Nintendo kicks off 'Crowdfarter' promo for Game & Wario
Narco Terror announced from Deep Silver
Call of Duty: Ghosts teaser gives tenuous look at next-gen COD
OZombie will be Spicy Horse's take on Oz
Deadpool listed for Wii U on Amazon Canada
CastleStorm assaulting XBLA next week
Leisure Suit Larry HD delayed until late June
Rhode Island looking to sell Amalur intellectual property
Resident Evil: Revelations DLC coming throughout June
Seeing Red: A History of the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death
Development costs 'tripled' for NGP and 3DS
by Jeff Mattas, Mar 11, 2011 5:00pm PSTThe next generation of handheld gaming is almost upon us. However, some developers are saying that the technological advances present in both Sony's NGP and Nintendo's 3DS mean that the average cost of developing a game for one of these devices could be more than three times the cost of making a portable game on last generation's devices. (via Develop)
"If you wanted to spend console money on developing a PSP2 or 3DS title, every penny of it would show, and clearly some of the launch titles have budgets two-to-three times what typical DS games have seen in the past," said JC Connors of Griptonite Games, one of Foundation 9 Entertainment's development studios.
Developer Rebellion's co-founder Chris Kingsley also rightly noted that consumers will expect more from next-gen handheld titles, due to the more advanced hardware. "With more powerful machines to develop on, expectations are higher and you have to spend more time and money creating larger and more detailed worlds," he said, before concluding in Spider Man-like fashion, "With more power comes greater expectation." Rebellion has adapted its Asura engine (used for mobile games) to work with both the NGP and 3DS.
In practical terms, the early consensus is that development costs for games on either of these next-gen handhelds could surpass $1 million on a regular basis. One can assume that some of this additional expense will invariably be passed on to the consumer.
The Nintendo 3DS hits the streets on March 25, though a release date for the Sony NGP has yet to be announced.
Comments
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 23 replies.
If they were smart, they'd go ports of home console titles (ie., Mario 64 DS, Star Fox, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina, SF IV, Splinter Cell 3), except releasing them at the same time as releases for the home versions. And add to that with episodic content facilitated by the online stores. Instead of paying $50 for one NGP game, you pay $10 for one of five chapters, enabling $45 bundles when guaranteed sales.
This is Nintendo complaining like the music companies complaining because no one buys albums anymore, preferring to buy only the songs that they want. Games should be broken up in the same way so we can buy the awesome levels and when it's a portal room (Dante's Inferno) level or Cubicle #209 Level in Fear, we can just say, "Skipping that chapter and I'll check back in when they offer something interesting."
It will encourage better games with more interesting gameplay, it'll give us only what we want a la carte, and it'll give developers time to be sure each level is polished. If a game is not working, a developer can either change course with the next level (or set of levels) OR that developer can just stop making the game that just isn't working. Imagine if GRIN had been stopped after the first level of Bionic Commando when sales were tanking and Capcom had just stopped development there. How much money would they have saved just by having the option?
Development costs don't have to triple because there are options out there, especially for the NGP, to keep costs low. That'll only happen if developers realize that the landscape has changed. Digital distribution offers a lot of opportunities for improvement.
And hell, by doing it this way, they'll probably curb a decent amount of piracy too. They could even go back to a place where demos become shareware and shareware becomes Level 1 of a game for free, the next set of levels for money.
Instead, Nintendo'll keep right on trudging with their plan of burying their head in the sand and not looking around at all the changes that could happen to help them profit from the way things are now. Instead of blaming "low value" and "tripling costs of games," we should just blame the real problem. These industry stalwarts are incapable of making the changes necessary to survive.
At least, that's how they look... so far...
You must be logged in to post.