Sqrl said:
Development costs are absolutely effected by hardware. Any modifications to the fundamentals of an existing architecture can easily cause numerous unforseen complications as well as numerous unforseen benefits.
If anything competition is what keeps game prices down as low as they are. Any company with a lock on a market would have no incentive to maintain reasonable prices. Competitors who are afriad of being percieved as too expensive instill the same fear in their competition and keep things from getting too expensive. |
yes development costs are affected by hardware, but never, absolutely never has coding ever eclipsed art as themost expensive part of development. the hardware also doesnt affect as much as you think. its pretty easy for a dev to make a 360/ps3 game look way better than ps2/wii/xbox game, yet ps2 games are still coming in at 20 million sometimes. that make sense? its because it really isnt much about hardware when the game gets made. hardware allows people to do more, and boy do they do more and spend more money doing it.
competition is also wrong. while competition does often keep things down, its really about the publishers. did the ps2 games outselling 360 games keep prices at 50? do publishers have a set price scheme for big games? the answer is yes and competition doesnt change that. it might make games better, but competition doesnt really keep prices down and as i have shown above it often can increase costs.
