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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - 3DS dev costs roughly TRIPLE that of DS!

Well Nintendo already said to expect software prices similiar to the DS. Also as the years go buy things become more expensive. Sure four years ago they could make a way cheaper DS game but almost all costs have risen , N-Space claims that their is no profit left on the DS. That would indicate costs of development have soared.Also Marvelous is a smaller less equiped studio their for costs are alot higher for them. I remember BandaiNamco saying a low budget 360 game cost over 4.5-million to make. However a bigger more equiped publisher could probubly make a game for alot less. Also this is Japan we are talking about and their Yen is gaining high on the US and European currencies. This also drives development costs even higher.

Now of course their is going to be a jump considering the technology. But I doubt its too much of one, I bet its only about 200,000$ tops. Notice Marvelous themselves didn't tell us how much of a jump their actually is. It would appear that 3DS is about as powerful as the GameCube maybe as powerful as Wii. As such the dev costs have risen but developing titles for the Wii/GameCube have gotten very cheap.

In the end I expect Nintendo to set the RRP at about 39.99$ a game. Only ten dollars cheaper then the Wii but in line with the DS. Sure this will mean less profit right off the bat but it will also mean higher sales due to its cheaper pricing. I highly doubt games will retail at 49.99$ or higher because that would cut a major advantage Nintendo had over Sony.

Games will continue to be this cheap to buy and I don't think the dev costs are that drastic. A million dollars may sound like alot but in all honesty it isn't. Developers like Marvelous know that they will sell alot of software on the 3DS and the few hundred thousand more won't deter them.



-JC7

"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer

 

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HappySqurriel said:

The 3DS having increased development costs isn't that much of a surprise, but I suspect a lot of developers will avoid having to deal with that by producing more traditional sprite based games rather than push the limit of the 3DS.

From what I understand sprites, especially detailed sprites, can actually be more expensive to produce than low-poly models.



noname2200 said:
HappySqurriel said:

The 3DS having increased development costs isn't that much of a surprise, but I suspect a lot of developers will avoid having to deal with that by producing more traditional sprite based games rather than push the limit of the 3DS.

From what I understand sprites, especially detailed sprites, can actually be more expensive to produce than low-poly models.


Yes and no ...

If you're creating games with (relatively) simple graphics and limited number of animations using sprites can be an order of magnitude less expensive than producing 3D models. The benefit of 3D is that after you have the model produced adding animations, changing the size or lighting conditions, or countless other features or effects is far cheaper than producing sprites to do the same thing.

Or to put this another way, as you try to produce a more and more visually impressive game there hits a point where it becomes less expensive to produce the game in 3D; but if you're trying to make the least expensive game possible it usually will be a game that uses 2D sprites. This is the reason why so many iPhone games still use sprites.



I don't understand why many people find this surprising, I mean its obivios, 3D = 3xDevelopment.



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HappySqurriel said:
noname2200 said:
HappySqurriel said:

The 3DS having increased development costs isn't that much of a surprise, but I suspect a lot of developers will avoid having to deal with that by producing more traditional sprite based games rather than push the limit of the 3DS.

From what I understand sprites, especially detailed sprites, can actually be more expensive to produce than low-poly models.


Yes and no ...

If you're creating games with (relatively) simple graphics and limited number of animations using sprites can be an order of magnitude less expensive than producing 3D models. The benefit of 3D is that after you have the model produced adding animations, changing the size or lighting conditions, or countless other features or effects is far cheaper than producing sprites to do the same thing.

Or to put this another way, as you try to produce a more and more visually impressive game there hits a point where it becomes less expensive to produce the game in 3D; but if you're trying to make the least expensive game possible it usually will be a game that uses 2D sprites. This is the reason why so many iPhone games still use sprites.


And hand-drawn 2D sprites cost more than most 3D models, especially after including animation. It all depends how you see it. And if you start to disagree with this, most games using 2D are not hand-drawn. Animated movies are mostly CGI (even 2D cartoons) and 3D because it is a lot cheaper than hand-drawn animations. Even if those animations are 2D.



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Kynes said:

It's normal that at the beginning of a generation, the costs are way higher than the precedent generation. You need to develop new tools, engines, the studios are not familiarized with the hardware... In two or three years, the production cost will go down, and if £375,000 to £1.1 million is a lot of money, then compare this with the costs of the HD consoles.


I couldn't have said it any better.

Once things are in place, costs will go down, especially for a handheld.



Leatherhat on July 6th, 2012 3pm. Vita sales:"3 mil for COD 2 mil for AC. Maybe more. "  thehusbo on July 6th, 2012 5pm. Vita sales:"5 mil for COD 2.2 mil for AC."

Untamoi said:
HappySqurriel said:
noname2200 said:
HappySqurriel said:

The 3DS having increased development costs isn't that much of a surprise, but I suspect a lot of developers will avoid having to deal with that by producing more traditional sprite based games rather than push the limit of the 3DS.

From what I understand sprites, especially detailed sprites, can actually be more expensive to produce than low-poly models.


Yes and no ...

If you're creating games with (relatively) simple graphics and limited number of animations using sprites can be an order of magnitude less expensive than producing 3D models. The benefit of 3D is that after you have the model produced adding animations, changing the size or lighting conditions, or countless other features or effects is far cheaper than producing sprites to do the same thing.

Or to put this another way, as you try to produce a more and more visually impressive game there hits a point where it becomes less expensive to produce the game in 3D; but if you're trying to make the least expensive game possible it usually will be a game that uses 2D sprites. This is the reason why so many iPhone games still use sprites.


And hand-drawn 2D sprites cost more than most 3D models, especially after including animation. It all depends how you see it. And if you start to disagree with this, most games using 2D are not hand-drawn. Animated movies are mostly CGI (even 2D cartoons) and 3D because it is a lot cheaper than hand-drawn animations. Even if those animations are 2D.


I think you're not understanding what I am saying at all ... If you're even thinking of movie quality graphics and animations, or games produced by major publishers you've missed the point entirely.

 

There are more games being created today using 2D sprites that were created by being hand drawn or in photoshop than all other games combined. These are games made for the iPhone, Nintendo DS or flash and they're created in this way because it is much (MUCH) cheaper to produce this content in 2D than it is to produce these games in 3D.

Start browsing the iTunes library of games and looking at the graphics, roughly 90% of the games involve 2D graphics that were produced by hand or in a program like photoshop.

 

edit: I'll put it another way ...

One of the main reasons why comic books are still hand drawn is because it is far cheaper to produce comic books this way than it is to produce these in 3D. 1 good artist can produce a hand drawn graphical novel in less time than it would take a team of 10 modelers and animators to produce the same work. If you were to take that same graphical novel and convert it into a movie it would increase the work of the artist drawing by hand by (roughly) 100 to 500 times, while the 3D modelers and animators would see their work increase by 4 to 10 times.

There is a massive "overhead" to working in 3D that is often (much) greater than the scope of the entire project being worked on. On the other hand 2D projects do not scale well, and as a project grows you rapidly hit a break-even point between doing work in 2D or 3D; and soon after that it becomes much cheaper to work in 3D.



darthdevidem01 said:

 

thats ALOTTA money

I think portable devs could benefit from perhaps making PSP2/3DS multiplat titles.....

 


PSP2 is rumored to be around 360 spec... 3DS/PSP1 or 3DS/Wii probably makes more sense if anyone wants to go multi.  



jarrod said:
darthdevidem01 said:

 

thats ALOTTA money

I think portable devs could benefit from perhaps making PSP2/3DS multiplat titles.....

 


PSP2 is rumored to be around 360 spec... 3DS/PSP1 or 3DS/Wii probably makes more sense if anyone wants to go multi.  


Expect that it's impossible currently to match X360 in portable form. Too much heat and power usage. Also I severely doubt that Sony wants to make ''$599'' mistake again. Those rumors should be taken with grain of salt.



KillerMan said:


Expect that it's impossible currently to match X360 in portable form. Too much heat and power usage. Also I severely doubt that Sony wants to make ''$599'' mistake again. Those rumors should be taken with grain of salt.


Honestly, I suspect that when people say that the performance of a handheld matches that of a console they mean so in a very loose fashion ... After all, people claimed that the PSP was a "portable PS2" but it was (in reality) a system which was approaching the processing power of the Dreamcast; and didn't really match the PS2.

With the PSP2 it is possible (and likely) that the performance will be somewhere between the PS2 and PS3, and the small screen size and limited resolution will lead people to make claims that it is a "Portable PS3" without it (really) comming close to the real world performance of the PS3.