Developers are used to increasing budgets from the time the market expanded with PS1 and PS2. But it seems the market has grown to a size, that does not allow for much more growth or at least not with the same speed. So yes, devs should accomodate to stable or even shrinking budgets.

Oh God, this is why I stopped supporting local game retailers and started importing from the UK.

You are right, the market haven't grown with the same speed as before, but the costs skyrockted each gen, as a result, PS2 games cost $49, PS3 $59, I am surprised that the price of PS4-One games remained the same, but only the future will say if there will be another jump of 10 dollars.

bs. With the structure of the xb1 and ps4 development will be much easyer. so cheaper.
They just need to develop a good engine that will be efficient and the cost will even decrease over time.
Also a smaller efficient team will be much better than a big team

 I want Ninja Gaiden the first R rated game in AUS but they only reelased digital. So I was gonna do what I normally do and buy from UK.

Then I read this on vook.net

FYI – Yep I picked up UK version but couldnt play it without creating a UK account. All good until WiiU broke down and Nintendo transferred accounts to a new console which caused a majot problem. 3 weeks later and they have worked out the problem and now need to build a back end repair. Prolly another couple of weeks. You have been warned!

Ugh, that sucks. Fuck Aussie retailers, the greedy price-gouging rats.

games are $80 to $100 now with season passes and more for dlc not in a pass of sorts. they basically sell you the game twice already. i guess they shouldnt spend $100,000,000 on one game then.

The programming is by far not the biggest part in the costs. Look at the credits, and how many programmers are there vs. how many designers, character designer, graphics people, music, ... The programming part is no issue, that's why the tructure has no or only a minor effect on the budget. The big effect comes from the size of the game: how many sceneries are to design (in an open-world game how big is the world)? How much detail you put into the sceneries? How detailed are the textures? How many characters are in the game, that look and move distinct? Has the game voice acting? How many characters share a voice actor?

That drives the cost, not the difficulty of programming.

Common sense should tell you that video game budgets will not drastically increase this coming gen. Technology will stagnate to a point where no significant advancements will be made in technology. You can see this already because next gen graphics jump is the slightest in recent gens. 

Take movies for example, budgets of blockbuster movies have been the same for nearly 8 - 12 years, with the average blockbuster costing between 150 - 185M.

For an other example, take cars. A ford focus 2013, will cost the same as a 2003 focus to produce, and will also sell for the same price...