Explain rising game costs to me

F

Fantasmo

Member
I pay $50 per new game.
I pay $20 per GH game.
I manage +/-$35 from outpost.com per new game (thanks wario64).
I pay $5-20 per bargain bin game.

I paid $60 per SNES game in 1993
I paid $75 per SF2 game in 1993

Adjusted for inflation:
(http://www.bls.gov/bls/inflation.htm)
I paid $79.31 per SNES game relative to 2004.
I paid $99.13 per SNES game relative to 2004.

Adjusting for cart manufacture my guess is that you could drop it back down to original prices listed above. And media is cheap as dirt now.

Yes, art teams are increasing and programming teams are increasing. But... don't forget in the meantime that the game market size is increasing and sales are increasing as well.

These game companies are crying for higher prices yet theyre turning a nice profit even at $20.

Maybe I'm missing something (and I concede I haven't fully thought this thru). Call me a cynic but I think the companies want to charge us more because we're gullible.
 
Well, first your $50 dollars do not go directly to the game companies. The retailers take off a slice, the publishers get a hand, there might be royalties to pay if the game has licensing, etc. The developer is usually the odd man out in this process, if established or welding some big franchise which they own the IP, the developer can get into a cut of the sales. For new companies though, you're happy to get your milestone checks and maybe a bonus at the end.

And don't dismiss development costs so readily, the amount of content creation necessary in each generation is increasing at a staggering rate. Modellers for example have had to jump from maybe +100 polys per model last generation to maybe thousands this generation to possible models with a million polygons next generation the same modeller won't be able to make the same output as he was able to. Thus team sizes have increased to the point where +40-men teams are not just reserved for the big-budget holiday releases.

Personally, I wouldn't be suprised to see an overall increase in game prices next generation, with 60 dollar for a new release. Someone has to pay for the costs associated with rising technology and the publisher is certainly not going to foot that bill.
 
nfreakct said:
Well, first your $50 dollars do not go directly to the game companies. The retailers take off a slice, the publishers get a hand, there might be royalties to pay if the game has licensing, etc. The developer is usually the odd man out in this process, if established or welding some big franchise which they own the IP, the developer can get into a cut of the sales. For new companies though, you're happy to get your milestone checks and maybe a bonus at the end.

And don't dismiss development costs so readily, the amount of content creation necessary in each generation is increasing at a staggering rate. Modellers for example have had to jump from maybe +100 polys per model last generation to maybe thousands this generation to possible models with a million polygons next generation the same modeller won't be able to make the same output as he was able to. Thus team sizes have increased to the point where +40-men teams are not just reserved for the big-budget holiday releases.

Personally, I wouldn't be suprised to see an overall increase in game prices next generation, with 60 dollar for a new release. Someone has to pay for the costs associated with rising technology and the publisher is certainly not going to foot that bill.
Click to expand...

But... but... the GAF Experts don't think that the market can bear a $60 price point!
 
development costs have gone up, so have development team sizes, and well as the amount of time needed to develop a game. So has the length of games.

Only thing that has really gone down is royalty fees.
 
I like to think of it like this.

Picture having to draw a boxer in an NES game. That'd take, what, 1 minute, drawing the pixels?

Picture having to draw a boxer in a SNES game. If you wanted it to look good, it'd probably take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.

Now picture having to draw, ie do the textures for a boxer in an N64 game. There aren't too many sides you have to draw, and thanks to the N64's textures, you wouldn't have to put too much effort into any of the areas aside from the face, and perhaps the hair, shorts, gloves, and shoes. Don't know exactly how long it'd take, maybe a week?

Then you've got something like Fight Night for the XBox. All the time it takes to scan the boxer's face, skin, things like that. Having to take pictures and convert stuff like the boxer's skin, working on the shadow/lighting system, the normal mapping, stuff like this. I don't know how long it'd take, but I'm sure it'd take longer than drawing 15 blurry textures for an N64 boxer.

And finally you have the next gen stuff. Programmers and artists always find shortcuts through new technology, but the bottom line is, if you're being ambitious or striving for quality, it's going to take more time, effort, and money than games of the previous generation.

And this comparison is only for one section of a development team.
 
*thread hijack*

I STILL want to know why, to this DAY, people say that piracy has increased game prices, when I'm buying them at 40, 30, 20 dollars or LESS at a regular Gamestop or EB? I'm not seeing the increase here people. I'm just not. Maybe I'm in some sort of slipstream parallel universe, cuz the games I buy are fucking cheap as hell.

And if piracy is so finacially harmful, why are the two most pirated consoles giving the least pirated console a run for its money? Why is the Gameboy still making massive money if damn near all the roms can be played on a PC or laptop (or palm pilot?) for free? ....Anyone? ....Bueller?

"b b b b b b but piracy killed the Dreamcast", no Virginia, Sony did that, over the internet.

Piracy might take a bit away, but it's not the Ragnarok of the videogame industry that every idiot extremist copyright crusader makes it out to be. This line of PR talk needs to cease, if not for stupidity, then for wasting bandwidth. Or I will eat okra.
 
Didn't the GT4 dev team say that each modeller spent one week on each model? and didn't they have like 5 modellers? And aren't there about 500 cars in GT4? So doesn't that mean that the models themselves took two years to make?

Take into account that you also have simultaneously designing of the courses, the compostion of the music, the programming of the physics, the AI, and the actual input, and, well, it's easy to see how costs rise.
 
I like to think of it like this.

Picture having to draw a boxer in an NES game. That'd take, what, 1 minute, drawing the pixels?

Picture having to draw a boxer in a SNES game. If you wanted it to look good, it'd probably take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.

Now picture having to draw, ie do the textures for a boxer in an N64 game. There aren't too many sides you have to draw, and thanks to the N64's textures, you wouldn't have to put too much effort into any of the areas aside from the face, and perhaps the hair, shorts, gloves, and shoes. Don't know exactly how long it'd take, maybe a week?

Then you've got something like Fight Night for the XBox. All the time it takes to scan the boxer's face, skin, things like that. Having to take pictures and convert stuff like the boxer's skin, working on the shadow/lighting system, the normal mapping, stuff like this. I don't know how long it'd take, but I'm sure it'd take longer than drawing 15 blurry textures for an N64 boxer.

And finally you have the next gen stuff. Programmers and artists always find shortcuts through new technology, but the bottom line is, if you're being ambitious or striving for quality, it's going to take more time, effort, and money than games of the previous generation.

And this comparison is only for one section of a development team.
Click to expand...

Okay, that makes sense.

See, the one thing that always stuck in my head about 3d was that it helped to CUT costs. What I mean by that is that many games would be able to have 10 different characters with all the same animation just plugged onto different models/skins. If you've done any FPS modding you'd see that lot of things can be recycled once the most important things are in place. However I guess I can plainly see that polish is important these days to differentiate your product and and cheating like that no longer flies.

Sounds like a case for open source. Hmm... that gets me thinking. I wouldn't be surprised if there will be an open source style setup for art; a huge repository for textures and animation/motion capture within a few years.
 
The argument for game prices remaining static while game costs continue to rise is based upon the VG market continuing to grow. The number of games that sell over 100k now compared to Ye Olde Tymes is pretty significant. Plus the VG market has expanded more fully into Europe (I wouldn't be surprised to see english-only localization for most games next-gen, though).

Niche markets have also kinda/sorta sorted themselves out, too, so devs can always be assured that certain types of games will sell enough to cover costs. See Combat Mission or Europa Universalis for brilliant examples of this thinking. Or Gradius.

There's also the continuing rise of middleware, plus stuff like XNA yadda yadda.
 
DJ Brannon said:
*thread hijack*

I STILL want to know why, to this DAY, people say that piracy has increased game prices, when I'm buying them at 40, 30, 20 dollars or LESS at a regular Gamestop or EB? I'm not seeing the increase here people. I'm just not. Maybe I'm in some sort of slipstream parallel universe, cuz the games I buy are fucking cheap as hell.

And if piracy is so finacially harmful, why are the two most pirated consoles giving the least pirated console a run for its money? Why is the Gameboy still making massive money if damn near all the roms can be played on a PC or laptop (or palm pilot?) for free? ....Anyone? ....Bueller?

"b b b b b b but piracy killed the Dreamcast", no Virginia, Sony did that, over the internet.

Piracy might take a bit away, but it's not the Ragnarok of the videogame industry that every idiot extremist copyright crusader makes it out to be. This line of PR talk needs to cease, if not for stupidity, then for wasting bandwidth. Or I will eat okra.
Click to expand...
*clears throat
Say a game has a demand of x and a supply of y. Because of piracy, the demand of said game becomes x - p (because many people will choose to download the game instead of purchasing it, there demand has no real affect) and the supply of said game becomes y + p (some people will pirate the game in order to sell it to others, which increases the supply). In otherwords piracy decreases the demand of a game while simultaneously increasing the number of copies of the game to purchase. With an increased supply and a decreased demand for the product, price will decrease.

The argument that piracy will increase prices by forcing others to pay a higher price to make up for lost sales is really just wrong.
 
like to think of it like this.

Picture having to draw a boxer in an NES game. That'd take, what, 1 minute, drawing the pixels?

Picture having to draw a boxer in a SNES game. If you wanted it to look good, it'd probably take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.

Now picture having to draw, ie do the textures for a boxer in an N64 game. There aren't too many sides you have to draw, and thanks to the N64's textures, you wouldn't have to put too much effort into any of the areas aside from the face, and perhaps the hair, shorts, gloves, and shoes. Don't know exactly how long it'd take, maybe a week?

Then you've got something like Fight Night for the XBox. All the time it takes to scan the boxer's face, skin, things like that. Having to take pictures and convert stuff like the boxer's skin, working on the shadow/lighting system, the normal mapping, stuff like this. I don't know how long it'd take, but I'm sure it'd take longer than drawing 15 blurry textures for an N64 boxer.
Click to expand...

I don't agree fully.

In the PSOne days, they were hiring specialise low poly modellers. Their skill was creating 'lifelike' models using the minimum of polygons. That can take time.

Now they can just model in standard packages, using standard artists, and run it through an exporter to shed some polys. Next gen its likely to be automatic, and I'd expect cut-scene and in-game models to come from the same original model via automatic exporters.

Yes, there will be extra work on shaders and the like, at least initially. But depending on the power of the machines, I'd expect that to end up as a maya exporter too.

So maybe costs will go up (motion capture, scanning etc), but I'd also expect them to plateau, so this isn't necessarily a never ending spiral of costs.
 
I think one aspect to keep in mind when considering things like these is the importance of middleware in the future. I'm sure EA also realize this, and it wasn't just pettiness that made them buy Criterion.

What I mean is... As development costs rise and content creation gets tougher and tougher on the teams, middleware will come in and ease a lot of their pain. I think it'll get used more and more and more until most games run on something else's engine. It really is the only economical way to go, too. I mean, how stupid would it be if they had to literally build a new type of camera every time they were to shoot a movie?

Anyway, my point is that I think the more and more widespread use of middleware will sort of negate the validity of arguments claiming that prices are ok since dev costs are rising. At least to a certain degree.
 
Yea, plenty of developers have mentioned the ridiculous reality of reinventing the wheel. Middleware does seem like the way for all games to go next-gen on (or maybe next-next-gen).

You're right, little by little, rising costs seem like they will plateau as technology gets better. CG is no longer as important as it once was as in-game graphics have the same quality minus the polish (and in some cases look better). I definitely see Mike Works' viewpoint on creating a character (taking months to sculpt, perfect and scrapping it a few times if you suck), but again, the tools get better as time passes.

I guess it depends on each game's particular goal; there will be a balancing act and some games will just go all out to raise the bar and cost millions upon millions in the process. But that's as stupid as making Duke Nukem Forever for 8 years.

In any case, as pretty as they are to look at, I'm glad I care little about graphics, as this hobby is really cheap when graphics are not a concern!
 
DJ Brannon said:
*thread hijack*

I STILL want to know why, to this DAY, people say that piracy has increased game prices, when I'm buying them at 40, 30, 20 dollars or LESS at a regular Gamestop or EB?
Click to expand...

I can tell you why-- because the piracy argument is bullshit.
 
The GameCube was easily the least pirated console ever (probably), yet you certainly don't see Nintendo dropping their game prices! The piracy argument is one of most ridiculous ones ever. It was just some developpers trying to convince people out of pirating.
 
I think it needs to be said that not every game next-gen has to be a GTA or a Gran Turismo. Developers don't need to come up with game design documents that require small armies of artists and programmers to realize. Developers that whine about huge development costs sort of do this stuff to themselves.

There's no reason they can't use an art style that doesn't require 10,000,000 polygon character models or can't create a type of gameplay that doesn't require thousands of modelled objects in each level.

Of course some games will always want to raise the bar, and we're better off for having them, but not every game has to strive for this kind of expensive-to-recreate realism.
 
SNES and N64 my parents paid £50-£60 per game (fucking piece of shit Nintendo, price fixing in Europe bastards)

Post Sony era

£40-£30

Thankgod for Sony eh?
 
I have no proof of this, but I think I remember reading that Nintendo basically drove down initial Gamecube development costs by creating a generic, modular engine that it could use for several different games, including reusable models (trees, rocks, garbage bins, chairs, etc) and textures (grass, sky, earth), which it then proceeded to apply to anything from SSBM to Mario Sunshine, MK:DD, and in highly stylized/tweaked form in LoZ:WW.

That kind of thing is what people should be focusing on: generic, modular, scalable classes and interfaces that can be re-used and re-skinned with minimal effort, yet yield maximum creativity. Use that effectively (as Nintendo has presumably done) and you can reap the benefits pretty easily.

On the other extreme, you have EA that somehow seems to think that profit means extremely expensive Hollywood stars, sports world figures, licenes, and so forth, applied throughout the game from voice acting to motion capturing to clothing. That path is just going to create a cumulative cost increase, as the moment they stepped down it, the next game they make would have to supercede the previous one in terms of integrated "mainstream authenticity", and therefore each game, and each generation will just get more and more complicated and expensive, especially because that approach means they -have- to make everything hyper-realistic with the maximum effort of technology.

I think Nintendo and other extremes made a very insightful choice in preventing that from happening to them, but on the other hand... EA's games are very profitable anyway, so I guess you're looking at two ends of the spectrum that really just loop back and deliver the same thing. On one hand you'll have the "nintendo" approach which is excellent for new studios and low-budget projects, and on the other you've got the glitzy EA definition that takes more time, more effort, etc. and is arguably not necessarily superior to the other merhod. Just a different approach.
 
Prine said:
SNES and N64 my parents paid £50-£60 per game (fucking piece of shit Nintendo, price fixing in Europe bastards)

Post Sony era

£40-£30

Thankgod for Sony eh?
Click to expand...


Early products always cost more. Fridges used to be $1000... its way cheaper now. Its called Economies of scale. THe mainstreaming of videogames helps too
 
Odnetnin said:
Early products always cost more. Fridges used to be $1000... its way cheaper now. Its called Economies of scale. THe mainstreaming of videogames helps too
Click to expand...

There's a different between early product prices and just sheer ripping consumers off. Nintendo was charging up to $130 (in the case of Turok) for N64 games around the UK launch time.
 
AtomicShroom said:
The GameCube was easily the least pirated console ever (probably), yet you certainly don't see Nintendo dropping their game prices! The piracy argument is one of most ridiculous ones ever. It was just some developpers trying to convince people out of pirating.
Click to expand...

It's also the one from which the company loses the most $$$ per sale, so logically they have to make up for this through a larger margin of profit from games. I'll leave the rest for you to figure out.
 
tahrikmili said:
It's also the one from which the company loses the most $$$ per sale, so logically they have to make up for this through a larger margin of profit from games. I'll leave the rest for you to figure out.
Click to expand...

Really? I thought Nintendo made money on the Cube...
 
I'm pretty sure the GC has always been close to break even or a little over (before the last crazy price cuts). Microsoft is the biggest money loser this gen, without even including the Xbox Live costs.
 
Well making someone feel bad by confusing them with numbers is easier than hoping they'll stop stealing.
 
How anyone can justify stealing is beyond me. If you're a thief, just admit it... don't trot out worthless arguments about why your actions are OK or whatever.
 
The more capable the platform, the more talent is required to exploit the platform. As the cost of labor, licenses, and fixed costs of doing business increases so will the cost of games. Even if my team size stays constant over 4 years it would cost me an increasing amount of money to produce the game. In addition if I'm creating MORE games because the market is growing, I have to account for the cost of the games that suck ass and become a several million dollar loss. Further as the size of the market increases, I have to spend an increasing amount of money to get out of the "noise" level of the market and be uniquely identified as a product in the market and press.

The popularity of the platform, the size of the market, and just the increasing cost of personnel will keep driving prices higher. So unless we start revolting and tell people "PS3/Xbox2/etc" is good enough, prices will keep going up. So long as people pay increasing prices, publishers have NO incentive to stop increasing revenues/profits.
 
tahrikmili said:
Oh yeah, Nintendo had the more efficient business model - and look where that got them.. :lol
Click to expand...
Uh, I don't know exactly where you got the idea that we're discussing business models from, but... as far as I know I was commenting on their ability to use modular, object-oriented design and programming approaches to maximise efficiency within the production process. If you think that somehow reflects on comments to do with the success of Nintendo in the market, I suggest you try to stay out of threads that apply too much pressure to your brain.

At $90? I sincerely doubt that.
Click to expand...
And yet, it makes a profit each year, so wherever the company is supposedly losing money according to your dubious and interestingly absent ...PROOF, it's definitely making more than that back elsewhere (likely: software).

Either way, considering this thread was originally about software development costs rising due to increased art production and staffing (etc), whether or not any company makes or loses money on its hardware is wholly irrelevant to whether or not it has a grasp on its software development process.

And, as my previous post attempted to point out, it seems like Nintendo is one of the companies who have figured out a profitable and efficient method of reusing art and code. So there you go.
 
Rahul said:
Uh, I don't know exactly where you got the idea that we're discussing business models from, but... as far as I know I was commenting on their ability to use modular, object-oriented design and programming approaches to maximise efficiency within the production process. If you think that somehow reflects on comments to do with the success of Nintendo in the market, I suggest you try to stay out of threads that apply too much pressure to your brain.
Click to expand...

Err.. You weren't comparing the two companies' business models? WTF? To summarize your rather long post, you pretty much discussed Nintendo's cost cutting modular games business model, EA's high budget celebrity games business model, and said, in your exact words: "That kind of thing is what people should be focusing on: generic, modular, scalable classes and interfaces that can be re-used and re-skinned with minimal effort, yet yield maximum creativity. Use that effectively (as Nintendo has presumably done) and you can reap the benefits pretty easily."

And I pointed out that between Nintendo and EA, the winner is quite obvious.

My brain is doing fine, thank you. How is yours doing?
 
tahrikmili said:
Err.. You weren't comparing the two companies' business models? WTF? To summarize your rather long post, you pretty much discussed Nintendo's cost cutting modular games business model, EA's high budget celebrity games business model, and said, in your exact words: "That kind of thing is what people should be focusing on: generic, modular, scalable classes and interfaces that can be re-used and re-skinned with minimal effort, yet yield maximum creativity. Use that effectively (as Nintendo has presumably done) and you can reap the benefits pretty easily."

And I pointed out that between Nintendo and EA, the winner is quite obvious.

My brain is doing fine, thank you. How is yours doing?
Click to expand...

I still don't see the term business model in there. I was and still am quite clearly commenting on two examples of ways to approach game design. Business models are way, way zoomed out from something like that.

As for who the winner is, I don't have time for pre-emptive armchair conclusions like that. Take your fish elsewhere.
 
Much of today's dev costs are incurred by rising salaries and increased team staffing. Content is getting more complex to create which takes more time yet schedules aren't adjusting so more manpower is required to meet deadlines. Ten years ago, teams working on triple A games hovered around 20-25 members but today's triple A games require at least double that. The size, scope and expectations of today's games demands that kind of manpower in order to meet aggressive dev cycles. That's putting it in the most general of ways and I'm well aware there are exceptions to the rule but that's the jist of it.
 
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