Not true.

This doesn't at all look at the middleware tool factors.

Did you know it's easier to create games now than it has been for the past 40 years?

It used to take years to develop games using machine code and they looked like crap. Remember that? And those crappy things could sometimes cost upward of $1 million.

Game development costs are rising yes, but not always in the areas you think.

Unreal Engine 4 is already scaled BEYOND whatever the Xbox 720 or PS4 will be, more than likely we won't get the full potential of the UE4 until the Xbox 1080 or PS5, same thing with the Luminous Engine. Many of the features that are already present in some game engines can't be utilized if the next-gen consoles don't come equipped with 8GB of RAM or more.

The other thing is optimization...people keep thinking "good graphics" is what makes games cost so much but it's actually downgrading graphics.

There are a ton of middleware tools out there that automate content generation. So environments, trees, physics, wind effects, all that stuff comes out at the highest fidelity possible just by clicking a few buttons, but these assets are way, way, way too big for consoles and can't be used in their automated format. Hence, artists usually have to "downgrade" or optimize the assets to run on hardware incapable of using the original assets.

Generating HD content isn't the issue, optimizing it for hardware is. Technically, there would be a lot of money saved if artist could use their first-iteration designs instead of having to use lower-scaled assets that can sometimes take anywhere between weeks to months to optimize for the hardware.

Sorry for the long-winded comment, but I just thought there should be some explanations as to why some budgets have ballooned so.

There's also marketing and third-party licensing which has also increased greatly (i.e., contracting Hollywood celebs, big music artists etc,.) which can bring a $10 million dollar game like Gears of War/Gears of War 2 and turn it into a $20 million dollar game like Gears of War 3.

@annus

Easier as in: Animations, physics, models, textures, terrain can all be done from one source. And by this, I'm talking personal experience. UDK is waaaaaaaaaaay easier to use than stuff like Visual C++ and Lightwave, which was common tools back in the late 90s and early 00s.

All that stuff you talk about needing separate people and time for is how things were done during the PSX and PS2 era. With stuff like Unity and UDK and CryEngine SDK all that stuff is condensed into one source. So the only real expense is in designing the middleware.

Also, stuff like lip-synching is automated in a lot of animation toolsets. This has been a standard since 2006 when Mystic was licensing out stuff like the EmotionFX that handled a wide assortment of animation needs, including automated lip-synching. Just like Valve's SFM, so no there is no need to have someone working on lip-synching to do that unless they just like wasting money on old tools that force them to do more work.

And dude, when I mean "easier to create games" you can create 16-bit style games in less than half an hour...stuff that used to take several years and a lot of painstaking code to do. Just google up tools like Construct 2 or Arcade County and you'll see just how easy it is. Then google up how hard it was for devs to make the original Sonic on the Megadrive.

Also, with tools like ZBrush and Poser I'm sorry but again, it's not only easier to sculpt characters but to texture them as well. Back in the day you had to manually apply each texture to each polygon surface or per-triangle. THAT WAS HARD. I'm speaking from experience here man.

I can earnestly say based on the tools available now compared to the tools and design engines back in the day, it's 1000% times easier.

As for mo-cap? Just google up iPi Soft and see how cost-effective and easy motion-capture is. If a company is paying millions for motion-capture they're doing it wrong.

Video games sales graph from BBC

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/me...

and its worrying...unfortunately

The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.

Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.

15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.

Let me be clear. This is sarcasm