The_Yoda said:
potato_hamster said:
All that says is that the cost of cartridges has gone down, not that they're at parity with blu-ray discs in terms of costs to make.
Cartridges used to cost $6-10 to make. Now they cost about a half to a third of that. Blu-rays still cost cents to make.
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You are not incorrect, it was the most reliable thing that came up with a quick search. What source do you have for your prices?
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It's pretty well know that it costs less than 50 cents to stamp a blu-ray or any disc for that matter once the technology matures. It was a little more expensive than DVD when blu-ray was first released because it required new lines, but now that these production lines have been in place for over a decade, the price has come back down to DVD levels once more. I think the last game I worked on that came on a blu ray cost less than $3 per game to have it pressed, packaged, and boxed for retailers. I also worked on a Playstation Vita title, and one of the challenges we faced when releasing it was price point. Having those Vita cartridges made and packaged cost over $6 per game. Part of that, however, was related to the fact that PS Vita games also go in a custom sized case, which mean packaging costs were also higher compared to PS4/X1 games which use standard sized blu-ray cases.
Obviously I can't show you my sources for that, as I'm just quoting what I was told, and please feel free to try to find other sources. It actually suprised me that the difference was so high considering how much more we could charge for a X1 game vs a Vita game for example.
Now that was a few years ago, and the prices of packaiging vita games might have come down since, but I have no reason to think that a new cartridge using more storage capacity and new security measures would cost significantly less than that. If they are ROM carts that are capable of additional processing, they will obviously be even more expensive again. That being said also I don't have numbers for 3DS games, so they could be different, but I doubt it's different by that much, as a 3DS game would face the same challeneges that Vita games do.
