Are games getting to expensive to ever recoup their costs?

[Bofferbrauer2]

JRPGfan said:

the2real4mafol said:

Why is budgeting adding 60% to the costs of developing this game in the first place? Not like Gears is unheard of! Just seems absurd.

Sooner or later they'll need to reign in these costs, advertise less, make smaller but more games. I'd actually prefer that. Games may look better now (not always, I hate how MW4 looks compared to classic COD for example) but they all seem shallower with physics, story and what made gaming fun in the first place and yet cost more to make and buy, require larger installs. Doesn't seem sustainable for us or them in the long run.

You mean marketing costs?  Yeah that is insane.
Like why would you need to spend that much on such, honestly these days with word of mouth, if you make a good game, people will notice regardless.

The 7+ years to develop is a big issue too I think.

PS3 / XB360 gen was great with games.
Like back then, Naughty dog did Uncharted 1, 2 years later on, Uncharted 2, then 2 years later on, Uncharted 3, and then another 2 years and Last of Us... ect.

Now games take forever to make.

Devs need to go back to the drawing board and figure out a way to push out games faster.

They did in the form of AI, but it has been widely rejected by customers.

Sadly, you can only automate so much, so not too much that can be gained here.

However, if they were to do multiple games with the same realistic looks, why not reuse some assets from those games, even if it's just background objects like trees or decoration? And also movement routines and potentially NPC and enemy AI while we're at it.

But even then, $800 Million is insane. That's more expensive than any movie yet to get anywhere near the same revenue of the big blockbuster titles they'd need to sell tens of millions of copies at full price, which is simply not sustainable.

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - 6 hours ago