The Doom of Gaming Begins, Next-gen dev costs to hit $60 million

"The next generation is going to be so powerful that playing a game is going to be the equivalent of playing a CGI movie today," quote from the article: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6212061.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1

This was more then enough to validate Gaming is headed in a pit for creative game experiences from a gameplay perspective. Absolute onslaught saturation of specifically FPS/games all chasing film quality to try to profit from the consumer. There is certainly nothing exciting on the market, but evolution titles with improved visuals.

"More than 450 people are working on Assassin's Creed 2"

How on earth does it take you 450 people to make a game that's not even that amazing, personally. The gameplay still looks rubbish from the first.

With the industry speculating the consoles to use a similar direction as OnLive for games that runs on servers/cloud computing, it makes me curious by how this will affect the PC space. I mean how can we not see this industry crashing like it did many years ago when it is headed in the same direction, it's just unbelievable.

"The next generation is going to be so powerful that playing a game is going to be the equivalent of playing a CGI movie today,"

I've heard that before....

It's quite cOLD in here.

I won't believe it until I see it.

I think the maker's of World of Goo might disagree. Some games will clearly be the equivalent of cgi movies but many successful games will pursue good story or good design over graphics and they will be rewarded for it the majority of the time. The two top selling games for a couple of years now have been The Sims (or some expansion thereof) and WOW (or some expansion pack). Neither one is a graphical powerhouse compared to something like Far Cry 2 or Crysis or even a GTA 4 but that doesn't really matter.adrake4183

Cahhhh OnLive will ruin everything :-\. Actually itll be just as expensive as owning a pc. The cost of fast internet plus hte cost of bandwidth, plus the monthly fees will be unbearable, 100-200$ a month(Maybe exaggerating a bit, but itll be a lot!)! And limited to a resolution etc.Dr_Brocoli

OnLive is going to fail.

Besides, its supposed to be "affordable", whatever that means, and it just seems to me like another gimmick...it won't really catch on with the mainstream console gamers. No one besides the Hardcore crowd even really knows about it...

Honestly, its the natural progression of things. Graphics get better, gameplay evolves, consoles get more expensive, and hardware gets better. That's how the gaming business works. Claiming this is just what they claimed back in '95 when the PSone came out, or the N64, or the Genesis, in the first 3D console generation. This is hardly different from that.

"More than 450 people are working on Assassin's Creed 2"

How on earth does it take you 450 people to make a game that's not even that amazing, personally. The gameplay still looks rubbish from the first.

OoSuperMarioO

The gameplay looks fine to some people, and the gameplay from the first one was ok by my standards, just a bit too repetitive...

Also, 450 people aren't just working on the gameplay.... graphics, sound, physics, design, etc etc....

Hopefully we'll see another video game crash soon.

Consoles will fail, while PC will rise. :P

Going to be tons of outsourcing.

Developers talk and talk like this all the time. Last generation was "Supposed" to be that way.

Also its up to Developers to choose to develop that way. Technology is advancing so fast right now I think some of these Game Designers need to slow down and actually Make "Good" games instead of 'Great Graphics" Im getting sick of the Eye Candy with Crappy Game wrapped around it.

thats bs, 60 million for a huge blockbuster maybe. Thats similar to a big huge blockbuster movie.

Gaming:where amazing happens

That's for consoles. What does "next-gen gaming" mean for PC's? It'll likely be a much smoother transition, the devs will get used to it just as they've gotten used to steadily increasing developer costs in the past.

"The next generation is going to be so powerful that playing a game is going to be the equivalent of playing a CGI movie today," quote from the article: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6212061.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1OoSuperMarioO

This statement is completely false if not exaggerated. There is no way for our gaming computers and even the consoles, would able to render the graphics similar to a CGI movie.

I doubt a AAA game would cost in average of $60 million. Maybe the president of Ubisoft meant for developing engines would include in the cost of a game.

That's for consoles. What does "next-gen gaming" mean for PC's? It'll likely be a much smoother transition, the devs will get used to it just as they've gotten used to steadily increasing developer costs in the past.

F1_2004

But as time goes by and new advances are made, wont the technology needed to make a game with CGI movie quality graphics essentially be outdated, and therfore cheaper? Than mayb we'll be able to have games with amazing graphics AND gameplay

the problem is not the tech, the problem is the manpower. When you increase the graphics you are basically increasing the detail and to do that you need same people working more or more people working the same, Either way you slice it - more money is required to produce these higher detailed worlds.

It's why Assassin's Creed 2 has 450 people working on it, although I think that's mainly so they can churn out a sequel with as much world in quick time. Just take 450 people then scale that up to 3 years dev time.