"new input system"? Are you talking about the WiiU tablet controller... a rehash of the 9 year old Nintendo DS concept, only with bigger screens?

Yes, that's exactly what he's talking about.

Definitely capcom LOL, they only have 150mil left and while facing rising development costs.

This is why Sony has been pushing indies so hard lately. They know that AA games are dead and AAA games are going to become less as the years press forward. Indie games are probably going to save the industry before it's all said and done.

Square Enix recently called in emergency meeting, apparently:

Square Enix's CEO: “We Must Reform With Urgency”, explains his plan excerpt:

“The business model is at a turning-point,” starts Matsuda. “Up until now, the profit of home-console games have been decided by price x number [sold]. Development and and sales were divided, and the game developers only needed to concentrate on their work. That’s where the strengths of our company laid within.”

“At the very beginning, the game business started out with ‘how can we get people to insert coins’. Afterwards, consoles became popular, and our company grew as game design and billing [methods] were divided,” Matsuda continues. “Presently, online games are prosperous, which again, has the theme of ‘how can we charge the people,’ as developers and sales have become inseparable. And the devices they can be played on has spread vastly. It’s truly a paradigm shift.”

“Past gaming generation changes took roughly three to five years. Nowadays, released titles are updated every day, and it only takes about three months for a situation to completely change. In order to react with such speed, it is urgent for development and sales to be unified as one.”

“In fact, one of the factors of the final deficit is the delay from the development to release,” Matsuda elaborated. “Such time-lag means a decrease of contact frequency with the players. It is necessary for us to set up a system that allows us to meet the demands of our customers in a more timely manner. We can’t just have a year of leniency. We must reform with urgency.”

Its happening.

What puzzles me is the "none of this applies to Nintendo hardware" mentality. I'm pretty sure developing for the Wii U is a LOT more expensive than for the Wii. Development costs from one generation to the next always go up, regardless of the platform. Heck, Nintendo is the company that lost most of its third-party support because it was strangling the ability of everyone else to make a profit.

There also seems to be this idea that we should be comparing everything to what Guerrilla is doing, which is just not the case. Very few developers are going to push the hardware as much as they will. I mean, Namco in the poll, seriously? A lot of developers, especially Japanese developers, aren't going to significantly increase their budgets for next gen. Capcom has already declared that they would not. Most games on the PS3 didn't push the hardware and the same will be true for the PS4.

EA has said that it will depend on the title but that they're looking at a 10-20% increase in costs. At the same time, however, they also said that they're looking to make more money per game sold than last gen.

Nintendo is just as guilty as the rest of the console manufacturers when it comes too development costs. Remember W101 costing %50 more to make than the first bayonetta despite the fact that bayonetta didn't profit with like 1.5 million copies sold.

I actually disagree that this is a bad thing. There is a wide range of niches in todays gaming landscape. From indie titles, to small titles, to large budget projects. All of them have different scopes and different markets.

Additionally, with the widespread digital distribution that will be going on this generation -- It's actually a very solid platform for developers to get their smaller games out in the eyes of the public and they can do that with a cheaper price point.

This will also force lower tier developers to focus on pleasing art styles and more unique game play. Rather than chasing top dollar project by copying established molds.

That's how things work here.

Did they give details on how they are going to do such thing? I mean without screwing up the consumer.