Game development costs are increasing
In this first graph from ArsTechnica, the left hand side represents the average amount of people working on a game. This figure has been increasing less than exponentially. This isn't really the frightening bit. The frightening bit is shown in the text in the x axis, you will realise that since the 16 bit era, cost of making a game has gone from an average of $0.05 million minimum, to an average of $17 million minimum, so its become at least 340 TIMES more expensive to make games since then !!
This second graph just shows game development costs (previous showed both gaming development costs and number of people working on them). Data is from ArsTechnica If this graph is even 50% accurate (i.e if 50% was the margin of error), then it would mean the average cost of making a next gen game in 2012 would be $25 million minimum, if its 100% accurate then the average cost of making a game in 2012 would be $50 million. Lets get straight to the point. This seems unsustainable. Lets make a new word up, call it "market entry figure". It represents an average developers view, on what the user base of a video game console should be before they start developing/making games on that console. This "market entry figure" has surely been increasing every generation. By Human nature, if something is risky, you are less likely to do it. Hence I speculate the following:
Leave a comment below...
We were expecting problems with mod support, but there are a lot of other issues.
Not accidental, they want modders to stop modding their older games to force them to mod Shitfield.
Over 14 GBs and doesn't change much at all? What? Taking up that much drive space for a pathetic 'remastering' is shameful.
Par for Bethesda.
LOL people are actually expecting massive improvements or something? From Bethesda?? the same people who released Skyrim multiple times and the all look like shit? THAT Bethesda? are people for real?
The ps5 version doesn't change a ton but from my small playtime it's enough to make me want to replay it just to have it running at 60.
A side note to this my PS4 version no longer boots after it's "update" so I guess that's what it feels like to own a Bethesda game on PC
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
A voice actor from The Coalition's third-person shooter series, Gears of War, has hinted at a new game announcement coming in June.
Hopefully Microsoft will go back to the original story line and get away from that woke nonsense from the last Gears game Gears of Woke! But were talking about Microsoft so all the betting money is on more of the same woke nonsense.
This is the price of wanting "next-gen" hardware out on the market. Rising development costs as a result of "next-gen" graphics engines and the manpower needed to run them just to make decent use of that "next-gen" hardware. The irony of it all is that today's video games cost less than they did 20 years ago.
I'd like to see the numbers of incoming revenue from games during these eras. It's obvious the price of game development will rise as the industry goes and from inflation, but the number u need to examine is the money coming in now comparitive to older eras. That will better tell you if gaming is in trouble or not.
Let's count on the indies then :')