I Do Not See How Development Costs Can Possibly Go Up This Gen

[crissindahouse]

I don't think that teams will get smaller or will release games faster with the same size so that inflation alone will increase costs even if teams will need the same man-hours (do you call it like that?) as last gen.

So, if Infamous: Second Son was made by the same team in the same timeframe as the first Infamous then it was more expensive and I doubt that teams for Infamous, Forza 5 or Dead Rising 3 were smaller as for their previous releases.

I mean, what did the average employee earn in 2006 and what in 2013 or even 2017? How much did they have to pay for energy compared to nowadays? Or to fly to Gamescom and have a stand there? All these costs rise even if better tools and engines allow to achieve better looking or bigger worlds in the same time.

So yeah, I get the feeling that cost will still increase at least for big games. Small Indie games are maybe cheaper to develop nowadays.

That's why DLCs and microtransactions will rather get more as less this gen and developers like EA or Ubisoft will still have problems to be profitable.

Well, that's what I expect, would be happy if I'm wrong.