Twenty7KVN
Member
Damn devs are already closing down or laying people off 7 years into this console cycle.If this is true some devs won't make it past the launch of these consoles.
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GI Biz: A developer sees model costs double for Durango sequel to Xbox 360 title
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In the event of a movie studio like arrangement, where there are only a few big publishers, who do you see as being the publishers? (of course this is all just for fun). Personal list:
America:
*Microsoft
*Electronic Arts
*Activision Blizzard (technically Vivendi is European)
*Take Two
*Valve
*Zenimax
Europe:
*Ubisoft
Japan:
*Nintendo
*Sony
*Capcom
Don't forget Sega and Konami (Oh boy).
America:
*Microsoft
*Electronic Arts
*Activision Blizzard (technically Vivendi is European)
*Take Two
*Valve
*Zenimax
Europe:
*Ubisoft
Japan:
*Nintendo
*Sony
*Capcom
Don't forget Sega and Konami (Oh boy).
CrankyKong
Member
So basically we should be prepared for less Mirrors Edge type games and more cover based shooters. Which absolutely sucks.
But...but....but....the money. We need it.
I really hate hearing devs playing the woe is us card. Adapt to the market and realize that you're not going to sell five million units. If you have to sell an absurd number of games to be profitable, then you deserve to fail.
But...but....but....the money. We need it.
I really hate hearing devs playing the woe is us card. Adapt to the market and realize that you're not going to sell five million units. If you have to sell an absurd number of games to be profitable, then you deserve to fail.
mugurumakensei
Member
Sprites aren't really cheaper. It's just 2D games are typically shorter and have fewer assets.
dragonelite
Member
Survival of the fittest and smartest.
It a shame for the people working and hopefully they can find new jobs.
Upper management should shame themselves if they fucked up.
GraveRobberX
Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
Giving $15 Base Fee, for the reward to play the game you funded, nice, not that much, if nothing comes to fruition, not that much of a hit
$60+... FUCKING YIKES! (as base)
Slippery Slope
You have to realize PS4 & 720 development ain't going to be cheap, most devs burn through cash like no tomorrow
That is why Publishers have to keep them in line, + greed/power to boot
Are you implying Mirrors Edge did not look good? It's one of the finest looking games out there.
Add in SE and Namco Bandai for Japan IMO, SE's got Eidos and DQ to fall back on even if "Square" development is in a rut and Namco Bandai has good worldwide operations, lots of captive licences with forgiving fanbases, and extremely strong nongame operations to push the kind of cashflow needed to risk making big titles.
I don't think Capcom will hold as top-tier given a continued industry shakeup. They can push a lot of decent-sized hits but have no clue how to turn out blockbusters, and the "we're changing RE to a shooter so it sells more like COD" statements they've made suggest that they're going to kill themselves making hits with blockbuster budgets.
Anyone familiar enough with Europe to make guesses there?
InsaneZero
Member
For all this talk about how the industry should simply learn to budget their games better, I'm surprised that apparently doing that and developing for a low-power option like the Wii U are mutually exclusive choices for those people.
Well, I probably shouldn't be.
Well, I probably shouldn't be.
They thought that *last* gen, to be fair. Although hopefully now smaller dev houses are a little more careful about where they focus their efforts.
Often, but not always. Many console games this gen would benefit from simple cheap things, like rendering at higher res, higher frame rates, more AA, better draw distance, stuff like that.
Though I can never picture Nintendo extending their hands to small developers in the same fashion as Microsoft (with XBLA) and Sony (with PS Suite)
I completely forgot that Square Enix has Eidos now. That absolutely puts them in a much safer position. It's weird that I even considered the owner of Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts to be in danger but if it weren't for Eidos I can tell you that would be the case. Dragon Quest X is a HUGE risk, Final Fantasy is a dying franchise (man that hurts to say) and Kingdom Hearts, while successful, isn't enough. Eidos will hopefully provide them with a brighter future.
Namco Bandai though? I honestly just don't see them being relevant going forward. Even now their input, while by no means horrible, is very slim. Soul Calibur and Ridge Racer are two games which I don't see surviving next gen. There is definitely still a fighting market but the amount of titles released will probably dwindle with the increase in budgets. Capcom will probably remain the pinnacle in that arena. I'm not sure how successful Ridge Racer is anymore but the only way I see it making it is if Namco truly tries to recreate the franchise. The handheld entries have been abysmal and are tarnishing its name. There is simply no possible way in my mind Pac-Man will ever make a comeback.
Sega is quickly falling off the face of the Earth. Sonic games are getting better but Sega really doesn't have much else. Beyond Sonic they have a few heavy hitters like Total War and Football Manager, but when it comes to games made internally in Japan they need to up their game in order to stay alive and relevant, which I absolutely do not see happening. Nintendo has definitely tried to help them with Mario & Sonic games, but I wonder how long people will care. It was a BIG mistake IMO releasing the new titles so long before the games actually begin.
He's implying that people will take less risks and go for the safe bet when deciding on what games to make.
blame nintendo, they are absolutely terrible in attracting and supporting 3rd party support
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
So basically EA, Ubisoft, and Activision (CoD) will be able to afford to budget their games next generation!
dragonelite
Member
You're a game asset maker?
Do we have some AAA game title modelers here that could talk about their pipeline on current gens.
So far i know is that they mostly Start with the highress model bake all the detail/info into textures and make a low res model that will use those detailed/info textures.
I have seen some folks start with a low res model.
Pai Pai Master
Banned
Here's an idea, make a bunch of A-tier QUALITY games that are made with good enough GAMEPLAY that they don't need 5 trillion polygons for a pair of TITTIES. Budget them well enough and make them compelling enough that they don't need to sell 10 million copies to break even. Sell them for $40-$50 a pop and use that to fund your AAA Call of Duty wannabe that is still made with enough care to sell tens of millions of copies.
5 "AAA" blockbusters a month aren't going to get you Call of Duty sales, no matter how much money you stuff into your game. There simply aren't that many people who give a shit about your modern dudebro shooter. Genres, audiences and budgets need to be diversified way more than we saw this generation, or there WILL be a huge crash coming.
5 "AAA" blockbusters a month aren't going to get you Call of Duty sales, no matter how much money you stuff into your game. There simply aren't that many people who give a shit about your modern dudebro shooter. Genres, audiences and budgets need to be diversified way more than we saw this generation, or there WILL be a huge crash coming.
Everyone is making AAA games.
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
Inevitable? It's already pretty much over. This is like a cruise ship sinking into a cemetery.
SC/RR aren't in particularly good positions, but Tekken is still hot (significantly more popular than SF4 in Japan,) costs are kept under control, and there's a really deep pool of solid midrange sellers like Tales and SRW ranging down to pretty much every anime license ever. Think a sort of Japan Ubisoft that knows how to manage its money and has several non-gaming lines of business to fall back on.
It's doing all. It's thriving and crashing and rebirthing.
The thing you have to realize is this: the AAA market brings in insane revenue. But it's for the big boys only. If you don't have the cash and IP to compete, stay home. Doubling their budgets isn't going to have a huge impact when you consider just how high the revenue is on those games.
It's crashing because if you're not a big boy with a lotto IP winner, you'll go bankrupt trying to break into the club. It's Members Only. Know who you are and stick to your station in life. Anyone who can't self-evaluate properly will learn the definition of Darwinism.
It's re-birthing because the middle tier market has never been more inviting. You no longer need a major publisher to break into this. If you're talented and have a great idea, there's tons of money to be had with the Digital Publishing systems. We're entering a golden age in this regard. But people don't like change. And they like sequels. They just have to change where they do their shopping and accept it's a new wave of IPs from new developers. This isn't a bad thing. New blood is good.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Eventually they along with 2K will be the only third parties left.
Get ready for $70 games with less content than ever before. Hell, we'll probably see online passes for new purchases as well, and gamers will happily get in line and pay up.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
The crash of the early '80s didn't end gaming. It was alive and well on computers and in the arcades.
If we were to see another crash I'd expect mobile gaming, and Nintendo to still be standing tall.
Alright. If this is true, it's TERRIBLE!!!
This means, even MORE developers - especially small ones - are going to struggle or might not be able to sustain their buisness.
That means, less risk-taking and even more genre dying (survival horror already doesn't cut it anymore)
In this regard, let's say, the Wii U does end up being "only" on par with current gen tech and it's level of developmont cost. Wouldn't this be an advantage? Especially if the Wii U catches on like the Wii in market?
This could be a good thing for Nintendo. Developers themselves said they made a mistage by not taking the Wii seriously from the beginning.
If the Wii does catch on like the Wii, they might be willing to support it wholeheartedly right from the start.
I've said it month before, considering the possibility of yet higher development costs than this generation for the next, the fact that Nintendo comes out with the least powerful console of the three might NOT be such a dissadvantage, especially that - and that's what some people have difficulty understanding - overall graphics have become less important.
ACTUALLY - concidering the WII U - it's not the question of how good third party games will look on it compared to the ones for PS4720, but much rather the question of how good
- Nintendo Frachises (Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid, F Zero, Zelda, Pikmin, Starfox, etc.)
and
- Wii Exclusives (Xenoblade, Monster Hunter, the Last Story etc.)
will look like in HD. THAT's the exciting part about the Wii U - even if it's "just" a PS3/xbox360 in terms of power.
This means, even MORE developers - especially small ones - are going to struggle or might not be able to sustain their buisness.
That means, less risk-taking and even more genre dying (survival horror already doesn't cut it anymore)
In this regard, let's say, the Wii U does end up being "only" on par with current gen tech and it's level of developmont cost. Wouldn't this be an advantage? Especially if the Wii U catches on like the Wii in market?
This could be a good thing for Nintendo. Developers themselves said they made a mistage by not taking the Wii seriously from the beginning.
If the Wii does catch on like the Wii, they might be willing to support it wholeheartedly right from the start.
I've said it month before, considering the possibility of yet higher development costs than this generation for the next, the fact that Nintendo comes out with the least powerful console of the three might NOT be such a dissadvantage, especially that - and that's what some people have difficulty understanding - overall graphics have become less important.
ACTUALLY - concidering the WII U - it's not the question of how good third party games will look on it compared to the ones for PS4720, but much rather the question of how good
- Nintendo Frachises (Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid, F Zero, Zelda, Pikmin, Starfox, etc.)
and
- Wii Exclusives (Xenoblade, Monster Hunter, the Last Story etc.)
will look like in HD. THAT's the exciting part about the Wii U - even if it's "just" a PS3/xbox360 in terms of power.
Chaplain
Member
The idea of doubling the cost of next gen game budgets is almost three years old now (12 Jun 2009).
yeah, consoles got boot but Amiga was thriving. I fully expect F2P and other experiences thrive on PC in the next 3-4 years, Nintendo will do well as a family console, Sony will probably crash, MS will do relatively well but pubs will lose money. It will last for another gen. They all have enough money to bleed.
You don't need a major publisher to get your title available, but you do need some significant backing to market it. Freeloading on Valve's promotion of their store works, but there's only so many slots for that.
It's also not anywhere near as appealing a move for a former low-tier publisher. The retail dev to self-publish on steam jump breaks even for a $60 game at around $15, but the self-publisher to publish on steam jump breaks even around $30.
what
But you see, there is a problem here as well, as costs go up the middle tier market will also be expensive to create for as well. Right now it roughly costs 5 mil just to make a game for xbla and devlopers are having trouble finding the money to make games, what do you think is going to happen when it costs 10 mil just to make games in the middle tier market?
The problem is the cost of making games is rising exponentially while the sales of games only rises steadily.
Lactose_Intolerant
Member
Why does this keep coming up? There are already websites for this.
Everything you mentioned is easy to make, that's why they do it.
I have no idea what you're implying there. Price * volume is what determines the break even point. If a self-publisher is charging 30 dollars for his game, he ain't making money because people aren't touching it at that price.
And as for publicity and marketing, only the AAA games get any marketing now-a-days anyways. If you're not the AAA games, you need to go viral. That's just the way of the world... retail or DD.
I can only talk about the pipeline in the last gen and the very start of this one before I left the industry. I was also only a coder, but I was aware of the modelling side (usually through telling artists that their model needed the polycount halved or it was never going to work).
I believe we had three tiers of model:
High-poly models with downsampling: Necessary for normal-mapped characters.
Mid-poly models with downsampling: Used for non normal-mapped characters. I'm afraid I don't know if those mid-poly models were sufficiently detailed to be used directly in the next gen.
Low-poly models, used directly: Scenery, mainly. Stuff that doesn't need all that much normal mapping.
In the proposed next-gen, the low-poly and *maybe* the mid-poly models would have to go up a notch in quality to be acceptable. The high-poly models would have been sufficient as is.
I suspect Epic used a lot more models with normal maps in *this* generation than we ever did; that's the advantage of having a shitton more cash to work with. As such, Epic's models aren't actually going to require any upgrading - they've already *spent* the shitton more cash. Our models wouldn't have been in the same boat; while our high-poly ones would be usable directly, one or both of the lower tiers would have to be bumped; either to high-poly to be future proof (at an immense additional cost) or improved but not *as* detailed at a minimal but still noticeable additional cost.
That's just how I recall our pipeline working, and it's been a while (and I was one or two leaps away from the heart of it) so parts may be incorrect. I'd be interested to hear what the pipeline is at a company that *isn't* rolling in cash, whether we were aberrations or otherwise.
it really depends on where it was produced. as somebody has already wrote in this thread it costs about 3 million $ to produce a PS3 game in Japan and Metro 2033 cost less than 4 million $ to make. These are not XBLA titles. I think AAA development might relocate to developing countries like Poland for example. Polish devs proved that they can produce high-profile titles this gen (The Witcher, Dead Island, Bulletstorm, Call of Juarez and some other smaller titles like Hard Reset and so on) and I expect them and other emerging markets do even better next-gen. Especially if DD becomes a more viable option on consoles.
I make video games. I don't have any information on any theoretical future platforms, however I do have intimate familiarity with models and budgets (technical or financial) and having an increased vertex count (GPUs don't care about polygons, count vertices if you want to actually have a number that means something) makes things generally easier, and a few things somewhat more difficult. I'd say it's a net time win overall.
Normal mapping relies on having polygons in the right places, with the right smoothing groups, the right UV seams in the right areas, with the right projection cage, all these little things. It's a pain to have to massage and tweak these assets because our limited performance budgets this generation make every polygon face count so we spend a lot of time noodling to fix common artifacts. Many of these artifacts (rippling normals, seams, projection errors) are ameliorated by simply throwing more vertices at the problem. Also, things like facial deformation and proper loop and edge flow of a 3d model of a head get a lot better if you have the verts to spend to make everything perfect. For hard surface modeling (Guns, tanks, robots), often times we have to remove extra chamfers or smoothing geometry on models because they don't fit in the budget, those could theoretically stay which speeds us up and increases quality.
Animators have fewer artifacts to work around, so they are faster. Modelers have fewer nitpicks and bugs to fix so they speed up. Adding verts is easy, taking them away in clever ways to retain silhouette while still baking great normals is a pain.
Rigging organic characters probably gets slower, maybe significantly so (more bones in the skeleton, more verts to wrangle, probably more things that react to physics like hair or cloth, etc), but we will build better tools for that problem, and do clever things like share unified geometry across characters to save time. Rigging mechanical stuff will stay about the same-ish timewise I'd guess.
If we get more texture memory next generation, then texturing could get slower, however if lighting and shading becomes more realistic due to increased processing power, then we actually paint less detail into our textures overall, which means texturing actually gets faster even though the texture sizes go up.
Environment art modeling should generally get faster since you can throw more vertices at common problems, not to mention having generally increased budgets for things like textures (to create variety) and pixel shaders (to do fancy tricks which make assets look more integrated into the world, or to procedurally generate content) means that stuff should actually get a bit easier or stay roughly the same, time wise. The expectation of more fully realized worlds could cause a strain on straight up overall productivity so studios might need larger departments here to compensate. Most will outsource more of the easy stuff and do the same amount of hard stuff in house.
Particle effects work will get generally slower and more expensive, probably, and will need more manpower. Good tools can help this. Teams will probably generally need more technical artists as well.
I say bring on the increased power, we'll generally speed up because of it. We are already speeding up as this generation goes on due to better tools like Zbrush alongside better pipelines to make everything streamlined and efficient. Budgets go up for all kinds of different reasons, but calling out asset production I don't think really paints a meaningful picture of why and won't likely be a massive contributor. it's player expectations and overall polish level that will be the drivers there.
To answer the below question about pipeline, we start with a high polygon model, make a low polygon approximation of that model which retains important silhouette, and then bake the details from the high down to the low using normal maps. Often time we also make a second or third lower resolution level-of-detail model which gets displayed only when you're very far away.
Normal mapping relies on having polygons in the right places, with the right smoothing groups, the right UV seams in the right areas, with the right projection cage, all these little things. It's a pain to have to massage and tweak these assets because our limited performance budgets this generation make every polygon face count so we spend a lot of time noodling to fix common artifacts. Many of these artifacts (rippling normals, seams, projection errors) are ameliorated by simply throwing more vertices at the problem. Also, things like facial deformation and proper loop and edge flow of a 3d model of a head get a lot better if you have the verts to spend to make everything perfect. For hard surface modeling (Guns, tanks, robots), often times we have to remove extra chamfers or smoothing geometry on models because they don't fit in the budget, those could theoretically stay which speeds us up and increases quality.
Animators have fewer artifacts to work around, so they are faster. Modelers have fewer nitpicks and bugs to fix so they speed up. Adding verts is easy, taking them away in clever ways to retain silhouette while still baking great normals is a pain.
Rigging organic characters probably gets slower, maybe significantly so (more bones in the skeleton, more verts to wrangle, probably more things that react to physics like hair or cloth, etc), but we will build better tools for that problem, and do clever things like share unified geometry across characters to save time. Rigging mechanical stuff will stay about the same-ish timewise I'd guess.
If we get more texture memory next generation, then texturing could get slower, however if lighting and shading becomes more realistic due to increased processing power, then we actually paint less detail into our textures overall, which means texturing actually gets faster even though the texture sizes go up.
Environment art modeling should generally get faster since you can throw more vertices at common problems, not to mention having generally increased budgets for things like textures (to create variety) and pixel shaders (to do fancy tricks which make assets look more integrated into the world, or to procedurally generate content) means that stuff should actually get a bit easier or stay roughly the same, time wise. The expectation of more fully realized worlds could cause a strain on straight up overall productivity so studios might need larger departments here to compensate. Most will outsource more of the easy stuff and do the same amount of hard stuff in house.
Particle effects work will get generally slower and more expensive, probably, and will need more manpower. Good tools can help this. Teams will probably generally need more technical artists as well.
I say bring on the increased power, we'll generally speed up because of it. We are already speeding up as this generation goes on due to better tools like Zbrush alongside better pipelines to make everything streamlined and efficient. Budgets go up for all kinds of different reasons, but calling out asset production I don't think really paints a meaningful picture of why and won't likely be a massive contributor. it's player expectations and overall polish level that will be the drivers there.
To answer the below question about pipeline, we start with a high polygon model, make a low polygon approximation of that model which retains important silhouette, and then bake the details from the high down to the low using normal maps. Often time we also make a second or third lower resolution level-of-detail model which gets displayed only when you're very far away.
Haunted
Member
Middleware save us. Development tools and pipelines need to be improved. Carmack is correct again.
haha well played
A dev sees around $10 back (or usually, up front) from a hypothetical $60 retail sale, and around $10 back from a hypothetical $15 Steam sale. A publisher with internal development sees around $20 back from a hypothetical retail sale, or about what they'd make selling on Steam for $30.
There is a lot of marketing for A-tier games. It's drowned out by the campaigns for AAA, but ever if you're just hiring a guy as community manager for the game's life cycle that's probably costing you over $100k.
Haunted
Member
Well, damn. I'm a complete layman here, so I just have to take every developer by his word.
This sounds good!
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