VideoGamer

The Xbox One has had a great deal of criticism this week, but it appears there is at least one person on the side of Microsoft – Gears of War co-creator Cliff Bleszinski.

Bleszinski's argument is that with the cost of making triple-A titles getting increasingly more expensive, publishers simply can't recoup their investment while the used game market exists.

"You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing. The numbers do NOT work people," he Tweeted.

He continued: "The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs. Assassin's Creed games are made by thousands of devs."

"Those of you telling me 'then just lower game budgets' do understand how silly you sound, right?"

And the former Epic man also suggests gamers angry at the Xbox One 24-hour online check-in should direct this frustration at internet service providers, not Microsoft.

"If you can afford high speed internet and you can't get it where you live direct your rage at who is responsible for pipe blocking you," he Tweeted.

Bleszinski also believes any talk of Sony's PS4 having already won the next generation battle is premature.

"If you're saying the next round of the console war is over before it even started then you're a f*****g idiot. This is a multi year fight."

Just in case anyone thinks Bleszinski is biased towards Xbox, he's "buying both a Ps4 and an Xbox One".

Xbox One launches this November priced £429, with the PS4 also out this holiday at the lower price of £349.

http://www.videogamer.com/news/bleszinski_defends_blocking_used-game_sales.html

I've been saying it forever. Make your team/company work its funds around more effectively, or scale back costs. Otherwise, you're free to join the likes of THQ and GRIN.

Blocking used game sales is not the solution.

edit: Yes, I know I could just say "make better games", but that coming from a gamer is too much of a casual saying - however, Nintendo agrees - http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=162493&page=1

So reduce the game and marketing budgets, dumbass.

I'll add what Jim had to say: "Why are people like Cliffy B simply accepting the absolutely ridiculous high price of game development as immutable fact, quickly moving on to blame something else instead of examining the problem at its source?

In a good business, the answer to something being too expensive to produce would be to, y'know, make it fucking cheaper to produce. Videogame consoles do this over time -- parts become less costly to manufacture, more efficient to put together. You'll find, with some of the most successful videogames on the market, the same is also very true. It's just that nobody will admit it.

Look at Call of Duty. Arguably the biggest of the big when it comes to gaming. A veritable powerhouse of profit that tends to be the biggest selling title of any given year. Yet, visually, it's always a step behind its peers. Infinity Ward and Treyarch have successfully mined years of cash out of the same game engine this entire generation, producing games noticeable less graphically intense than the competition, yet trouncing the pretenders at market every single bloody time.

Even its "next-gen" title, Call of Duty: Ghosts, is running off an enhanced version of the same old engine, and I bet it turns a very healthy profit regardless.

Then we have the PC. A platform famed for being able to produce better graphics than the Xbox 360 and PS3 ever could, and yet let's look at some of its biggest success stories. Minecraft. Terraria. Hell, Valve and its antique Source Engine seem to be doing just fine, producing games people are absolutely excited for and love to play, despite being nowhere near as expensive to produce or graphically shiny as the Battlefields and the Tomb Raiders of the world. " http://www.destructoid.com/used-games-and-aaa-games-are-incompatible-good--256227.phtml

On what grounds other than ad hominem does he dismiss reducing game budgets?

Highest selling games of the gen: CoD, NSMB, Wii Sports, Minecraft, Diablo. What do they all have in common? Less than current gen graphics.

High costs is not the only problem.

Look at Japanese game makers - you certainly wouldn't say their games are not good looking, but you can also notice that few of them go belly up, and most of them are in the green. Their funds are managed better.

Graphics don't make the game. But hardware always advances, and if you don't make your game look better than the competitor's, you may be left in the dust, so competition is pushing eachother forward. There needs to be more effective management, for starters.

Couldn’t agree more. The problem is the $60 tag and the convention that its a fair price. Its a premium price, period.

I buy a lot of $60 games, but most of the time i am burnt and feel stupid for falling for it again. what dictates if i buy it at premium or not, is the hype i have for it. The solution is that i have to get REALLY good at seeing the game from afar and deciding if it is for ME or not. The problem with this is that I get so efficient at it that i don’t give enough space for errors, meaning new type games and games that are out my comfort zone

Yeah, and we bitch and whinge about half those games ad nauseum for being repetitive and failing to innovate.

We can't have it both ways.  On points like NSMB, I agree with you entirely.  But I also like to play games like Far Cry and Gears and I want those games to look stunning.  That costs money.  And it means that I need to shell out a fair bit of it.  That only continues for as long as plenty of other people are shelling out a fair bit of it as well.

As to those making disparaging remarks about reducing game budgets in this thread, many of whom have clearly not studied economics in any capacity, Epic has been at the forefront of this field.  The Unreal Engine 3 is a forerunning example of cost-reduction across the industry.  Middle-wear and shareable engines are a prime example of strong business practices.  And guess what, high end games with a strong graphical focus, character driven story development and large worlds still cost a tonne to make.  This is all ignoring the immutable fact that developing new IP is, by its very nature, often highly resistant to models of cost reduction prominent in industries such as manufacturing (a comment I direct at a poster that thought it prudent to compare component reduction in consoles directly to high-end software production for those consoles).

Edit: For clarity, most of this post was not directed at the person I quoted, who's post I use purely for reference.

cliffy, i usually like you but no. just no

I suppose making a lot of money changes people.