Rockstar allows GTA to cost 100+ mil only because it always sells more than 20 mil units at US$ 60. Games without all that success will have lower budgets and that it is. And graphically speaking, GTA 4 is horrible by today's standards. We won't see a big increase between gens now. The PS4/720 architeture is way simpler than the current gen and that, with better development tools, will keep costs low. 

It's necessary to consider the importance of the advanced tools and libraries. Programminga games on an Atari demanded a much more specialized programmer tha current gen games. If the objective is keep costs low, the solution isn't to make worse graphics and games, it's to improve architetures and development tools and libraries to make things easier and more cost-effective. 

Epic games main business is selling a game engine with the objective of cutting costs. Did you really expect that they would said that costs will be ok next gen?

For all the flak Pachter usually gets, he's one of the first (maybe even first) who sad dev cost won't jump significantly in next-gen. Nice to see someone confirms that, those earlier statements from Epic always sounded a lot like snake oil sales pitch.

At this time everyone is deveoping new engines for the next-generation to take advantage of newer tecnology while also cutting costs. If he is willing to sell UE4 by promising a cost increse "only" by a double, then it means he thinks a "x2" cost rise is already an attractive result for developers.

That won't stop devs for making bigger games which in the end will result in much higher dev cost. Programing and engineering only takes aprox. 20% of the total dev cost. There are also games like Mass Effect and L.A Noire that tried to replicate movies by hiring movie actors to do the voices plus very expensive soundtracks, marketing, etc. Not all dev cost goes directly into simple coding, there are other big factors to take in mind. 

Like some people already said, GTAV is rumored to be $130m+, GTA is an extremely big game but it gives you a glance of how expensive this games are becoming (with some going waaay to high like Star Wars: ToR with a budget of $200m). They might stay roughly the same, but it won't help the greedy publishers and devs to make bigger games which will result in failure. We saw this during the gen with a lot games and some devs and publishers going down.

God, they are saying 5X to 6X? Looking that way 2X looks ok to me too. But, anyway, I wouldn't thrust both of these numbers, since they are interested in selling ther engines, it can be just a way to spread FUD to sell more licenses. Crytek is other that wouldn't be confiable when talking about this...

Assuming next-gen consoles are coming and some of us think they are, Take-Two will have extraordinary offerings when it comes,” - agent confirmed as launch tittle for ps4

With the average dev cost of AAA games being between $20m-$40m, 2x doesn't look too good...

Ok, but the thing is the UE3 (and possiby 4) licenses are going to be sold to big publishers, hence big companies who have the internal resources and knowledge to estimate how much a new game is going to cost. Consider that a "x2" promise must sound attractive to them, I don't think any company like Activision, EA, Ubisoft is going to make a multi-million worth contract just basing on FUD.

On the other hand you are right, Epic can only benefit from increasing development costs so this statement is convenient for them. I wouldn't really belive it if they were the only ones saying this, but lately there were many other developers concerned about development costs. The Take Two statement is a bit against the tide.

To be honest I belive them if, in their case, the costs won't rise too much but that may not be automatically true for any other developer and publisher. In the end I think more developers and publishers are going to struggle in the next future.

me too, i just hope to play the damn game! anything that comes from rockstar has my immediate attention. this one i have been waiting for for years. i have faith that its still in development because rockstar games take ALOT of time to make. gta's, read dead redemption and max payne are all good examples