How much money is being spent on PS3 games...

[blakjedi]

Versus x360 games?

If we are to beleive all the hoopla around the immersive visual quality of PS3 games (full environments rendered with physics, caustics, LDR/HDR) which should be a visual leap over X360 games I just wonder how is that possible without spendingtons of money on that game? Are PS3 game budgets bigger tha x360 because of programming complexity, better models, stronger artwork, more accurate and higher utilization of physics/ AI? Whats the real deal?

And if the budget on PS3 games is higher would the results be similar/the same if the same budget was spent on x360?

 

[Hardknock]

I don't think there is a way for us to know this yet blakjedi. Patience my friend.

And baring MGS4 and FF (possibly), most high profile big budget games will be multiplatform. And they should look rather identical on each platform.

 

[joebloggs]

Well an anonymous publisher* gave a rough breakdown for their support:

PS3 - 50%
XBOX 360 - 30%
Rev - 20%

How that relates to budgets, man-hours and other resources, who knows.



*Edited for correction.

 

[Hardknock]

Well EA gave a rough breakdown for their support:

PS3 - 50%
XBOX 360 - 30%
Rev - 20%

How that relates to budgets, man-hours and other resources, who knows.

Interesting. What do you mean by "support"? PS3 will get more titles? Do you have a link?

 

[joebloggs]

Interesting. What do you mean by "support"? PS3 will get more titles? Do you have a link?

Sorry, my memory is getting mixed up - that percentage breakdown was from an anonymous publisher although EA did mention they were working on more PS3 titles.

Both those quotes were from EDGE magazine and related in this thread:

http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=81334

Consider the words of one publishing representative: “We have commitments to all formats and it’s still early days, but right now our publishing plan hasn’t changed much from last-gen. We’re committed about 50 per cent to PS3, 30 per cent to 360 and 20 per cent to Revolution. This could change – depending on what happens with Revolution, we could ramp up our Nintendo activity and there may be some opportunities in the online 360 space that could change our activities there – but our projections are built around PS3 as the next generation cornerstone."

Consider the biggest third-party outifit in existence, Electronic Arts, which has no less than 20 360 games in the works - but is happy to confirm that it's working on a larger number for PS3.

Consider another publishing representative’s take on it: “The truth is, most developers we’re working with who have console backgrounds want to be working on the PlayStation 3. We’ll be bringing more PC content on to the Xbox 360 and often releasing dual PC/360 versions at around the same time, but our dedicated console properties will be leading on the PlayStation 3 in almost every instance."

 

[Hardknock]

No problem. The 360 having only 10% more EA support than the REV was a little suspect

Nice cover for that issue:

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2900/ps34uq.jpg

 

[London Geezer]

I don't think there is a way for us to know this yet blakjedi. Patience my friend.

And baring MGS4 and FF (possibly), most high profile big budget games will be multiplatform. And they should look rather identical on each platform.

It will all depend on first party games, and it seems Sony likes to spend their cash on big games. The Getaway cost a whole lot of money, for the time it was released.
GT games always cost and arm and a leg. FF games too. I think God of War cost them quite a lot, considering the production values, from CGI to the orchestra soundtrack... Those ain't cheap these days...

Multiplatform games should be ignored for this thread i think, since they probably have a total budget for all consoles and it might be hard to see how much of that budget is being spent on one platform and how much on the other.

 

[Titanio]

The comment on its own doesn't tell us how much more expensive PS3 games may or may not be versus others, though. More resources commited to PS3 could just mean more titles in the works rather than more money being spent on the same number. And even if it were the latter, unless the games were exactly the same in ambition as their 360 or Rev counterparts, you couldn't really infer anything from that.

Really, it comes down to the last bit - how ambitious devs/publishers want to be.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PS3 has a Reality Synthesizer that can create realities in hardware at no extra cost. That's the only logical explanation...

 

[London Geezer]

The comment on its own doesn't tell us how much more expensive PS3 games may or may not be versus others, though. More resources commited to PS3 could just mean more titles in the works rather than more money being spent on the same number. And even if it were the latter, unless the games were exactly the same in ambition as their 360 or Rev counterparts, you couldn't really infer anything from that.

Really, it comes down to the last bit - how ambitious devs/publishers want to be.

More resources must mean more people. And the majority of a game's budget (or any company really) is spent on wages. So generally a game with a 100 strong team will cost more than one with less people.

 

[Titanio]

More resources must mean more people. And the majority of a game's budget (or any company really) is spent on wages. So generally a game with a 100 strong team will cost more than one with less people.

Of course, but I don't know if 100-person teams are any more peculiar to PS3 than to X360..

It still boils down to your goals, though, your ambitions. If it generally takes 100 people on PS3 the same amount of time that it takes 60 people to make a game of the same quality/ambition, with all else being equal (capability, team effectiveness etc.) then maybe you could make a point.

 

[London Geezer]

Of course, but I don't know if 100-person teams are any more peculiar to PS3 than to X360..

Of course, i have no idea either, i was just saying that if we get the number of people of different teams, we might start to get an idea of how much money is being spent on a game compared to another one. Obviously there are other things affecting the budget though so it's a bit hard.

 

[ERP]

Of course, i have no idea either, i was just saying that if we get the number of people of different teams, we might start to get an idea of how much money is being spent on a game compared to another one. Obviously there are other things affecting the budget though so it's a bit hard.

Most publishers are going to base their costs on projected sales.
They actually don't just throw people at it an try and sell what they get at the end of an arbitrary period.

Launch/year 1 titles are a little different, some publishers see it as an opportunity to establish a frachise, so they will spend relatively more compared to projected sales.

 

[London Geezer]

Most publishers are going to base their costs on projected sales.
They actually don't just throw people at it an try and sell what they get at the end of an arbitrary period.

Launch/year 1 titles are a little different, some publishers see it as an opportunity to establish a frachise, so they will spend relatively more compared to projected sales.

Agreed. In the end my point holds true: we have no idea :smile:

 

[Laa-Yosh]

If we are to beleive all the hoopla around the immersive visual quality of PS3 games (full environments rendered with physics, caustics, LDR/HDR) which should be a visual leap over X360 games I just wonder how is that possible without spendingtons of money on that game? Are PS3 game budgets bigger tha x360 because of programming complexity, better models, stronger artwork, more accurate and higher utilization of physics/ AI? Whats the real deal?

I don't expect to see ANY difference between X360 and PS3 game art. Both aim for a HDTV display, both support roughly the same polygon counts, have the same amount of memory, have support for similar complexity in shaders (=> number of texture channels), both will most likely realy heavily on normal and parallax mapping etc. etc. Style choices may have a strong effect on the art though, cartoon-like visuals can not rely on source photographs for texture work, as seen in Half-life; but nevertheless, we can safely assume that art production pipelines will be the same. Especially when compared to the difference
between the PS2 with its palettized textures and lack of normal mapping, and the Xbox with its DX8-level shaders.

Similar production pipelines will result in similar budgets for the same amount of content. Just because the PS3 has more processing capacity, the studios will not design more levels, more enemies or more cutscenes. As ERP indicated, budgets are more dependent on publisher decisions that tend to consider sales and other issues, instead of coding and design goals.

 

[AW0L]

hopefully all this talk about budgets dont transalate into another price hike in the media. Bigger devs teams more money spent on art more money spent on a whole.

 

[mckmas8808]

IAnd baring MGS4 and FF (possibly), most high profile big budget games will be multiplatform. And they should look rather identical on each platform.

Sony 1st party and 2nd party disagrees with you.

 

[pc999]

hopefully all this talk about budgets dont transalate into another price hike in the media. Bigger devs teams more money spent on art more money spent on a whole.

We already saw a price increase of 5euros per games, at least here, it may be just because the XB360 is brand new and they want to make a faster return, but with such increase in game budgets as we keep hearing, I am not very hopefull.

I guess that much more people will start to buy only games in the classics series (which can be bad for them).

 

[Rodéric]

We already saw a price increase of 5euros per games, at least here, it may be just because the XB360 is brand new and they want to make a faster return, but with such increase in game budgets as we keep hearing, I am not very hopefull.

I guess that much more people will start to buy only games in the classics series (which can be bad for them).

XBox360 games cost 70€ around here, 60€ for MS funded games (such as Perfect Dark Zero & Kameo).

 

[Titanio]

XBox360 games cost 70€ around here, 60€ for MS funded games (such as Perfect Dark Zero & Kameo).

I've seen a few 360 titles over €80 here. The bricks-and-mortars are pretty shameless, comparing the prices with play.com and the like.