Oh snap, I was betting with myself that this article was from Kotaku. I was wrong.
Didn't think Venturebeat would do something like this. Funny, though.
PR folk could learn a thing or two from your posts.
Actually, middleware tools are already cheap and widely available.
Mixamo makes it so devs can purchase animations and rigging via microtransactions.
ZBrush makes it easy enough for anyone to craft and design HD models and props.
Bryce makes it convenient to procedurally generate environments on the fly.
Texturing is just a Photoshop brush away.
And IPI Soft makes it where you can perform detailed motion-...
They just finished the Unreal Engine 4...wtf are they talking about engine costs? They already finished the UE4 and profits from Gears of War 3 was enough to pay for it. Heck, nothing is even running on UE4 or utilize its full feature set, same thing with CryEngine 3 and Luminous Engine...why would devs have to spend money on new engines when current gen consoles can't even use the engines that are already available on the market?
Sometimes I think devs like spreading bad...
Right on...like Minecraft, lol, which cost peanuts to make and has a higher profit margin to operation cost ratio than every single game released this gen save for the recent Call of Duty games.
@Eldyraen
Spot on.
But even if they're not on "new generation" engines, I'm looking at stuff like StarForge and DayZ and Mak and those games look better than most stuff on consoles and have innovative features and best of all, THEY'RE CHEAP!
If AAA devs want to throw double the money down the drain and raise prices and make everything extremely expensive, fine, do that...I'll just stick with REAL gaming on a PC wher...
But the 360 is seven years old and the PS3 is six years old...you can only do so much optimizing on dinosaur tech, hate to break it to the fanboys.
@Pushagree
That's the biggest load of bull crap, dude.
The "size" of GTA 4 had nothing to do with MS. There were even a few things the PS3 version had, media wise, that the 360 version did not. Also, the 360 version was gimped pretty badly when it came to smeared texture resolutions.
Knight_Crawler is right, it wasn't disc space so much as it was RAM, and both the 360 and PS3 have problems with limited memory access for ga...
@SolDojo
Those are excellent points, and it's funny you should mention AI because GTA 4 had some really good AI...they flanked, they laid down suppression fire and even tried using the environment to an advantage.
However, one thing I noticed was that if you were engaged in a shootout, everything else around you kind of came to a halt to accommodate the AI who were in "combat" mode.
I agree that there are technical ceilings the...
Ugh, dude...
NPD is failing because we're at the end of an era. A lot of core gamers aren't throwing money away on crap just because. That's not how gaming works.
Digital distribution has been on an incline. In fact EA beat some forecasts BASED on their digital distribution revenue.
NPD only looks at brick and mortar, and of course that's in decline, what moron is going to keep throwing $60 at games that aren't worth it? ...
A better fight would be "Would You Kindly" from Bioshock vs Corvo. That would be a badass fight.
@Forbidden_Darkness
But not all games HAVE to be expensive. Minecraft outsold Crysis 1 and Crysis 2 combined and that game was not more expensive to develop.
Journey was a low-budget game that sold more on the PS3 than Crysis 2 did on PS3 and Xbox 360 combined.
If they can't break even while spending millions of dollars in games people aren't buying then they're doing it wrong.
To be honest, Crysis 3 looks exactly like Crysis 2...
After watching an entire mission playthrough both games look and play about the same, but maybe it's just me.
This will keep happening.
$60 + 3 million copies = not enough to break even. It's like WTF?
I remember during the PS2 era $50 + 1 million copies = developers jumping for joy.
This has been the gen of the publisher, where they've screwed over gamers and developers alike.
I hope Crytek gets out from under EA because it isn't really helping anyone but EA.
Games should be priced according to their value.
Technically, Minecraft could sell for $60 and it would be worth it. However, a game with infinite replay value and incalculable amounts of content is cheaper than games that give you 5 hours of gameplay (i.e., Warhammer 40K: Space Marine).
Why is a short game with pretty graphics and little to no replay value, (I didn't buy that game for multiplayer) valued at $60 when it doesn't give you $60 worth of ...
Except, how will they get over the RAM limitations? GTA 4 ran into the problem of having the same two cars (usually taxis, which kind of fit with the atmosphere) over and over again. Very rarely was there a mix of different cars on the screen at once.
Also, when police chases started civilian cars usually disappeared off the road when you were on foot.
I love that they're making things bigger and better but there are still technical roadblocks there. Jus...
It was hot before you starting counting down from 3.
ROFL....that's so freaking awesome! I can't wait to see it.
Cool.
Better stop buying CoD and the 101 iterations of DLC that comes along with it, then.