Revolution game prices.

Msen. But the vast majority of the games were only started on this year all the same - sorry, we don't know the exact details of these things but we can look at the physical details. Microsoft say games will take longer and thus cost more, games take only a year (bar a few exceptions) to make.

No, they definitely were not.. the vast majority of games take a while to make. Rare, for example, have a concept together years before they start actual development.

If devlopment teams stay the same size they will take longer- you can't compare to this generation, as teams will be far larger. Think of it like this: the first games were made by bedroom coders, by themselves, over a matter of weeks; a 10 person dev team could recrete one of those games in a matter of hours.

but if the PGR game at launch costs more then that is immoral and a scam.

I don't see how?

But those "concepts" are basically all exisiting franchises and thus time/cost is negated. And remember I've been omitting Rare as they are teh exception to the rule.

Basically I think we'll have to agree to disagree here because frankly, though cost will rise realatively speaking, I don't buy the fact that it'll cost

Don't they always over estimate prices, so they can avoid pissing off customers if the game turns out to be more expensive.
I think we'll see the odd

As for PGR, a generic game whipped up in a year, worth

It's their fault if they can't break even, good games do in all cases.

Look at RE4, massive development time, massive costs but a great game, great sales and now great profits.

I do like the idea of Steam and such, it would massively benefit the industry - but Microsoft hiking up prices doesn't imo.

Atari must be loving this though :-/

Basically I think Nintendo have the right idea, make it easier and cheaper to make games, get the little guys in on the act. There's a whole host of teams like the Alien Hominid makers just waiting to make it big, and thankfully due to Nintendo's stance we could see more of them.

Nin10do... serious, for someone in their 20's you seem to have a sever lack of knowledge about how the world works.

In terms of games, a rough breakdown of costs is this:

For a game that retails at

It's their fault if they can't break even, good games do in all cases.

Thats just not true.. look at the charts. Look at whats selling well.. its the same as music and film.. the best are underground, struggling to survive.. and they need to have the extra money to stay alfloat.

Look at RE4, massive development time, massive costs but a great game, great sales and now great profits.

Hardly counts considering its a sequel.. they've had more than 3 previous games to build up to the sales they will get now. I'm talking about great games that came from nowhere that are only out now thanks to big publishers picking them up.. Fable, as a good example.

Are you saying great, original games companies should fail, and the release schedules should fill up with even more derivative crap, because the innovative ideas don't sell as well?

I know exactly how these things work

The only thing that will likely go up in non-direct profit is the TAX, relatively speaking a great chunk of that

auzdafluff figures are based on percentages though.. say the publisher gets 25%... thats

Touche, mseny - didn't think of that, was in more of a set price mindset due to the nature of the thread

look at the charts. Look at whats selling well.. its the same as music and film.. the best are underground, struggling to survive.. and they need to have the extra money to stay alfloat.

I can't think of one good games company that's gone bust while producing top quality games, though I have feck all knowledge about the two you posted previously.

Who went bust, Acclaim - were their games good, no.

New companies, free radical. They are producing great work, innovative games like Second Sight and are doing quite well for themselves.

I can only see hiked prices benefitting people like Atari who shove out crap liker Driv3r and have it sell millions..

Hardly counts considering its a sequel.. they've had more than 3 previous games to build up to the sales they will get now. I'm talking about great games that came from nowhere that are only out now thanks to big publishers picking them up.. Fable, as a good example.

Are you saying great, original games companies should fail, and the release schedules should fill up with even more derivative crap, because the innovative ideas don't sell as well?

I know for a fact that if RE4 was the first RE game it would have sold well.

How can indie games companies even make a high budget game to begin with, sure if they could actually do it they might just benefit - but I seriously question if we'll have any small companies making benefit of higher priced games.

What reason does the gamer have, when now financially restricted due to larger costs, of buying a

auzdafluff wroteon't nieve, the retailers, Taxman, and Publishers are what push up games prices. Guess who gets hit when the Supermarkets buy in bulk, thats right, the Developers share.

Does that mean Micrsoft were lieing when they said games would increase in price due to larger teams/longer development times?

What reason does the gamer have, when now financially restricted due to larger costs, of buying a

Sharpshot wrote:

auzdafluff wroteon't nieve, the retailers, Taxman, and Publishers are what push up games prices. Guess who gets hit when the Supermarkets buy in bulk, thats right, the Developers share.

Does that mean Micrsoft were lieing when they said games would increase in price due to larger teams/longer development times?

OK, I haven't read much of this topic, so I'm just going on the first post.

Nintendo say that the Revolution is designed to LOWER the cost of development L-O-W-E-R. I expect AT THE MOST games to cost

buying habits won't change.

Yes they will.

To the sort of person that likes the type of games found on the XBOX/360 there is a whole stack of games within the launch window that they might really want. Just say the launch lists are roughly correct there could be 10 games on that list that type of gamer want, do the math. A 360,

nin10do wroteThe only thing that will likely go up in non-direct profit is the TAX, relatively speaking a great chunk of that

Its unlikely Revo games will go up but it is likely that Sony and Microsoft games will.

Sony is the most likely company to raise prices, for a start they'll be using Blu-Ray discs. Not only is this semi-proprietry for the start of the console's life but because its new tech disc production facilities won't be firmly in place yet making the media expensive.
Secondly, the PS3 is an entirely new platform with an entirely new way of making games. Most consoles come with dedicated GPUs seperate to the CPU, whether you worked on the PS2, Xbox or GC you were working along the same principle. According to Sony the Cell chip will be running the graphics with the nVidia GPU there as support. Old tricks won't work here and devs will have to spend time and money figuring out new methods.
Thirdly, if the PS3 is anywhere near as powerful as people are being led to believe then that means game development prices are going to shoot up. You can't make a game that looks better, is more realistic and larger than current games on the same budget with the same tools, same dev teams and within the same time thats allocated to this generation.

Microsoft are in the same boat for most of this except that they'll have a more standard platform to work on, so the it'll be eaier for devs to get to grips with it.
With regards to Microsoft's "Huge" launch catalogue, a lot of these games were probably made under the same conditions as Kameo and PD0. UbiSoft's Ghost Recon 2 has been playable since before last summer. They made the game and drew up plans for a sequel, then realised that this couldn't be achieved on modern hardware. Companies like UbiSoft know more about the industry then we do so its quite likely they had a general gist of what was comming in the next gen before the rumours and leaked specs came out and designed their games accordingl. Character models, physics engines, etc are not entirely platform specific and would've been designed a while ago and then had them upgraded/down-graded and the code ported depending on the dev kits.

The Revo should be little if at all more expensive to produce for. Nintendo have already put a realistic two to three times more powerful tag on it and Shiguru has alreay gone on record saying that architeture wise the Revo won't be far off the Cube. It sounds weird saying this but next generation the Revo will be the only real "upgrade console" as to all extents its a more powerful Cube with some extra features and I'm not saying thats a bad thing.
The Cube will still be using proprietry discs, they'll be 12cm big using DVD tech but they'll only be 6-7GB big and manufactured by Panasonic once again. They'll probably be once again made in specific Panasonic labs to reduce piracy but they should still be able to be made with conventional equipment so its unsure how this will affect the price.
Due to the Revo having the lowest statest power increase and its basing on GC tech it should theoretically be the cheapest and quickest console to design for by a long shot, the new controller interface being the only thing remarkably different from the Cube.

We will more than likely see a price increase in Sony (they charge about $10 dollars more for PSP games over the DS and GBA) and Microsoft but its unlikely we'll see a price increase in Nintendo games.

But thats just from a development point of view, we haven't looked at marketing yet. One company charges

Will companies like EA charge different prices for different consoles or will they blanket price?

Remember the shit they kicked up when Microsoft wouldn't let EA charge seperately for their games.. they'll do the same with game pricing: the same for everyone.

I reckon only MS & SONY will raise the prices. Gastrian took the words out of my mouth

Though...Movies cost more to make and prices haven't really gone up at all...Care to explain that?

Xerou wrote: Though...Movies cost more to make and prices haven't really gone up at all...Care to explain that?

First they go to the cinema, then they get you to rent and buy, then they sell them on to TV companies and games companies.

Games have one source of revenue at the moment, games.

Ah the days when you could buy a Firebird or Mastertronic Tape with a perfectly decent C64 game on it for

Because they have so many more ways of gaining revenue...

First they go to the cinema, then they get you to rent and buy, then they sell them on to TV companies and games companies.

Games have one source of revenue at the moment, games.

That still doesn't explain why the prices haven't gone up. Movies are costing more and more to make, yet prices stay the same. The ways of selling and distributing movies have been around for ages, they're static.

To be fair if you're going to put down rent and lisencing income (selling lisencing to Movie producers) for movies you'd also have to do it for games.

don't get me started on steam

Movies have gone down in price for various reasons. Piracy is a main concern, then there's volume, merchandise, tv rights, etc.

Movies aren't rising in price that much over standard inflation rates, game production is.