IamAwsome said:
....but can the industry really survive it?
Everyone in the PS3/360 camp says the Wii U isn't poweful enough. How powerful do you expect the PS4/X3ox to be??? If Nintendo takes a loss on the so called "underpowered" Wii U, than what makes you think Sony and MS will be able to release consoles with MOAR power, and even remotely turn some sort of profit?
The base Wii U is $299, and they profit with 1-2 games sold, so that puts the production price at around $325 (and no the GamePad doesn't eat up most of the cost). If consoles are as powerful as you people want, we could be looking at $400-$500 launch prices if they don't sell at a loss.
Oh, and 4k will NOT happen next gen. just saying :).
Development costs are rising, and we lost a lot of devs this gen. What makes y'all think they'll survive with costs tripling? We'll just have more Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, and Madden, and less innovation. Lightbbox Interactive, Eat Sleep Play, and Superbot Entertainment were all founded in the middle of this gen. They all released games last year that didn't sell. After that they faced major layoffs, and make iOS games now. THQ went belly up, and poor Vigil got left in the cold. Now we have publishers like EA and Square Enix consistently posting losses. If big publishers are losing money now, how will they survive next gen?
The answer?: They WON'T
If development costs rise more next gen like Epic says, bigger publishers will have to merge, and smaller publishers will either turn to iOS development, or shut down altogether, like THQ and Atari. Everyone wants an insanely powerful PS4, but for the good of the industry, it's not necessary.
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