this graph made by Factor 5 is interesting ( right click , view image to see the full image ):

There you go. Thanks celine.

 

@NJ5
Eh eh only devs knows

well a dvd only costs about 20 cents to make so i would say they would have to sell a dvd for 10$ and sell 1000000 of those

The average price for a highly polished game last gen was around 7 million for a console game and I believe it had to sell something around 600-750k to start making money. I have the breakdowns of where all that money goes at home but I'm guessing I'll forget about this topic by the time I get home. >_>

twesterm said: The average price for a highly polished game last gen was around 7 million for a console game and I believe it had to sell something around 600-750k to start making money. I have the breakdowns of where all that money goes at home but I'm guessing I'll forget about this topic by the time I get home. >_>

 

By the way Facor 5 said that Lair cost about US$ 23-25 million to develop ( huge flop for SCE )

On the other hand Factor5 possibly just sucked. Throwing more developers at a project that is already late seldom solves any problems but makes them bigger. LittleBigPlanet developers said that the emphasis on huge teams is overdone.

In the end nobody is forced to make hugely expensive games. They do not need motion capturing, hugely detailed textures, great shaders, if you want to make simple games you can make this even more easily than on lower powered consoles because you don't have to optimize. The only problem is: these games do not sell because other developers have all these things.

Another big factor IMO is that the first game on the new gen will always create a big overhead. You have to train developers, create tools, make every artwork and shader from scratch because you cannot reuse anything. This will be much less painful with the second (and depending on lifecycle length) third game of each developer.

Kyros said: this graph made by Factor 5 is interesting On the other hand Factor5 possibly just sucked. Throwing more developers at a project that is already late seldom solves any problems but makes them bigger. LittleBigPlanet developers said that the emphasis on huge teams is overdone. In the end nobody is forced to make hugely expensive games. They do not need motion capturing, hugely detailed textures, great shaders, if you want to make simple games you can make this even more easily than on lower powered consoles because you don't have to optimize. The only problem is: these games do not sell because other developers have all these things. Another big factor IMO is that the first game on the new gen will always create a big overhead. You have to train developers, create tools, make every artwork and shader from scratch because you cannot reuse anything. This will be much less painful with the second (and depending on lifecycle length) third game of each developer.

To a certain extent you're correct in that the focus on large development teams is one of the main factors to out of controll budgets, the fact is that the quantity and quality of 3D content that is required to produce a modern videogame requires a huge number of man hours; which means either a large development team or a long development cycle. Many HD games to date have gotten around this by simply shipping games with far less content (occasionally as little as 4 to 8 hours of gameplay) but the budgets are still very large; if these games were to offer the same 15 to 30 hour single player experience with a large and diverse collection of multiplayer modes that was available in previous generations these games would end up with $50+ Million budgets regardless of what tools they develop, and what pre-existing content they have access to.

You are correct in every point: I just want to clarify that nobody forces developers to make games that look as good as they do. They could easily provide 30h of gameplay with the same amount of work but the game wouldn't look as good.
It has primarily nothing to do with the power of today's consoles (more power is ALWAYS good). Its all about the competition.

So the sentence: HD games are expensive to make is false.
But: Expensive HD games are more successful. Is correct.

Its comparable to movies. Bug budget movies are more successful. On the other hand some movies that do NOT have a big budget can be highly competitive too.

And Lair is a bad example: Their problems were definitely not in the Graphics sector. They nailed that one. But they sucked at basic things like level design and controls which exist 1:1 on non HD consoles.