people should better chill, won't happen anyway.

BTW THQ is one of the publishers that is now focussing on more budget releases (starting with MX vs. ATV Alive)

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/275229/news/thq-cheaper-games-is-the-future/

I don't take this as someone saying that games will be $100 a pop next generation.

I take it as someone sayign that we can't expect the same kind of budgetary leap we got going from last gen to this one.

If this is true, next gen, I will only buy bargain bins and dl titles.

Stop confusing people with commas and we should complain because $60 bucks is already a lot if you like buying a lot of games and the buying of tons of games is what keeps the industry alive. 1 Euro= 1.3598 dollars

Whoever said this was probably high...

its the same here in germany. (if you buy in stores, Online, its much less. like.. well. 55-60.) but yes, if you buy a Game in Stores over here, you are paying a nice ammount of money already.

But i think the Dev's are the main-Problem.

they should

a.) invest more money and time in  functionality in their engines. instead of reinventing similar game mechanics, the engine should be able to automize common routines that are necesary for more than one game.

For example take the Gamebryo engine. parts of Oblivion were created by the engine with already done pieces of the world in.. well.. 'mind', which has saved bethesda some effort. (of course they had to populate those parts manually, but the ground of those certain parts was built by the engine.)

b.) Re-use of existing material. another way to save time, is to reuse .. for example, ground textures.  Item Textures. take for example Fallout and Oblivion. yup, many things were just recoloured. Okay, that was an example that shouldnt be followed (a little more variety should be doable..) but i think ya know what i mean, right?

c.) In addition, i think they should make the next Gen of Consoles profitable from the start.  PS360 are strong devices. look at Final Fantasy XIII for example. did you just stand there sometimes to watch the Horizon? i am pretty sure anyone knows that most of that the heaven, the Forests, the towns, were more of a picture than actually modelled places u just couldnt reach. and even with stronger hardware, they wont change that, because no matter how strong the Hardware - fully moddeling those places u cannot access  is just moneywasting.  and else, except some flaws, Topnotch Games like Gears, and God of War or Uncharted.. or even FFXIII.. they are all gorgeus already, and there isnt much more hardware needed to make them stunning enough for the next generation. (Oh and when they are profitable from the start, Sony/MS/Ninty could lower the licensing costs per game for a low ammount.)

i think the next gen will come until mid '13, but we wont see PRONREALISM graphics, but Motion Gaming, enhanced (read; PS3,5,  Xbox 540) graphics, and an OS that is actually kinda close to what we call Windows/Linux/MacOS today.

edit: But again - 100$ (or 90-100€) is just more than unlikely, because - like someone said already - the costs wont improve as much as it did last gen. i think 75-80$/€ is high end already.

This

Was FF13-2 worth the risk? 

 This interview has been horribly misquoted and is just another example of what I assume is just another N4G controversial title hit grabbing no-name site. What he actually said was that if new consoles were introduced this year, or even next year, then he can't see the financials 'adding up' at a price below $100. No 'on average' figure OR that it doesn't matter when the next gen starts, reading the full interview there is much less of a story here.

 It is interesting to figure out where the consoles are going price-wise next gen, but in truth I think we'll see a sort of 'tier' system of games. Sure enough your Call of Duty's, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect's - the really huge budget titles might go as high as $100 but I think it own't be rare to see what may be perceived as lower budget titles instead only charing $70 or $80, or less. Before the next gen on consoles hit I think we're going to see alot of price / revenue experimentation with regards to the best way of pricing a game and getting that money digitally via DLC, or subscription or something.

 Doubt we'll see a new Xbox or PS3 until 2014 earliest imo, and I reckon personally it'll be as late as 2015. The numbers don't add up and neither Sony or Microsoft have any real reason to throw a new console into the fray yet - they're still waiting to see their money back from this generation. Nintendo are a hard one to call but I can't exactly see them pushing the graphics and hardware up beyond the PS3/360.

I think it all comes down to whether publishers can control budgets of games and keep them at reasonable levels for their expected sales ...

As you hit 4 to 8 times the processing power of the HD consoles you start to hit a point where there is almost no technical reason that limits the amount of "detail" you add to a game; being that you can add more (and more) objects that are each at (much) higher detail than current generation games. Certainly, you can't render every page on every book in a library; but that library could have very bookshelf, and all the books on it, as their own independently modeled object.

If games start getting $100,000,000 budgets regardless of the appeal of the game publishers will probably have to start charging $100 per title to attempt to recover their costs.

Unfortunately (for them), I suspect that any system with $100 games will either sell very poorly or have rampant piracy.

How much do people already pay for games on average? Once you consider all the map packs and DLC offered for various titles the average game price for the new full price buyers could already be considered to be > $60, though how much more I cannot say.

I can see them splitting up the single / multiplayer aspects. For instance they'll sell you Call of Duty 10 but you only get the single player OR multiplayer for the full retail price and you have to unlock the other half. So if you just want to play through the campaign they may only charge you $50-60 and if you want the multiplayer they will charge you $50-60 but if you want both then they'll charge you $100 plus various DLC packs.