Developers Not thrilled with Nextgen?

[liolio]

Yeah I'm sure thats it...

Maybe look at the cost scaling from all previous generations? You think that line thats going straight up at 45 degrees is gonna go down this gen because why? Because you determined so? Whats magically changed this gen that is going to make the cost scaling of new titles completely reverse its previous course over the last two or three decades?

I really want to know.

May be because nowadays PC games are consoles games and the other way around works too.

Because to get normal map thy need to get calculated while taking in account sub pixels details?
Because Epic said so and from hated they became so relevant lately? I speak of their presentation about instead of using REYES to generates 4 millions micro polygon models to produce normal maps, they would better render them in real time?

Because better texture are available on PC?

Because as consoles are mostly PC and that next gen console specs won't even be in line with nowadays high pc. They may end barely in line with mid range part.

Clearly nothing objective and serious point to a need of significantly raising the quality of the assets.

Have you any argument to oppose the points (correct or not) I gave in my previous post? Because your post is trolling, empty, not even trying to answer my points might them be wrong...

reported... I'm done with that attitude.

 

[Acert93]

Wow, next gen news hitting fast and furious now. Developer states Durango budgets twice that of current gen...

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-03-next-gen-consoles-mean-increased-development-costs

I am sure art will need some increase next gen but studios using normal maps (everyone worthy of getting a next gen dev kit) and even some POM they already have high poly models. Likewise studios making PC versions of their games will also be used to having much higher resolution source art and game-version textures. So the reasoning given doesn't make a ton of sense.

What does make sense is a studios FIRST next gen game is an important "anchor" game. e.g. Halo on the Xbox, CoD2 on the Xbox 360, etc. Getting a good looking/good playing game out of the gate allows you to cut your teeth on the technology, compete against a limited field of content, get your brand established, and allow you to really push home a killer app in Holiday#3 when the install base is big enough to have substantial sales rewards.

From that perspective I absolutely believe Xbox3-Launch-Titles will see LARGE budget bumps. They are the movie equivalent to "Blockbuster Summer Popcorn flicks." Everything is going to be pushed to the next level for those titles.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Because better texture are available on PC?

For the vast majority of PC titles, texture resolution has been stagnant for many years. Not many PC developers can afford to dedicate the money to budget for better assets.

Take a look at Crysis 2. Higher res textures weren't released until a few months AFTER the game was out. Prior to that texture detail was only marginally better than consoles.

Or ME3, horrible texture res. on PC.

Skyrim...same deal with horribly disappointing textures.

Regards,
SB

 

[hoho]

For the vast majority of PC titles, texture resolution has been stagnant for many years. Not many PC developers can afford to dedicate the money to budget for better assets.

Take a look at Crysis 2. Higher res textures weren't released until a few months AFTER the game was out. Prior to that texture detail was only marginally better than consoles.

So you honestly think they remade the textures to have higher quality for the texture pack? I find that rather unlikely and I'm quite certain they had the source art at significantly higher quality than was even in the high quality texture pack and all they did was to tweak their tools to spit out textures at different resolution.

 

[Ninjaprime]

May be because nowadays PC games are consoles games and the other way around works too.

Because to get normal map thy need to get calculated while taking in account sub pixels details?
Because Epic said so and from hated they became so relevant lately? I speak of their presentation about instead of using REYES to generates 4 millions micro polygon models to produce normal maps, they would better render them in real time?

Because better texture are available on PC?

Because as consoles are mostly PC and that next gen console specs won't even be in line with nowadays high pc. They may end barely in line with mid range part.

Clearly nothing objective and serious point to a need of significantly raising the quality of the assets.

Have you any argument to oppose the points (correct or not) I gave in my previous post? Because your post is trolling, empty, not even trying to answer my points might them be wrong...

reported... I'm done with that attitude.

Sorry if I was a little hostile, just the attitude of "developers are greedy idiots that don't know how much things cost and just want more money" irritates me to no end. Its not a secret, they aren't hiding anything. All you have to do is look at the evidence at hand:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_development

However, approaching the 21st century, ever-increasing computer processing power and heightened consumer expectations made it impossible for a single developer to produce a mainstream game. The average price of game production slowly rose from US$1M–4M in 2000 to over 5M in 2006 to over 20M in 2010.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubisoft-Game-Development-Will-Cost-60-Million-In-the-Future-114487.shtml

http://www.gamespot.com/news/game-development-costs-to-double-6133848

^ Developer saying the same thing back in 2005, and guess what, they actually undershot the increase. Were they just looking for more money?

http://www.develop-online.net/news/33625/Study-Average-dev-cost-as-high-as-28m

http://compsci.ca/blog/profitability-in-video-game-industry/

http://www.cnbc.com/id/35932496/As_Video_Game_Development_Costs_Rise_So_Do_Risks

Really good articles from Ars, they are old but still apply:

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/11/crossplatform.ars/1

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/12/8479.ars

In the last 12 years, average development cost has gone up ~12 times. It has not slowed down, and in fact, it has accelerated over the last 6 years from the previous 6 years. Even if it begins to change trends and the rate of increase drops in say, half, you're still going to see dev costs hit twice last gen within next gen. In 2006 the average cost was ~5 million. In the 4 years between then and 2010 it quadrupled to ~20million. Right now its estimated at around ~30 million. Even if, right now, it the rate of doubling every 2 years dropped in half to doubling every 4, next gen is going to see over $60 million average by 2016, which shouldn't even be the middle point of next gen.

So by early next gen, even assuming the trend drops in half average costs will double. Following the trend of the last 10 years, instead of cutting it in half, we'll probably see over $100 million. How many games over the last 5 years made well over 100 million? You can probably count them on your fingers and toes.

 

[Otto Dafe]

Yeah I'm sure thats it...

Maybe look at the cost scaling from all previous generations? You think that line thats going straight up at 45 degrees is gonna go down this gen because why? Because you determined so? Whats magically changed this gen that is going to make the cost scaling of new titles completely reverse its previous course over the last two or three decades?

I really want to know.

I don't really think there's enough data to extrapolate a linear cost increase. In part because gaming is a young industry but also just because it's tech. For one thing there are certainly inflection points, e.g. in content creation the move from 2d->3d in the 90s, the move to high resolution in the 00s, from text scripts to Hollywood voice actors and so on. So, I mean, you do have costs rising, but you also have a bunch of discrete, quantifiable production characteristics that have been added along the way.

For next-gen I imagine simulation being a major inflection point, as I think players will come to expect more diverse and complex animations, material properties, particles and physics. Imagine the best qualities of Uncharted, BF3, and Red Faction as the low bar for that kind of stuff next-gen.

Or I'm totally wrong!

 

[liolio]

Ninja first thanks for your well developped answer

First,I notice from you links and that confirms my belief is that the growth is not linear but put on paper it might looks like an exponential growth. Usually that spells nothing good and bursts as some points.
We were discussing few days ago with Joker454 and I agreed with his pov I don't expect assets quality to get significantly higher than the quality of AAA games (say BF3 on a good PC).

On average you might be right as not all games are AAA games with 100millions budgets. The problem I see is that average can be a poor representation of reality.
Average could be 20millions for a game whereas there are really few games with that kind of budgets. Like in our society there could be polarization with +60 millions games (speaking of budget) and games with few millions with really few in the middle (cf the 1%). This is already there.

So to me next gen will be even more AAA focused and I don't believe that even a step (not jump) forward in assets quality (vs even PC Silent Buddha) will have a significant impact on the budget of those AAA games. May be percents but nowhere near the exponential growth we saw in the previous years.

So to sum-up for an average game it might be an increase in budget but put bluntly I believe that there won't be that many average games. not proved IP or adventurous concepts may be downgrade instead to downloadable games more often.

I'm not on my computer again tonight. So I can't do proper searches and linking from my phone but somebody on this board but posted some really interesting info on the market evolution ( no growing) and the weight of AAA games in this market (growing share of slightly diminishing volumes) and within those AAA the growing weight of a handful of franchises.

Isn't somebody at Epic said lately that if you're to develop a games a couples millions dollars (I don't remember the exact figure) you might do something wrong. I think he meant either you go AAA and you need way more or either you should consider a different approach for the game (and most likely its mean of distribution digital vs physical).

So starting from there I don't know who made that initial comment but it doesn"t add up that well to me. If it's a AAA devs I don't believe that costs will increase significantly. If he is in between they be using the wrong approach and they are taking too much risks as there is no longer that much of a market for "in between games". Investing say 10 millions on single game may be a good way to good for chapter 11 filling pretty fast ( may be on some casual kinect games but it's risky and I believe only studios part of a bigger ensemble can take that kind of risks. Actually casual games may be cheaper to develop but must require healthy marketing budget to reach its targets so I'm not even sure of this).


For greedy devs it's not my pov and it's a bit improper it's tough to be personal against pretty big corporations.

Ps sorry for the spelling mistakes, I'm going to fix that asap.
And again there was nothing personal but sometime is bothering to take time to post to receive an "unfair" response or something that could be perceived as such. farewell.

 

[Prophecy2k]

I am sure art will need some increase next gen but studios using normal maps (everyone worthy of getting a next gen dev kit) and even some POM they already have high poly models. Likewise studios making PC versions of their games will also be used to having much higher resolution source art and game-version textures. So the reasoning given doesn't make a ton of sense.

What does make sense is a studios FIRST next gen game is an important "anchor" game. e.g. Halo on the Xbox, CoD2 on the Xbox 360, etc. Getting a good looking/good playing game out of the gate allows you to cut your teeth on the technology, compete against a limited field of content, get your brand established, and allow you to really push home a killer app in Holiday#3 when the install base is big enough to have substantial sales rewards.

From that perspective I absolutely believe Xbox3-Launch-Titles will see LARGE budget bumps. They are the movie equivalent to "Blockbuster Summer Popcorn flicks." Everything is going to be pushed to the next level for those titles.

I agree completely with this statement, although I also wonder if animation might be a big contributor to dev budgets next-gen? There were few games this gen with really impressive animation; GTAIV, RDR, Assassin's Creed games and Uncharted games are all standouts. I would imagine that kind of animation quality as being the baseline, but i'm unsure of how far procedural animation systems can go, and how much extra hand-rigged animation frames would still be required. Multiply that by a massive number of varied shaped and size models in the sprawling open worlds of next-gen games and i wold imagine animation becoming a mammoth task.

Then again however, this gen we did have games like Skyrim, whose sales never at all suffered for its poor poor animations.

 

[Arwin]

A lot of time needs to be spent on making content creation more efficient. And games need to take content creation into account more and more too. Of course this is obvious stuff and it's already happening anyway, but the big step forward needs to come from that direction. Scanning objects, outsourcing, user content generation, sharing CGI data with movies, etc.