At first I thought that he meant games THIS gen, lol. Well, guess they should be glad that next gen isn't coming for a long time until the price for that is down.

I think this generation has demonstrated that just because processing power is available doesn't mean you have to take advantage of it, or that you will get any (financial) benefit from doing so ...

Realistically, how many people would be that upset if 75% of games in the next generation were (essentially) games built using the graphical technology of the best Wii games with higher resolution textures and (moderately) higher detailed models so that their output at 1080p@60fps looked really crisp and clean? If the other 25% was made up of games that were (essentially) upgraded XBox 360/PS3 games (say 15%) and games that pushed the systems to their limits (say 10%) you would end up with games produced at a budget the publisher/developer could afford, in an industry which would support the variety and creativity that users are looking for, with the impressive experiences everyone can enjoy.

Most people aren't even graphic whores so I don't really see much point in pushing the system at an unnecessary rate.

Ubisoft must be making lots of money from their cheap DS and Wii games though.

Unfortunately their financial reports aren't very informative.

There were some interesting technologies with 3d cameras in that you can start importing actual props into the games instead of modeling them by hand. So instead of creating a model of a Corvette, they would simply scan the car into the game engine. So instead of taking 5-6 months per car per person it would take 10 people 1 day to scan 30 cars and after than a car could be finished say in 2 weeks rather than 6 months by the 3d modeller.

Hey once again another thing to back up the "HD games cost 20-30 million" statement.

For the rest of it.... If most people didn't care about the HD horsepower leap... why is there suddenly going to be a giant force pushing for the next leap beyond it?

As far as I've seen, the $100k per team member per year number works really well (note that includes all costs related to an employee, not just the salary).

That doesn't include the marketing budget though, which can be almost nothing or almost as much as the dev budget.

Oh these just get noticed by me because people are always trying to argue this isn't the case even when such numbers are so casually refered to as standard operating procedure by everyone.

It really is interesting to see so many people just so willing to let things continue and project the sitaution as unstoppable.

If the next gen consoles have GPUs equivalent to today's high end models (about $300 right now, definitely way cheaper by their launches) then we may get CGI graphics. I mean, current consoles have GPUs about equal to the 7800GTX from Nvidia. By todays standards thats a weak card, but they're still pumping out fantastic looking games. Just imagine what they could do with a GTX 285 or HD 4970 equivalent!

I would love them to make $60 million games.

That enables 150 guys working on a game for 4 years. (for the epic RPGs and action-adventures that always need time to develop, but for your graphics intensive shooters you could have 300 guys work on it for 2 years - wow)

Ubisoft has the right vision.