Ex-Sony WW Boss on AAA model

Surprise: It's not sustainable.

"The problem with that model is it's just not sustainable," he said, explaining that the current generation has seen the cost of development reach between $80 million and $150 million for most AAA games -- excluding marketing costs -- with production taking up to five years from start to finish.

Source

It only took them what 10-15 years to realize that because I remember Nintendo being attacked for not chasing the power and also saying something similar years back.

But we all knew that for a long long time that AAA gaming is heading for a crash.

We need the resurgence of Arcade, A and AA games from big publishers

We need EA to make Road Rash

We need THQ to make Hydrothunder

We need Sony to Make Twisted Metal (The right way)

We need Sega to make Crazy Taxi

And most of all, we need gamers to buy and support these types of games. Not every game needs to be the next Fortnite or have the production values of the Last of Us

Well bigger budgets never made better games. It's the talent and the ambition that makes a game good, and the quality of execution.

We often see this in the movie industry. Movies with bottomless budgets rarely serve the quality of movie-making and storytelling as much as they're serving the masses for the hope of making profit.

Mainstream big-budget games seldom take risks because there's a lot more at stake. Smaller budgets not only create a greater discipline in drive for what's great in video games, but smaller-budget games are more likely to take greater risks.

It's been on the wall for years. Releases getting rarer and fewer in between. Games going for the broadest and blandest mass appeal. Ever more bullshit monetization and microtransactions.

Maybe it would help if games remain games and stop trying to be "cinematic" or "realistic." No one needs to see a horse poop realistically, or go through the full, agonizing animation of upgrading a weapon.

But anything that is not triple A is indie trash. 😉

I'm all for bringing back some AA games but if the gaming industry goes all indie I'm out at that point it will just turn into mobile gaming and surprise mechanics as EA likes to call it. I think in the future AI can help build AAA games to speed up development time and cost.

Heading for a crash? I'd say the 7th gen was that crash. Game development exploded in the 7th gen and many studios and publishers went under, studios put everything on line just to be undone if a game failed.

The remaining titans of AAA publishing have largely played it safe. Seems most diversity and creative risk is coming from indie developers. There's still room for AAA games, studios, publishers, but it's finite.

@pc_rocks: Ok lol.

With the onset of mo-cap, high-level VA, ultra-realistic graphics, this is a no-brainer. Costs are spiralling, and devs/pubs are largely locked in terms of price. Canada got a bump in price when the USD rocketed in value a few years ago. As a business, you have to constrain the costs or increase those costs at the risk of losing portions of your market.

As much as I like these high-end graphics, i'm enjoying P4G in 4K on PC on a whole different level from Vita. A balance is needed.

Good! Go back to more reasonable methods that allow for more inventive products. Indies have the right idea but without the backing to make them amazing. It's the same with all current entertainment; I would rather have 100 amazing games than 10000 mediocre games.

That's fine because not every game has to be a blockbuster AAA game.

When you try to make them all AAA you end up with either bland or broken experiences.

Not sure why this is so difficult to underst... oh right all these damn publishers can only think as far as their next earnings report to their shareholders.

You know what else we've discovered. It doesn't matter if they keep turning out crap because there are always people willing to make a fun game with a reasonable budget. So screw 'em. While there is crowd-funding or smaller publishers like Focus Home and Devolver Digital we will always have fun games to play. And every now and then a major publisher manages to squirt out something decent - probably by accident - so there's that.

Plus the horrible crunch culture that AAA studios implement onto their employees. Not everyone, but a lot.

What they need to do is develop some kind of an AI that helps game development. This will be the next breakthrough in game development.

How crunchtime isn't against labour laws boggles my mind. When I was salaried, I often came in on off-days for numerous reasons, but when I asked for overtime, or time in lieue, we got a company call lambasting anyone who did their own job, and that of others. After that, I did my 37.5 hours and told them to do one. Fortunately, the family who owned the MSB (who later got bought out buy a Credit Union,) were dealing in money laundering (supposedly) and shown the door.

Been saying this for years: they are spending way too much to make games.

Best games I have played in the past 10 years have all been from independent or small studios. The games I continue to play are all from independent or small studios.

AAA games are fleeting. They spend all that money for a game I am going to spend 20 hours on? Tragic.

I hope they return to where games were in the 90's, or at least where development was. Lower cast, more games, more experimentation, more risk...if it doesn't work out, take it as a learning experience and be thankful it didn't take 150 million dollars and a few hundred/thousand people to make the game.

...excluding marketing costs...

Wow, excluding marketing? That's probably another few hundred million right there.

I don’t interpret what he said in the article the same as you OP. As I understand it he is saying that the model of doubling costs every gen is not sustainable (which is obvious). He is not saying that AAA development in general is not sustainable.

I think costs next gen will not double because games won’t be that dramatically different. The UE5 demo was interesting as it was as much about cost saving features for developers (dynamic lighting, scanning 3d objects etc) as it was about cool new features for the consumer.

Definitely unsustainable. I still remember FF7 development took around 40 million dollars and 200 staff alongside Sony spending their own money of 40 - 50 million for advertisement. that is in the 90's.

Welp what to do, I mean I want a Bloodborne sequel to happen with the best staff, promotion, love and money Sony and From Software could give.

If we need gambling and need to rely on people who have serious addictions and spending problems to finance our games, than it's not sustainable.

Yeah, and the games are usually shorter, feel less ambitious and have less content because they're wasting so much money on graphics, voice acting and production values.

It's sustainable for a select few companies. That's honestly how it's been for awhile now.

Yep.

Hence why most of my favourite games nowadays are Indies. They try new things and cut out the bullsh*t (usually). In the strive for realism, we seem to have lost the 'fun' aspect of games & seem to prefer pretty cutscenes to actual gameplay.