Activision Boss Predicts Rising Game Development Costs

[Furism]

This is funny to me because it seems all the games I want to play cost less than $5M to make (Project Eternity, Wastelands 2, Star Citizen). Maybe if they didn't do so much marketing campaigns on big billboards or hire Hollywood actors for voice over they'd save some money.

 

[Smithburg]

Game do not get more expensive to make, they just keep spending tons and tons of money on their advertising. New engines can be expensive, but not many companies make new engines, nd if they do they use it for a long time recouping costs. This is just Kotick trying to jack the prices of games up to 70 dollars for the new generation.

 

[Smithburg]

$5 says that this announcement was only made so that there is less of an explosion of hate when next-gen games from Activision retail at $100 a shot.

Because, you know, solid gold toilets.

They did the same thing last generation so that they could mark up the price of games to 60 Instead of 50.

 

[Smithburg]

Well, yeah. That is quite obvious. As technology progresses forward, it becomes more expensive and difficult to program a game. Back in the 80s a company could shit out a game in a couple of weeks. Now a game that doesn't spend years in development just can't compete in today's modern market.

Not true. Games could take just as long, and often did.

 

[M920CAIN]

Well, I am no expert, but let me say this:
Old games - crappy graphics, mediocre gameplay (for the most part) <=> cheap costs
Modern games - better graphics, better gameplay (for the most part) <=> higher costs.
New generation equipment - better graphics, better gameplay (I hope) <=> even higher costs.

Isn't it like gamer greed? I mean we (as gamers) want more of everything, immersions, pixels, story, etc, etc, etc. It costs more to add those extra details. That plus the costs of training staff with new equipment and there you go. I think it's common sense for prices to go up, not endorsing it, but it's the "greed for more details" that's making this emerge.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

WHAAAT?!

Do you...mean to say...that considering console generations' consistent history of rising development costs...

...

...this generation will result in...YET HIGHER DEVELOPMENT COSTS?!

[small]No shit, my dog could've told me that.[/small]

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

No shit the cost of development is going to increase. It's not like we're, you know, moving on to more complex and advanced technology and therefore must have more complex and advanced code as well or anything.

 

[Ken Sapp]

No shit the cost of development is going to increase. It's not like we're, you know, moving on to more complex and advanced technology and therefore must have more complex and advanced code as well or anything.

Nothing is faster than the speed of stupid.

OT: I love how the article points out that Activision had $4.8 Billion in revenues last year. How about telling us what their profit margin was? You know, how much they made per dollar spent? That would be a more telling figure in my opinion.

And why must costs go up? Are your in-house developers not capable of learning the new hardware/software? Does that require that more developers be hired? Will it take longer to code? I might understand if they were talking PCs since there is great variety of specs from one unit to the next and the software must work adequately on all (or at least a majority) of them. But console specs don't really change over the life of the device. The console I buy on launch day will have the same specs as the one bought a month before the next generation is released. Add to that the fact that console specs typically lag PC specs by at least three years....

If the games you are creating for PCs now have not required massive increases in development costs and most of the code is the same(beyond the bits that tune it for specific consoles) then where is this massive cost increase coming from? The need to incorporate more heavy-handed and useless DRM that does nothing but piss off legitimate customers?

 

[felixader]

Maybe Kotick should refrain from using 90 Million or so on overblown PR?

Then again, this way has been proven to be successful for the companys wallet so why should he.