shinobi602
Member
Obviously costs will increase, but it's good to hear it won't be a massive spike. Take Two also shares a similar sentiment:
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Ubisoft/Take Two don't foresee spike in next-gen development costs
- Thread starter shinobi602
- Start date
Obviously costs will increase, but it's good to hear it won't be a massive spike. Take Two also shares a similar sentiment:
Glass Rebel
Member
Ubisoft I'm not surprised, they can stretch everything they do over 7+ games and add some Templar flags here and there but Take 2? Maybe they can finally get their development times down to just 5 years.
Aquamarine
Member
Ubisoft, last November:
Well, Assassin's Creed 3 was double Revelations' cost, so maybe they already made the jump!
It doesn't necessarily have to increase depending on how they approach development. If they see the first two years as transition years where they are essentially making advanced versions of the games they are making now, the changes in cost could be minimal. These may be viewed as genuine decade long consoles. We have years 3-8 to see major changes.
Pai Pai Master
Banned
There's gonna be a shitload of cross-gen multiplatform games for the next couple of years.
I found the quote after making that post. He estimated the average next-gen game would be $60M. Boy be trippin'.
shinobi602
Member
What?
KungFucius
King Snowflake
Why does anyone expect costs to increase? Games are still going to be 720p or maybe 1080p and the improved IQ is going to come from better AA and the overall ability of the GPU. It's not like devs are going to turn around and start adding more intricate content. The increased cost last gen was largely due to and industry wide pissing contest.
Or maybe they'll tone down the marketing for the IPs they established this gen?
Yup - seems like UBI is going to use current gen engines. Will be interesting.
it's believable.
Tools have improved a lot and most of the budget is used in marketing, star voice acting, mismanagement.
I think that the budget will grow for games that need a lot of content like some open world and rpg games but productions have to be more efficient with tech, assets and people shared between studios.
Edit: I mean that there will be an increase but not anywhere big as before
Tools have improved a lot and most of the budget is used in marketing, star voice acting, mismanagement.
I think that the budget will grow for games that need a lot of content like some open world and rpg games but productions have to be more efficient with tech, assets and people shared between studios.
Edit: I mean that there will be an increase but not anywhere big as before
AHA-Lambda
Member
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
The argument that development costs need to rise next gen has always been ridiculous.
Glass Rebel
Member
Development costs have risen during this gen and somehow that's going to stop?
D
Deleted member 80556
Unconfirmed Member
Of course it won't be that much worse. They already have engines in place for next-gen, Ubisoft has Anvil-Next, and Take Two has RAGE (probably can be scaled up for next-gen for Rockstar) and Unreal 4 (if they do license it from Epic) for 2K.
I mean, it can't be that expensive for them. Hell, maybe it won't be that expensive for EA either, many of their studios are using Frostbite 2, which is also next-gen ready.
I mean, it can't be that expensive for them. Hell, maybe it won't be that expensive for EA either, many of their studios are using Frostbite 2, which is also next-gen ready.
mentalfloss
Banned
Yves: Relax everybody, we'll just keep costs low by making last gen games on next gen consoles!
Everybody: You're a frickin genius Yves!
Everybody: You're a frickin genius Yves!
Oh yes, because the ever-growing list of defunct devs says so.
Criminal Upper
Banned
Huh? How did that miss that? Are they headless?
EatinOlives
Member
Not necessarily. Especially when it comes to visual assets, models and textures, etc. are all compressed/optimized to hell and back to make everything work on hardware from 2005/6. Newer consoles would allow devs to at least keep their assets closer to their original uncompressed formats. Hell, look at the original renders of Gears of War 1, they're still extremely impressive.
There are plenty of reasons why devs close down, and many of them don't involve rising dev costs.
Cymbal Head
Banned
Funny, I read the title as "Ubisoft/Take Two didn't foresee spike in next-gen development costs," and I thought this was about the previous generational transition.
Now I wonder what publishers were saying back then.
Now I wonder what publishers were saying back then.
I don't think the same old with a visual increase will have any impact. The costs will rise for openworld games with complex game mechanics and interactivity.
The graphics in general look phenomenal, but the assets don't look that detailed, even going by the other screenshots, i remember a ton of visible and crude angles in the models.
So they may just end up using models they would've otherwise produced for cutscenes.
electricpirate
Member
Makes sense, it also seems like we won't be seeing dramatic jumps in visual quality if that is so. Probably mostly iq improvements.
That's a fair assessment.
I mean whenever I look at renders I feel they look much better than they do in games, but they still have to build the render quality assets.
No it's not, they will rise. The only question has been by how much and how quickly. We have gotten varying estimates and even Ubisoft's CEO is only saying he expects costs to be similar for the first two years. I can't remember where but I read somewhere that the costs to license Unreal Engine 4 will be more than 3.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
Yup. I'm going to guess a lot of the cross generational/multi platform games from the big publishers will have their early nextgen games simply look a little better graphically, but otherwise not be nearly as amazing looking as some people seem to think nextgen will be.
Haunted
Member
See, if that's the kind of stuff they're talking about with [re]using engines, I'm good.
If they're talking Gun, I'll have a problem with that.
Well didn't Epic already say next gen games will jump at least 2x, maybe 4?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-11-13-epic-expects-next-gen-game-costs-to-double
Yeah they did. And hey maybe as mentioned Ubi already made the jump! That explains the 60000 people working on AC3
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-11-13-epic-expects-next-gen-game-costs-to-double
Yeah they did. And hey maybe as mentioned Ubi already made the jump! That explains the 60000 people working on AC3
Well it's worth considering that several publishers made a next-gen engine at the end of this generation and then had their games run like total ass using it.
I imagine a lot of these can scale up significantly if given the art assets and a bit more work.
Just having better models doesn't mean much at all. How many games have built insane assets for prerecorded videos? They all make much higher quality assets than they use to produce bump maps. Textures are all higher quality than is used. Everything else is just a question of density of design, which could raise the cost if you demand everything to be uniquely fashioned for an instance, but it's not really any harder to place a thousand trees than it is to place two hundred. And all these DX11 effects are clearly cheap enough to implement that they can do it for middling selling PC games, let alone major console releases.
The real rise will just be production standards, motion capture, performance capture, etc.
The real rise will just be production standards, motion capture, performance capture, etc.
Gemüsepizza
Member
Guess what, they are selling software tools for game development. Of course they say dev costs will rise ( "but not with our new Unreal Engine 4").
Or they just dropped creating lower mesh and gone straight for original which should be looking like those models. Usually mesh is around anywhere from 500k to 2mln+ Game meshes for current gen had mostly 10k-40k+.
It would be probably cheaper using original mesh rather than creating original mesh and then downsizing it to xxk poly.
I am no dev but it is logical imo.
Also more power = less tricks.
For example if PS3 had more power and could do realtime SSAO in GOW3 it would be cheaper doing realtime SSAO for GOW 3 rather than baking it.
Hard Reset guys also showed that even small budget can give amazing visuals.
Except that they are going to rise. Perhaps not as big a jump, and perhaps not at the start, but they are expected to increase.
Dark Octave
Banned
This was always my thinking as well.
I can't talk about tools but for an artist visual or audio, I don't see what would change from the way things are already done on a basic level. Visual artists won't have to scale down as much to meet limitations for one.
I can't talk about tools but for an artist visual or audio, I don't see what would change from the way things are already done on a basic level. Visual artists won't have to scale down as much to meet limitations for one.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
They might, but they don't have to if the scale or the art pipeline doesn't change.