Publishers overestimate their necessity.

[20happyballs]

Euphoria14 said:

20happyballs said:

Miguel_Zorro said:

The same people saying they should just lower budgets for game production will be the people lining up for GTAV.

Agreed. Personally, i don't want us consumers to have to compromise. But rather than price, I rather not have developers compromise on imrpoving quality. If all you people arw not just talking out of your @$$, then I think that publishers should really start segregating the market. I don't want my AAA experiences to take a hit. I love playing games such as Uncharted, Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, and their increasing production quality. If you guys are really okay with your lower budget games, then I hope they make a market for you also. I dont want our differing opinions to have to ruin the industry....however, i doubt you guys really know what you are asking  for.

You are missing the point of the article.

You have plenty of games with the same or higher production values that don't cost $40,$50 or even $60M+ to create. Many of them, like Uncharted are made with budgets ~$20M. The Witcher 1 & 2 created with budgets under $10M. Lower cost =/= lesser quality title.

High production values can be achieved if devs and publishers put in the effort to find ways to lower cost rather than just allowing it to escalate and expecting the consumers to cover the rising cost.

 

Fact is that much of these issues are not due to second hand sales or people lending out their games more so than these companies mismanaging.

 

Don't be shocked if we find out TLoU cost less than $30M.

While I cant say i know myself, it is important to look at what is causing development costs to rise, and why those games were produced more cheaply because those developers are obviously the exception. Some of my guesses as to the reason for their powered development costs is that they pay their game designers much less. This is not something developers can really do anything about for the most part because you cant expect people of high credentials to just agree to a lowered salary. If they did try to lower their salaries, those workers would just leave. Im pretty sure that the CDprojekt developers will also start having higher budgets because the people in that studio are now becoming well known enough to find a job elsewhere.

Bungie has something around 400 developers. With an average salary of around 50000, thats already 20,000,000 for 1 year. Most good games take at least 2.

Im sure that there are many many other factors that we dont know about.