http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=186365

Lionhead head boss Peter Molyneux has likened development of big-budget games to Hollywood of past and questioned how much longer the current development model of such titles can be sustained.

"...there's a lot of things that we could talk about, and one of the things that you talk about is the sustainability of these huge, huge titles, and how close this model is, at the moment, with what happened in the movie studios when they stumbled upon the Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster - Quo Vadis, Cleopatra, all that", Molyneux has said in an interview with GamaSutra.

"And they suddenly turned from making films that cost five million dollars, into making films that cost a hundred million dollars. And that caused all the small studios to just completely shutter, for a long time, until they found a new way of working. You know, where everyone came together.

"And I think you could look at this industry and say, 'How much longer can we sustain this model?' We only need to have a couple of big, big losses - we've probably already had a couple already, under the radar. I can think of a couple off the top of my head."

"When someone turns around and says 'I think there's got to be a better way of doing this'. I do wonder about that", he said.

This is were the Wii has a massive edge over ps3 and 360, the production cost is half. Not to mention the larger user base.

Molyneux is a smart guy and knows there is more to games than huge budgets and mind-blowing visuals. He was the Wii's biggest cheerleader until MS buried him under a pile of cash after all. :)

Last time I looked at Hollywood there were still a lot of blockbusters. Many more than in Cecil B. DeMille's time.

And what was the last good and unique movie that Hollywood produced? On top of that, Hollywood almost disapeared until the release of DVD gave them a stable source of Revenue and compensated for their massive budgets; since then their losses have slowly returned and they're claiming it is piracy (and not their poor product) that are causing the losses ...

 I think he's referencing the rise of independant and smaller films. He's not so blind as to think big-budget blockbusters have or will disappear.

Well Hollywood never had XBLA/PSN/WiiWare , so I dont think we are that deep s**t at the moment :)

Mm Lord of the Rings, over 300 million $ budget. Over 3 billion $ in revenue from theatre only ( prolly up to 6 billion$ now with DVDs and TV).

There are tonns of 100million$+ movies made every year and last I checked none of the big studio has gone down recently....

PS : movies are not so different from games, in both cases the real big budgets are usually sequels or parts of very well known franchises....( LoTR, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caraibs, Die Hard, Spiderman,...)

Eh, his movie analysis is pretty bad. The small-budget movie maker struggles to survive in this market even today, and until a couple years ago they had almost completely died out. Every once-in-a-while you do get the small-budget hit like Juno, but these are unfortunately rare.

That said, his comments that the market shouldn't let themselves get lost in high budget are very true, but as long as the Wii, PSP, DS, PC, XBLA, WiiWare, and PSN are around there should always be a place for small-budget creative games. One of the reasons I prefer the small-budgets is that they are usually much more creative and take more chances.