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So 360 is cheap to develop for?
- Thread starter Aika'svyse
- Start date
Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
The sooner the industry switches to a download distribution method, the better. It eliminates so many costs.
Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
Well obviously.
Those Naughty Dog charts are hilarious. At one end, they assume royalties of only 3/6/9 dollars per unit, yet at the same time they act as if they'll still be fronting the whole of the development costs whilst receiving those royalties. Not quite how business works, but looks great on the graphs.
And I'm surprised no one has mentioned that 99N's is one of MSJ's big investment titles, and as such I'm pretty much positive this budget includes the 'incentive' that MSJ gave Q to actually make this game for the 360 (which has been rumored to be around $8-10 million). I'll be surprised if this number actually constitutes only the creation of the title, and I'm certain that we'll see many, many games released this next gen that have budgets around $1-3 million.
I can't wait to see Mistwaker's numbers, as MS has supposedly thrown $40 million to Sakaguchi for Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey combined; and that's just to put 'em on the 360, not to actually make them!
And I'm surprised no one has mentioned that 99N's is one of MSJ's big investment titles, and as such I'm pretty much positive this budget includes the 'incentive' that MSJ gave Q to actually make this game for the 360 (which has been rumored to be around $8-10 million). I'll be surprised if this number actually constitutes only the creation of the title, and I'm certain that we'll see many, many games released this next gen that have budgets around $1-3 million.
I can't wait to see Mistwaker's numbers, as MS has supposedly thrown $40 million to Sakaguchi for Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey combined; and that's just to put 'em on the 360, not to actually make them!
They aren't. Blue Dragon is being developed by Artoon (of Blinx fame), while Lost Odyssey is being developed (via UE 3.0) by Feel Plus (which is essentially Scarab, known for their work on wonderful XBox titles like Dinosaur Hunting).border said:
Given this line-up of developer "talent," I'll have to consider Sakaguchi a miracle worker if he manages to conjure up something halfway decent with either of these titles.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
Striek said:Yup. I guess Sony + MS can dish that out but it will be hard for others to compete.
Heres the powerpoint. I took a couple of (rough, resized for 56k) shots of the more interesting slides. Good read though.
Fear - An appropriate response to the future of videogame development.
$30 million?! Good god, only Square comes the closest to some sort of regularity on such budgets and that's only reserved for the main Final Fantasy titles!
Piepz said:
rofl. Part of that $60 is to cover taxes. Part of that $60 is to cover manuf. and marketing costs, Part of that $60 belongs to retail outlets for their own profit. Not to mention 15mill is probably for game development, not developer salaries and company needs.
It's still a band-aid on a 6 inch gash. Many devs will die or get swallowed up by big publishers so they can put out a lot of 'safe' me-too games this next gen. And that quote about reusing game engines to drive down costs is dead on. In fact, it can be expanded to resuing art, textures, models, physics, mechanics, etc etc. Many many games are going to look and play the same this next gen....hell you can start to see it now.
Scott's post already answered this, but I'll just add that Mistwaker using Artoon and Feel Plus doesn't actually have anything to do with MS. MSJ funds Mistwaker for the games, and Mistwaker uses that funding to pay for the outsourcing to Artoon and Feel Plus.border said:
And I'll have to agree with Scott's hesitance towards the quality that both Artoon and Feel Plus will bring, as both studios are pretty damn poor when you evaluate their previous titles. That combined with Sakaguchi's absence from game development for the past, like, 7 years or so, and the inevitable pressure MS will put on Mistwaker to get these titles out the door has me extremely worried in regards to how well these games will turn out.
I mean, Artoon and Feel Plus really are fucking terrible studios. Sakaguchi really couldn't have picked worse devs...
Umm, this is exactly how you calculate dev costs. A game is a digital creation, so there are no other costs besides human resources. Some teams may have small research costs (like grabbing sounds from actual guns fired, or photographing actual race tracks, etc.) but this would be a fairly small portion of the final budget. When you create a texture, you don't need to use any physical material.trilobyte said:
Do you honestly think that a) developers ever purchase computers instead of simply leasing them, b) they lease new computers for every single game, or c) they include the entire costs of said leasing into one single game.trilobyte said:
Computers to a developer are assets that are spread out amongst an entire fiscal year, over an entire portfolio of titles. Not to mention a developer would spend, at most, 50,000 to 100,000 dollars a year on them, and that would be for around 200-300 comps per studio, which is a heck of a lot.
Heian-kyo said:
? Most of them BUY computers. Dev kits, PCs, Macs. Do you know what the economics of renting PCs are? They're retarded. And computers are relatively cheap.
$1000 bucks per year, per person is NOTHING. Even an admin costs about $150k per year in health insurance, desk space, office rental, AC, blah, blah, blah.
WOW that's some expensive stuff.
So I take it most independent devs will also be doing PSP and DS projects to gain some money to create their big-time X360 and PS3 projects.
If, lets say, MS didn't have to rush the next generation and PS3 (like it was planned) launched in 2007. Would the dev costs would have been less pricey?
Im not trying top troll here I just wanna see if rushing the next generation is a part of this issue?
So I take it most independent devs will also be doing PSP and DS projects to gain some money to create their big-time X360 and PS3 projects.
If, lets say, MS didn't have to rush the next generation and PS3 (like it was planned) launched in 2007. Would the dev costs would have been less pricey?
Im not trying top troll here I just wanna see if rushing the next generation is a part of this issue?
MightyHedgehog
Member
inthezone said:
Why would it change dramatically? Aside from issues due to half-baked development tools/supporting software, the cost will be the same because you're still doing the same level of work.
MS jumping in first has nothing to do with the cost of the games.
Mefisutoferesu
Member
Heian-kyo said:
I can't speak for Feel Plus, but as I understand it Artoon consists of several EX-Square employees. Sakaguchi's been playing it pretty close hiring up people he's already worked with and ex-employees and so on. Perhap the Artoon choice is an extension of that?
To learn that Feel Plus == Scarab, though, scares the snot out of me. Why in god's name would they choose such a developer? Gameplay mechanics aside, since I'm praying Mistwalker will dictate these things, I don't recall them having any REAL technical talent so to speak of.
So no info on who's actually directing the Mistwalker games? I bet it's someone from Mistwalker instead of Artoon/Feel Plus. Artoon has some pretty decent coders so if Mistwalker handles the actual game design, art, music etc and Artoon just the programming it could turn out well.