CESA's annual report shows that publishers are selling fewer games, but their development is more efficient and costs are down.
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While Japanese publishers may not be selling as many games as they used to, they are saving money by making their research and development more efficient. A game for the PlayStation 2, which had the highest R&D expenses, according to a sample of 37 companies, cost an average of 39 million yen ($355,000) to make in 2003. In 2002, that number was 59 million yen ($537,000), meaning that companies have been able to cut development costs by about 33 percent. Games for the original PlayStation had the lowest R&D expenses, costing an average of 5 million yen ($45,000) in development in 2003. It cost almost triple that in 2002, at an average of 14 million yen ($127,000) per game. CESA estimates that game design cost is inversely proportional to the amount of time since a console's launch, due to improvements in development tools and developers' skills.
