[QUOTE="lordxymor"] 1080p isn't needed. 720p isn't needed. Rumble isn't needed. Analog sticks aren't needed. 5.1 audio isn't needed. complex physics, stunning graphics, etc... none of those things are needed.
You can make great games without those things, remember Snes and Atari?
Now, when you have those things, and you make them avaliable to developers, they WILL put them to good use, or maybe some of them won't and will prefer to make a 2D game in the middle of the freaking 7th generation and still the game can be just as successful and criticaly acclaimed as those multimilion multiyear MGS/Halo mega productions.
It's about giving the developers tools. How they use, and how successful they are using them is up to their efforts and imagination.
HuusAsking
But you hit a new problem when you start making bigger and bigger games, and this is a problem that technology can't readily fix because the problem is economic. It's Diminishing Returns. The retail price of games hasn't risen that much in ten years while inflation has dulled the developer's dollar. And considering how much it's taking to make the likes of Halo 3, imagine multiplying that by 3 to 5 to make a game that has 20-50GB of real game data. Not to mention the time constraints and the strain on the budget. HOw much more money does it cost to create a higher resolution texture, or an uncompressed audio clip? Honestly, they're making games nowadays shorter due to the lack of space. Gears of War only cost $10 million to make, compared to other, lesser games like Lost PLanet that cost $20 million. Games really aren't that more expensive these days. Games are going up maybe 30-50% in cost this generation, if that.As Mark Rein said in the same article that i quoted in the OP, "I hate to hear people talk about "We're going to charge more because it costs more". Sure, it costs more because you're developing using better technology and making better games. Not just because you're wasting money developing your own tools - there's a lot of people that are doing that.
You could consider me a little disingenuous on this because I've got technology to sell to people, but there's other technology you can buy, not just ours. People who are trying to re-invent the wheel are spending way more money than they should. Our own games, we're seeing a 30-50% increase in cost, but we're expanding our teams and make much better games.
UT 2007 is way more detailed than any UT games we've done prior to this title. It's not processed three times, and it's not costing us 30 million USD. There's no excuse for us to raise the price. I hope retail and rental dovetail into that and hopefully reduce the people playing our games that aren't paying us. When we worked with Atari, they sold our games for $39 and we actually agree with that policy. Reduce the price of our game, not increase it."
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