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Forums - Gaming - Will next gen end up with far less studios and people developing for it?

osed125 on 21 January 2013
Wander_ said:
osed125 said:
Wander_ said:

As the time goes by the development costs will decrease until it affordable for small developers.

If you look at the link on the post above you, you'll realize that's not true.

Do you remember a game by the name Shenmue ? it cost sega 70 million to make it 13 years ago. Now do you think that a game like shenmue now adays would cost that much ? NO. Because development costs decrease every second.

Shenmue was like the Stars Wars: The Old Republic of the time. If you look at the list of games on the thread you will see that all the high budget games come from this gen, with all in the range of $45m+ (and excluding CoD those numbers do not count marketing).



Nintendo and PC gamer

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Wander_ on 21 January 2013
osed125 said:
Wander_ said:

Do you remember a game by the name Shenmue ? it cost sega 70 million to make it 13 years ago. Now do you think that a game like shenmue now adays would cost that much ? NO. Because development costs decrease every second.

Shenmue was like the Stars Wars: The Old Republic of the time. If you look at the list of games on the thread you will see that all the high budget games come from this gen, with all in the range of $45m+ (and excluding CoD those numbers do not count marketing).

Look at Uncharted 2 possibly the best looking game on consoles and it only cost Sony just $25m. If it came out in 2006 it would've cost them 60m minimum.



osed125 on 22 January 2013
Wander_ said:
osed125 said:
Wander_ said:

Do you remember a game by the name Shenmue ? it cost sega 70 million to make it 13 years ago. Now do you think that a game like shenmue now adays would cost that much ? NO. Because development costs decrease every second.

Shenmue was like the Stars Wars: The Old Republic of the time. If you look at the list of games on the thread you will see that all the high budget games come from this gen, with all in the range of $45m+ (and excluding CoD those numbers do not count marketing).

Look at Uncharted 2 possibly the best looking game on consoles and it only cost Sony just $25m. If it came out in 2006 it would've cost them 60m minimum.

That's pure speculation, you don't know if the game would have costed more early in the gen.

The matter of the subject is that developers are scared of the cost. Neil Thompson from Bioware said "You'd have to sell 20-30 million copies before you broke even." http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=153253&page=1

Obviously he's exaggerating but we are going to see games that need 5m units to break even, like Dead Space 3. 



Nintendo and PC gamer

NintendoPie on 22 January 2013
Otakumegane said:
I think that the industries will be on the 2 extremes, the indies and the huge publishers. Seeing a decrease of those in the middle though.

I agree. It's kind of like our "Class" System here, in the USA. High Wealth staying, Medium Wealth going, and Low Wealth increasing.



Wander_ on 22 January 2013
osed125 said:
Wander_ said:
osed125 said:

Shenmue was like the Stars Wars: The Old Republic of the time. If you look at the list of games on the thread you will see that all the high budget games come from this gen, with all in the range of $45m+ (and excluding CoD those numbers do not count marketing).

Look at Uncharted 2 possibly the best looking game on consoles and it only cost Sony just $25m. If it came out in 2006 it would've cost them 60m minimum.

That's pure speculation, you don't know if the game would have costed more early in the gen.

The matter of the subject is that developers are scared of the cost. Neil Thompson from Bioware said "You'd have to sell 20-30 million copies before you broke even."

New technology is expensive  everyone knows that. Even Naughtydog said that they went through hell when they first started to develop for the ps3.



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osed125 on 22 January 2013
Wander_ said:
osed125 said:
Wander_ said:
osed125 said:

Shenmue was like the Stars Wars: The Old Republic of the time. If you look at the list of games on the thread you will see that all the high budget games come from this gen, with all in the range of $45m+ (and excluding CoD those numbers do not count marketing).

Look at Uncharted 2 possibly the best looking game on consoles and it only cost Sony just $25m. If it came out in 2006 it would've cost them 60m minimum.

That's pure speculation, you don't know if the game would have costed more early in the gen.

The matter of the subject is that developers are scared of the cost. Neil Thompson from Bioware said "You'd have to sell 20-30 million copies before you broke even."

New technology is expensive  everyone knows that. Even Naughtydog said that they went through hell when they first started to develop for the ps3.

Either way the cost of games are increasing waaaay to fast. Like I said in the post above, Dead Space 3 needs to sell 5m units in order to break even (and that's from a full retail price). 

Also take a look a Kingdoms of Amalur, the game needed to sell 3m units and the game sold 1.51m (according to VGC) let's add 1 more million because of digital sales and possible undertracking. 38 Studios shuts it's doors because of low sales.

So like Otakumegane said in the first post, the "middle" games are going to disappear, it's going to be the big games and the small (indie) games.



Nintendo and PC gamer

Wander_ on 22 January 2013
osed125 said:
Wander_ said:

New technology is expensive  everyone knows that. Even Naughtydog said that they went through hell when they first started to develop for the ps3.

Either way the cost of games are increasing waaaay to fast. Like I said in the post above, Dead Space 3 needs to sell 5m units in order to break even (and that's from a full retail price). 

Also take a look a Kingdoms of Amalur, the game needed to sell 3m units and the game sold 1.51m (according to VGC) let's add 1 more million because of digital sales and possible undertracking. 38 Studios shuts it's doors because of low sales.

So like Otakumegane said in the first post, the "middle" games are going to disappear, it's going to be the big games and the small (indie) games.

So there will only be Call of Duty,Assassins's Creed,Halo,Gran Turismo ? i will officially retire from gaming if that happens.



xwan on 22 January 2013

just casual reading saids the opposite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_development

. The average price of game production slowly rose from US$1M–4M in 2000 to over 5M in 2006 to over 20M in 2010.



osed125 on 22 January 2013
Wander_ said:
osed125 said:
Wander_ said:

New technology is expensive  everyone knows that. Even Naughtydog said that they went through hell when they first started to develop for the ps3.

Either way the cost of games are increasing waaaay to fast. Like I said in the post above, Dead Space 3 needs to sell 5m units in order to break even (and that's from a full retail price). 

Also take a look a Kingdoms of Amalur, the game needed to sell 3m units and the game sold 1.51m (according to VGC) let's add 1 more million because of digital sales and possible undertracking. 38 Studios shuts it's doors because of low sales.

So like Otakumegane said in the first post, the "middle" games are going to disappear, it's going to be the big games and the small (indie) games.

So there will only be Call of Duty,Assassins's Creed,Halo,Gran Turismo ? i will officially retire from gaming if that happens.

That won't necessarily happen, it all depends on how developers and publishers are willing to take the risk of high budget games. If all publishers go on the route that every AAA game needs to be like high budget movies then I could see the releases of games becoming far between from each other and possibly only the most popular ones (with some very few exceptions on new IPs). 

If on the other hand publishers and devs take it slowly and not go to the movie type budgets, then next gen could be just like this one, with dev cost staying pretty much the same and luckily more new IPs.



Nintendo and PC gamer

Wander_ on 22 January 2013
osed125 said:

That won't necessarily happen, it all depends on how developers and publishers are willing to take the risk of high budget games. If all publishers go on the route that every AAA game needs to be like high budget movies then I could see the releases of games becoming far between from each other and possibly only the most popular ones (with some very few exceptions on new IPs). 

If on the other hand publishers and devs take it slowly and not go to the movie type budgets, then next gen could be just like this ones, with dev cost staying pretty much the same and luckily more new IPs.


If only publishers can take the same route as Nintendo and make fantastic low budget games.