I'm not one of those folks who will preach about people pirating games. I can even understand to a degree when we are talking about sixty dollar games from gigantic publishers, but pirating a 10 dollar game that was made by one dude or a very small contingent of people... what the hell is wrong with you, you greedy friggin' pigs? I've spent more in an hour at a coffee shop than the cost of Hotline Miami.

Amen

I'm certainly not going to lose my sh*t over a piece of concept art, but this does fit with a disturbing pattern with the way marketing and production have been completely misinterpreting or misrepresenting what make the Hitman series enjoyable and unique.

I look forward to seeing more about the game, despite its flaws (and all Hitman games have been flawed) Absolution was pretty damn good, even if it did broaden the definition of what one does and can do in a Hitman game.

The name of the convention keeps reminding me of a certain book which shall not be named. Most unfortunate.

Red Steel U, baby

@Yomigaeru It was always expensive back in the day because of the cartridge system - some games could cost upwards of $100 depending on how big a ROM was, and that was considerably more money back then, too. Games today are far, far more expensive to develop, but the production cost per unit is much lower because of optical media. Even with that and digital distribution (which aside from Steam remains infuriatingly lock-step with retail prices), developers and publishers keep insisting we spend more and more, and we will probably hit the $80 mark either this generation or next.It's kind of sad, especially when you realize that some of the most exciting games these days are made with teams of less than two dozen people and for costs that are measured in thousands rather than millions of dollars (or only a few million, in the case of larger ones).

"Sweeney added that Epic's first next-gen technology demo, the 2011 "Samaritan" video, took four months and a squad of 30 developers to create."This figure is also less dramatic than it sounds if you consider the production time associated with high-end, digital animation when all of the art assets and concepts have to be produced from scratch. And when also you consider that this is brand new technology with which the artists are unfamiliar...

@SOKOLEK That's a cynical view, but I can't help but think that there is a sliver of truth to it.

@games_are_fun71 @endorbr You are putting words in his mouth. The big cost increase last generation was the necessitation of producing high definition art assets and the dramatic expansion of scope (think Skyrim and the like). Graphical fidelity can only go so far before you meet diminishing returns in terms of human perception. The upsurge in cost is going to come not from a better overall fidelity but the size or minute details of the world --- both of those things have actually become the wheelhouse of middleware.

I also take issue that you think lowering dev costs or not making another tectonic shift in technology will equate to a lower quality. That is a very unrefined view of the hobby.

Also, in all likelihood, the new consoles will be slightly above average gaming PCs for the time of their release. We will get bigger, slightly prettier games (like on PC now) and they will run a 1080p close to 60 frames a second.

I suspect that this is an overestimate, or an early shot being fired in the rationalization of making games $80 a pop.