'In every single console transition we've seen an increase in expenditure'
Development costs will increase for studios creating games for next generation platforms, the CEO of Activision has said.
Speaking to investors during an earnings call, as reported by CVG, Bobby Kotick said that every console transition had seen an increase in costs, and expects there to be no exception with the next Xbox and PS4.
He explained that although development costs will likely smooth out over time, studios and publishers will need to invest in new tools, technology and game engines to take advantage of new hardware features.
"This is my 22nd year doing this, and every single console transition we've seen an increase in development costs," said Kotick.
"Over long periods of time it gets smoothed out, but I would say this is not a transition where that's going to be an exception.
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"We're going to have to figure out how to take advantage of the unique abilities of new hardware and that requires new skills and investment in tools and technology and engines and so yes, that's likely."
Despite Kotick’s assertions, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently said that he believed development costs were unlikely to change for the next generation of consoles, and that the publisher had actually managed to tighten its expenditure as it prepares to make the step into new hardware.
“We don’t have any reason to believe our development budgets will change significantly,” said Zelnick.
“If anything we have become – group-wide – much tighter in terms of how we spend our money. We can’t say specifically, but no we don’t expect to see a meaningful change in what it costs us to release these top quality products.”
Ubi say otherwise. Any dev with common sense can see otherwise. If anything, this is the first generation where this won't happen, because we're now at a point in time where we optimise more than we improve. The only way budgets can go up from here is trying to do something INSANELY ambitious and unheard of.
Changing the standards to 60fps, 1080p and DX11 are the only major changes we'll see for the bulk of this new generation. With the exception of your workflow re: DX11, this costs nothing.
At least Ubi understands this. I think Kotick is trying to fearmonger and dissuade potential competitors.
I can go download Cryengine and Blender and knock out a AAA quality scene with mechnaics in a month, 5 years ago this was not possible at home, even with high end hardware. Content creation costs are improving all the time, and optimisation costs are also on the decline.
...and we all know that Activision's not going to be the one to do that. If it doesn't fit a proven cookie-cutter mold, Activision wants no part of it. That latter fact alone would counter Kotdick's assertion.
