CESA report: dev costs highest on GC (japan)

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Kendoka
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CESA Report Yields Surprises

By Dennis Day, News Editor
Published July 28, 2003 -- 10:11 am CDT

The CESA (Computer Entertainment Software Association) recently published its annual "White Pages" report on the Japanese videogame industry. Apart from detailed sales figures and market trends, the report also features survey data from several game developers. According to 43 companies questioned, software development costs were the highest on the Nintendo GameCube at 72 million yen ($603,000) and lowest on PlayStation 2 at 14 million yen ($117,000). Elsewhere, the report revealed the relatively limited interest in network compatible games. Despite heavy promotion from Sony and Microsoft for their respective online services, only 9.6% of console owners questioned said they regularly play network compatible games.

I'm surprised the FF Xs, MGS2s, etc. didn't skew the results upward for PS2.. maybe its all the mahjonng games ;)
 
is it an average? because of course with the amount of games available for PS2, and the amount of CRAPPY games on PS2, the average would be lower.... while on GC, where up until not long ago i could count on 4 hands (not that i have 4 hands...) the games available for it, and with how many were hi budget nintendo first party games, then of course the average would be higher...
 
Yeah, what london said, all those barbie games drive down the average on ps2, and since the only thing you really see on gamecube now are high profile games, it has the highest.(Capcom has several expensive games, nintendo, sega...eh.....who else still makes game for the system? oh yeah, factor 5 has one game)
 
Who says GC does not crappy games. With all those multi-platform games GC is almost there with PS2/XB.
 
Another thing to take into account is that in Japan often a company will make, say, a mahjong or horse racing or pachinko game and then every 6 months after that will rerelease a new edition virtually identical to the last.* I've always felt that they coded/designed all those "games" at once then slowly released them. ;) Since almost all of these games are on PS2 now that probably drives the average down by a very large amount since a far larger chunk of Japan's PS2 library than you might think is occupied by these genres.

*Kind of like sports titles here but only more shameless.
 
SEGA has some of the worst development costs for games when it comes to this stuff. It probably ranks high on the list, but I don't see how for the GCN as mostly SEGA stuff on that is just ports. Still, I don't see how the GCN could be $607,000 and the PS2 so little? I guess it's an overall average of how many games are on the system to what their budgets are.
 
Ah, also I forgot, this is an *annual* report, so super-budget PS2 titles like FF X, MGS2, etc. weren't included.
 
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