| superchunk said: I don't believe I said its only nonNintendo devs doing this. I think that is your bias, not mine. It also fits my narrative just fine. My focus is to not push graphics but instead spend time improving tools to reduce costs. BOTW should not require 2MM sales to break even just as Horizon should not. |
I agree that tools should be improved to bring down costs..... but even doing that cost money (until its done).
As things stand in the industry, what makes these games cost as much as they do isn't a mad craze for better graphics. Just look at a game like abzu, rime, child of light, below, the witness....etc. All extremely great looking games but none cost nearly as much as the bigger budget games to make. And that comes down to the size of the world and the assets that goes into those worlds. These games cost as much as they do because of how big, varied or how high the production levels are in the game. No amont of tools will bring down those costs.
20 years ago a game like ocarina of time had nothing but its world and gameplay to go for it. That was ok then and marked the pinnacle of game development. Today? development has grown, and now you need things like voice actors, cinematic directorsz surround sound design teams....etc, All these things add to the quality of the "base" game and in turn its cost of development.
Then we have games like COD, which doesnt really cost more than $30-$40M to actually develop each game.... but has a marketing budget that could b 3-4x more than that!!!!
All I am saying is that there is way more than graphics that result in why games cost as much as they do now.
