EA's money-maker for that period wasMass Effect 3. That game's budget has been estimated at around $40 million, and it has sold over 3.5 million copies to date. Look at those numbers closely. EA spent $40 million to make $56 million, and they had to ship more than 3 million copies to make a profit at all."