Wii U VS 4BONE graphics

[Scoobes]

Play4Fun said:

Scoobes said:

Play4Fun said:

Here.

Educate yourself.

That article is as bias as they come and completely fails at giving any form of balance. Some of the developers she mentions in this article have actually profited and grown hugely this generation. He talks about Bioware making the most expensive game but that same studio from the start of the gen has grown hugely to the point where it now encompasses 5 teams/studios with nearly 1000 employees and has 3 of the biggest IPs going into next gen. That's all from a single studio in 2005.

It also fails to recognise that studios should actually have an easier time of making games moving into next gen than with PS3/360. The PS4/X1 architectures are effectively PCs meaning far less time (and effectively money) can be spent on engine development and more time spent on the games themselves.

Anyway, have studios closed this gen? Yes, of course, but this happens every generation. Developers and publishers that fail to adapt to the changing market conditions will either go under, or get bought by someone else. That's just business as usual in this industry.

Rising cost of game development wasn't anywhere as big a problem in other generations as it was this gen so saying "this happens every gen" is disingenuous and ignores the realities of the problem.

Even Ubisoft and Epic were talking about expecting development costs to double or triple next gen.

Game development costs have risen every successive gen and have always been a problem in the industry. This is nothing new.

Go back to the SNES/Genesis to Playstation/N64 transition. Developers were beginning to struggle with exploring 3D and the increased costs of developing in 3D combined with the relatively high costs of cartidges. People seem to forget this. It was actually the use of the cheaper optical disc format that helped keep developers going as they made the 2D-3D transition. Still, a good number of devs struggled or went under.

The transition from SD to HD has had similar teething problems. What people fail to take into account is that publishers of big AAA titles are now moving towards alternative revenue streams for their titles rather than the single game purchase as in the past. Buying a game is part 1. They then have DLC, micro-transactions, map-packs (weapons packs or any other type of overpriced pack), e-bay-like stores (e.g. Diablo III), Pay 2 Progress (fast track) and small standalone titles in the same franchise (e.g. Far Cry: Blood Dragon which has sold 1million). Then there's also different business models such as F2P, episodic content and subscription based MMOs. All are relatively new methods of gaining revenue (except maybe subscriptions) that have gained traction this gen. And that's not including things like product placement (Apple products in MGS4).

There's also little reason for costs to rise so high if the developers and publishers are intelligent about their development. Take Witcher 3, a next-gen open world game, touted as having a world bigger than Skyrim on 3 platforms with a $15 million development budget. Or Metro: Last Light which is reported to have a budget of only 10% of its rivals. Gears of War 1 & 2 cost Epic $10 and $12 million respectively. That's not to say we won't still have massive budgets (LA Noire, GTA V and Watch Dogs come to mind), but it's up to the developers and publishers to budget wisely, adapt to the new market/tech and find ways to counteract the costs by increasing their revenue/profit without pissing off consumers. Those that fail to do this struggle, those that suceed, survive.

Like I said before, this has happened every gen and will happen next gen. Costs have risen every gen and those that fail to adapt their business struggle or go under. This gen isn't particularly different in that regard.