RolStoppable said:
The thing that would more or less enforce the cap would be the hardware itself. There wouldn't be an actual cap. For example, the 3DS doesn't create a development environment where big publishers can simply outspend everyone else. There's a limit to what can be done on the 3DS, and that limit is high enough to allow many different kinds of games, but low enough to allow virtually every publisher to reasonably compete with everyone else. |
Are you sure that even hardware can enforce such a cap? To me it seems much like the Wii in that the reason big publishers haven't tried to simply outspend everyone is because they don't feel it would be worth the return on investment on Nintendo platforms. They just decided to spend more money on PS360 games instead. Or mobile in the case of the publishers that would have been releasing handheld games.
I was also under the impression that though Nintendo did save a lot of money developing some of it's games for the Wii but that the advertising was far larger than normal. I'm not sure if marketing and advertising are included in costs here but I would imagine that even in a development environment such as the one you described if there is much competition that advertising costs might be inflated to get the needed attention to your title to be successful.
It really seems like capping budgets is only something that the management or producers of studios themselves or the publishing entities can really dictate.
