"These are all part of a separate market. I was talking about full-content games (not XBLA or PSN) on the HD twins in contrast with the Wii. The Wii capped it, so that business dynamics doesn't apply there. Same goes for XBLA or PSN."

Why would you ignore digital games when the digital market is only going to be more & more relavent next gen?

"CoD has top grade graphics. It's pretty necessary for the consumers of it, otherwise the Wii version would have likely sold just as well. The crowd that wanted CoD wanted top graphics imho. The two (its graphics and its popularity) go hand in hand."

What I meant is developers won't have to maximize the power of the PS4 & Nextbox. They can settle for a modest bump of this gen (Much like CoD is but a modest bump of last gen). I don't expect a modest bump will be much of a hassle of developers. In fact, we may see an even smaller bump.

"It's already happened. Lots of companies went belly-up due to it also. The only question remaining is, have the surviving ones learnt, or will they need another such gen to understand. If so, why not just lower the bar and keep things in their time."

Actually no. I used to believe this myself. Studios aren't shutting down due to graphics. They're shutting down because their games have gameplay or online issues. And if next gen consoles truly are easier to develop for, then I don't think we'll see a mass closing of studios.

Oh, I just meant that I considered XBLA and PSN a sub-market on the PS3 and 360 platforms, so not part of the discussion really. Much like Wii is another discussion, so it wouldn't be apples to apples. They are capped while the regular HD twin full-game platforms are not.

If hollywood is any indicator, that kind of market (the CoD/blockbuster market) always wants bigger and better. But as you said we never know where the market will turn, so this is only an observation of buyer behavior more than anything, I may be wrong. Regardless, CoD was biggest and some of the best content when it comes to realism last gen, especially those that consumers bought "en masse".

But you don't know that. Assumind you're right, the steep development costs they incurred in parallel with poor gameplay and online offerings sealed their graves. You see what I mean? A dev on another platform could have maybe resisted failure by trying anew, but here it was make it or break it. From what we understand at least.

It's fun watching the PR wars, it really is.

Is it not also the case that high development costs lead to less risk taking and a lack of New IP?

Of course! Imagine the failure of creating a new IP in high-production costs and seeing it tank!

On the flip side, other studios have been able to do it elegantly, especially Naughty Dog. I guess it all depends on the caliber of the studios. But you can be certain that studios with less certainty of success are in big danger in a cut-throat business like the HD twins.

Sounds good to me. 

I don't think next generation graphics will represent too much of development cost increase. Believe it or not, a lot of top developers create the same amount of assets and art that you'll see in demo's like the Unreal Engine 4, the difference is they compress the assets or use bump mapping instead of displacement etc. The reason why so many companies have been suffering in recent years is because consumer are buying less games, partially due to mega titles like COD and online multiplayer which means that it can sustain some gamers for an entire. I believe software sales in the past were far more splintered, so it was beneficial to more companies.

Its definitely the fault of expensive game development and the powerful hardware and NOT the bad developers fault, hence why we saw most major 3rd party developers shift and have waay more focus on the Wii during this whole generation. And that is also supported by the fact that 3rd party developers have made muuuuch more money on Wii than on PS360, which is why all major 3rd part titles such as Assassins Creed, COD, FIFA, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Dragon Age,  GTA, RDR, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Max Payne, Final Fantasy and many many others have found their way on Wii and have been largely successful, where on PS360 these games were never even released due to 3rd party being much more successful on Wii (because of its awesome weak, hardware capabilities, its a well know fact developers love working on systems that limit their effort greatly)

Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp.

Read through the whole thread derp.

Yeah i'll get right on that !