We need more AA games across the board. Games that aren't pushing the hardware to the limit but have creativity and fun as the top priority, and don't need a six year development cycle.
Here’s 2 problems with that. AA games at AAA prices would be an issue. Hi-Fi Rush is a great game at 30.00. At 70.00, it’s a nope. Also, once gaming stops pushing the envelope, why would someone upgrade their hardware? This is mostly a Sony problem, because Game Pass is full of great AA and AAA games at a decent subscription price, and Xbox can subsidize their gaming budgets with it.
I think studios may have to work on small experimental games as a supplementary income source, instead of purely focusing on triple A titles - essentially the old Walt Disney approach: make really cheap entertainment, which would fund the animation blockbusters
Or fund small game projects, and slowly build up the small projects into full fledge Tripple A games AFTER the success of the small project wins over fans. Whils listen less to investors as they know nothing of gaming, not totally ignore them but they want money so tell them to be patient and let the golden goose lay the eggs and not cut it open. Which would mean reject Gaas since it is over flooded with Gaas.
I don't think the gaming industry will crash to levels seen from the '80s, but it'll certainly go into what I would probably dub as a video game recession where a lot of bigger studios either reorganize or purge and only certain major studios still hang on because their business model seems to be far less impacted by that said recession.
I mostly agree wit you, except in one point: I think the industry is already going through a recession. Otherwise, how would you explain the massive layoffs we saw during the last year? I'm not entirely sure its due to games' poor performance. Happy new year!
Its CLEAR there will NEVER be a gaming crash. EVERY gamer no matter where u look is very happy that digital games are illegal to resell and would be happy to pay $200 for a game and for it to immediately be worth $0. Gamers would rather wait 2 years for a digital game to be cheaper than resell it a couple weeks later and getting most of their money back, then buying it to keep when its $10. They do NOT realize thats an option. Its like on PC, 98% of games STILL have the 4 main types of stutter (shader, traversal, loading and pipeline) which are worse on any system that isn't $10000, yet gamers say "NOPE I CAN CLEARLY SEE STUTTERS BUT I WILL CHOSE TO IGNORE THEM CUZ PCs ARE JUST BETTER BRUH."
Nintendo is not a graphical power house yet they are making games that sell and people like.....my point is graphics is not the main way to make games as long as it looks decent and its fun to play should be enough but it looks like this big companies are loosing the focus of gaming. i hope Sony finds a way to get back on track i really do. theres a reason Nintendo has been around for as long as it has.
I also imagine Nintendo may only really blow the budget on their biggest titles like Zelda BOTW and Super Mario Odyssey, and they likely use titles like Zelda Skyward Sword HD and NSMBU DX to help build revenue for their console and game development. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe alone probably funded the development of TOTK and then some.
But Nintendo will sell you the same game 4 times over and never offer a discount on the price because they are a trash company that wants to rob you of your money.
8:07 sums it up. NOBODY realizes the obvious, not even these "expert" content creators. Things like ray tracing will enable new game mechanics. I feel like I shouldn't state the obvious as they are basically billion dollar ideas cuz again NOBODY realizes this. And game devs know that gamers do NOT care about innovation. You are implying gamers just want the most featureless, generic and boring game possible and that COMPLETELY TRUE.
The (AAA) industry isn’t sustainable. It’s absolutely out of control. They make so. Much. Money. 💰And yet they can’t recoup. The money is going to the wrong places. And shareholders asking for more year after year and publishers promising the same is just a destructive spiral.
Jonathan gets a few things wrong: 1. Sony's games do not need to break even or even make a profit. They are there to sell consoles. And they do. This is Sony specific though and does not hold for other publishers. 2. Everyone always says that they want developers to have good salaries and games to be delayed if they are not finished/polished. You cannot have it both ways. 3. The main cost is labor cost. The longer it takes to make a game, the more expensive it is. But the main reason for long development times is not that the games are too complicated to make but that the industry forgot how to get games out the door. It's bad management and lack of focus, self-indulgence and feature creep. Insomniac might be the exception here since they actually seem to know what they are doing and ship games in a timely manner. If you look at Suckerpunch for example, it cannot take that long to make a stupid GoT sequel (if that's indeed what they are working on). The fact is, they don't know what they are doing. The same with Naughty Dog. It wasn't the multiplayer project that makes us wait forever for a new game, nor was it the remasters, since not too many people were involved in those projects. It's the fact that they lost the ability to actually make games, to have a vision that is realistic and focus solely on making that vision a reality. Basically, they are sitting on their asses all day, smelling their own farts. I don't think that ballooning budgets are a problem for the industry. It's not one for the film industry and neither will it for the games industry. Publishers compete with each other and those able to focus and have good management will be able to outcompete the other guys. The bigger problem is that the AAA industry becomes less and less likely to take a risk and similar to movies almost all games will be some safe BS iteration of the franchises that we had a billion times over. Innovation will come from smaller productions, AA or Indies. And there is more than enough room for those to exist. The same why the memorable films are not the new Avengers or Avatars, but smaller productions. They do not make the same kind of money of course, but they do not cost as much as well. So in conclusion we should expect the AAA industry to be a lot more shallow in the future, but the good games and innovation will not go away, there is a place for them in the market.
@@SecularTranshumanist Consoles aren't where the money comes from. Ignoring Nintendo,consoles are usually sold at a loss. Game sales and online subscriptions are where the real money is.
@@jeffreywilliams1347 I am aware of that. It's not moving consoles to make money from consoles, it's moving consoles to get the console owners into the ecosystem and have them spent money on the PS store. That's where the money comes from. If a first party game makes a small loss or just about breaks even that's an OK outcome for getting a million more people into the ecosystem.
I'd rather them focus on the quality of each game over the quantity of each game. Like I'd take a short but sweet game over a long game just for the sake of it. Some of my favorite games are more focused experiences. Not everything has to be a massive open world 30+ hour game.
@@jimmythegamer2231 I wonder if majority of it was for marketing, they are reusing the same map with an added area and upscaled assets from the previous game so what could drive up the cost.
@@mitchjames9350 This is what I dont get, its re-used assets, map design, layout. kept the same base animations as the previous 2 games. Its noticeably shorter than Spiderman 2018 but it costs over 3x the amount. Are you telling me salaries in the last 5 years at Insomniac has tripled?
That is because of bad writing that pushes woke crap that the majority of people don't want to see. Go back to good writing and good stories and stop preaching about all the woke crap. Not hard to figure out.
Nintendo is the winner here, no need to develop high graphics because they are focused on casual & fun games. Switch 2 just need to use current Mario Odessey graphics but crank up high Ray Tracing on it likes Fortnite RT on PS5. Win for Nintendo ❤
Ghost of Tsushima had a budget of 60 million... We need some smaller games, too, like Gravity Rush and Concrete Genie. But bring back stuff like Killzone, Resistance, Infamous, Twisted Metal.. just on a simple, smaller scale.
You guys say stuff like this but there is a reason why Sony ditched games like killzone, resistance, twisted metal, etc..they were only selling like 1 or 2 million copies on an install base of over 100+ million. Who would continue to develop games that no one buys
@@MarcusM334 Death Stranding sold 5 million, they green lit a sequel. Days Gone sold 8 million, they were denied a sequel. What's up with that? ... But my point is they have a bunch of old IPs, and as I was saying they should bring them back, just budget tighter. A simple multiplayer of Killzone. Smaller scale version of Infamous. Twisted Metal as a GAAS would be compelling. Obviously not expecting a 50 million budget for a new Gravity Rush lol
Get your math right. If a game cost 95 million to make, the break even is selling 5 million copies, this includes advertising. Spiderman 2 needs to sell about 15 million copies to break even.
I don't get why the videogame industry can't just do what the film industry does: Reduce the budget and have the creatives figure out how to get the most out of less. It worked for the original Deadpool movie. And if I am being frank. . . I don't see why Ratchet & Clank PS5 needs soo much more polish, so much higher visual fidelity and such greater budgets than Ratchet & Clank PS2. I don't think expectations are the problem, or even profit margins. I think the problem is the higher ups are handing out too much "mess-around" money to their studios. Games are going overboard. Simplify the end result won't result in a worse experience but will result in a more manageable end product to make. Maybe the PROBLEM of the budgets being so high is because they keep growing their studios too much to where you have a thousand people working on a game that should only take 100 people. . . where all THOUSAND of those developers need to get paid. I'm sorry, but if that's the issue, segment them. Split the teams up and have them work on more projects, all with lesser complexity _(not lesser "scale" necessarily, but just lesser "complexity")_ to develop. Doing this results in more frequent output, FASTER output, and cheaper budgets. This is how PS2 era became so well received by the public. - Reduce project complexity. - Reduce studio team sizes (by splitting one team into multiple, each working on separate projects to result in higher output. DO NOT JUST DO LAYOFFS!). - Reduce the budget for these games. People will buy them regardless anyways. There, I fixed the gaming industry for ya. Easy. 1 title alone simply cannot feed infinite mouths. If you have too many mouths to feed, you gotta have the excess mouths work on something else. Over-staffed. Over-budgeted. Over-done. That's the issue. The solution: Downscale.
I also think the story campaigns are getting too long these days. Sure it's nice to get the odd 60-100hr jrpg with a highly complex deep story, but general games I'm fine being at the 7 to 12 hours mark, as they used to be on ps1 and PS2 era times. Most games don't need to be 40-50 hour slog fests. The replay element could come with New Game+ modes.
I don't usually comment but I had to on this issue. The gaming budgets are INSANE and you are correct, I feel we've hit a ceiling when it comes to pumping money in VS a game looks. I may be in the minority but I'm fine with 1080p as long as it runs at 60fps. That is all I care about. Another thing to look at is THE INDIE SCENE, the games have WAY smaller budgets, are stylized and in a lot of cases look "worse" in comparison but do amazing sales wise. This tells ME that if you have a vision, a creative idea, a path in mind you don't need to spend hundreds of millions to wow us! This may just be my old school way of thinking but having tons of games come out, they all look pretty/flashy/gritty what have you, but it seems to me in a lot of ways they are visually similar enough and will just get jumbled together in the minds of people.
I mean, most indies don't do amazing sales-wise. Most of them either sell decent but not great or sell poorly. Only a handful of indies ever actually manage to permeate into the mainstream and sell gangbusters. But maybe most indies don't need to sell amazing due to their often very small amount of staff and their limited budgets.
look at a indie game called otxo, its a black and white graphic style that is a suped up hotline miami with a increcible soundtrack, i had more fun playing that than most triple A games with photorealistic graphics. im very happy the indie scene is alive and well. not just that but also there is retro new games for old systems still being made. castlevania symphony of the night is getting a sega mega drive port by a youtuber developer and it looks impressive. of course its not going to sell millions but the passion is there
@spankrocketgaming294 Passion is what makes games great, not 100's of millions of dollars. But once in every blue moon, you'll get that Final Fantasy 7 type of game.
Well said @josh6520. I could not have said it any better and in fact you said pretty much where I stand on this subject as well. I think the industry is at a crisis point as to where do we go next with regards to game prices. Its getting out of hand.
I like video games. I am 41 years old. I’ve been playing video games since I was six years old. It’s getting to the point now that it is not worth my time. The value is just not there anymore honestly. Now they’re discussing on how to remove physical video games and give you only digital video games at which point they could remove from your library. I’m sorry but it might get to the point where I won’t need to play video games anymore. Maybe only the retro video games we’ll see.
I think marketing budget is what has increased the most after the pandemic ended... companies are fighting for a lower cpa (cost per acquisition) in market channels
I think the pandemic was part of the problem with these expectations with Stockholders. There was a boom in Video gaming and they now expect that to continue. People arent staying home anymore. They need to face reality
There's a number of things I believe they should do. The more the better. First one is obvious. Smaller scope. Personally I find returns have been seriously diminishing since seventh gen. Performance issues aside, I find PS3/360 game absolutely fine. And today, performance should not be an issue even at much higher resolutions. Second, Art direction over technology. This is what sets a game apart, not things like ray tracing Third, ditch the licenses. Really, was it worth it to Sony to lose money in order to have the game be Spider-man? Keep the design and game play and focus on licenses you own or create new ones. I'd certainly be more intrigued by new franchises over the ones we've been getting for decades now. Fourth, stop antagonising part of your audience. If you need every consumer dollar you can get, why continue with the ideological agenda? That just loses you part of your audience. Stay neutral and the loss from the lunatic twitter mob is likely to be smaller. Be really welcoming of *everyone*
A big thing they can do is drop the woke esg nonsense, that will help substantially as I was put off with the woke stuff in Forbidden West of the portrayal of men.
So Sony must follow the twitter mob and make no Woke games anymore. What about the idiots that are making woke the pinpoint of theyr lives. Grow up there are not only strait people in the world. Everybody has the right to life his lives as they please.. But no the anti-woke mob denails them to do that. They want people to only living as strait as they are. Its logical that "woke" people are defending theyr lifestyle. Everyone has the right to live his/here life as they please. And games and movies dont want only please the anti-woke movement they will show the world as it is. Fuck the anti-woke mob....
Insomniac/Sony definitely lost a sale from me for their ideological pandering and Peter Parker redesign in the Spiderman 2. I loved the original on PS4.
Theirs. Stockholders want more year after year and publishers promise the same. It’s not sustainable. Also marketing budgets are just absolutely out of control. The industry makes so. Much. Money. But it doesn’t go to the right places.
I've been saying this for years. These entitled gamers complain about the dumbest things and have so many fuxking options on what to play these days, a triple A game needs to sell 10 million copies now just to make a profit. I'm only nervous that when this escalates, the only company still standing will be the creatively bankrupt one that has $2 TRILLON to afford to continue to take loses until there's no choice but to buy an Xbox and subsribe to gamepass for $500 a year.
People may hate it, but this is why companies like Sony need some successful live service games and/or mobile games to fund their AAA projects in the long term. It has come to the point where AAA games, especially singleplayer ones with zero microtransactions, are starting to become unsustainable. Hell, even some once-successful live service games like Destiny 2 are starting to become unsustainable as well. The fact that a game with a similar $300 million dollar budget to Spiderman 2 can sell 6 million copies and be considered a flop that made zero profit is insane and is not a good sign. Sony either needs to release some very successful live service games/mobile games, start selling their games on more platforms (e.g. PC, cloud, and mobile), or both to remain viable as a business. Because at this rate, the Wolverine game is gonna cost like $450 million to make and require 10 million copies sold to break even (considering Spiderman 2's budget is 3x larger than that of Spiderman 2018 over a 5 year gap).
Exactly, they don't have much choice in the matter (if they want to maintain sustainable), the gaming industry is moving fast into mobile, cloud, PC etc, 2024 is the year they'll have to start making big moves in those directions.
or you know they could just scale back on their games and not have their budgets balloon up to a rediculous amount seriously tho, ps4 tier games still look and play good in the current day, they havent aged at all, this current push for better graphics is kinda unecessary imo, the only thing the ps4 and xbone gen were missing out on was better load times
@lemon5000-tj6nv or they could stop licensing the Marvel IP = stop MCU(ing) the gaming industry. Related but isn't this why cinema & TV collapsed because of that IP (oversaturation), ballooned budgets & feeding into nostalgia & pop-culture.
@@lemon5000-tj6nv I mean I agree but I think part of the increased budgets is just due to inflation, and the fact that Insomniac is located in California where wages are some of the highest. The fact that Miles Morales didn't cost that much less than Spiderman 2018 despite being half of what Spiderman 2018 is in terms of length is maybe an indication of that. Also, you know how it is: if one publisher continues to make PS4-level games exclusively on next-gen hardware while another publisher releases multiple cutting-edge PS5-level games with insane graphics, then people will criticize the other publisher for not having insane graphics in their games. People always compare everything.
I had no idea Hellblade was made on a budget of only $10 million! No wonder MS wanted to acquire them. I'm sure Hellblade 2 costs quite a bit more, but there's no way they suddenly spent Spider-Man 2 levels of money.
I wish the industry would pivot and make slightly smaller games (from 30-90hrs to like 15-50hrs) for big budget games. That's still a 70$ experience in my book if the game is quality.
There’s already backlash on games that are short in length. This is the industry where the hardcore customers are too passionate to the point where they would find anything to nitpick a game.
If scaling games back means that more casuals quit, then good. Gaming as a niche nerdy hobby would be amazing to have again. Casuals in gaming have done nothing but brought -Microtransactions -Lootboxes -Games as a service -The same lame sports games every year, etc. I say bring on gaming become niche again.
Not every game needs to be a AAA blockbuster. Nintendo has figured that out and Xbox is slowly learning with games like Grounded, Pentiment & Hi-Fi Rush. Sony pigeon holed themselves into making only blockbuster games and conditioned their consumers to expect the same. The fact that they are having to layoff people from Insomniac tells us its some serious mismanagement going on at Sony.
All I'm hearing is "projected" "expected" "expectations" which amounts to nothing but word of mouth or in other words "I believe this, and I think that, but to be honest I really dont know anything" Click bait....
I'm hoping scaling back games leads to more innovation in the forms of more varying and creative art styles and world design as well as more focus on gameplay, story, and unique mechanics.
Seeing smaller games from Xbox like Hi-Fi Rush, South of Midnight, Pentiment, and Grounded makes me hopeful Also Marvel's Blade having stylized, non-hyperrealistic graphics will probably allow it to be cheaper than something like Spiderman
@@jimmythegamer2231Hi-Fi Rush was very likely being made for Switch at first. South of Midnight might as well not even exist yet. Give it a few years. We'll see how it goes.
@@jimmythegamer2231 and Hi-Fi Rush failed financially. I love the game especially given how optimized it is and how cool it is. People complained about unfinished AAA games and then buy them anyways.
@@kicapanmanis1060 it didnt fail financially because you missing the point of gamepass. Its about keeping players subscribed and gaining more subs. Hi-Fi Rush did its job, it made alot of noise, had a few million players
I do think the phrase "time is money" is very apt in many cases, there have been so many examples of games being in development for say 6+ years but only having less then half of that being actually productive not to mention having to restart development. And i do think that is a management issue
I think and hope that eventual use of AI can generally be a good thing. That is if it's used as a tool to streamline projects. It do a lot of lazy legwork that talented people can then trim or micromanage to curate content. Games are getting so hard and long to make, so if AI can trim this down, I think this could be the solution.
@@skycloud4802 One of my big bugbear in many games is the Procedural generation which can and cannot work but really depends on the game....but i think Procedural generation + AI could make it a lot better
@@EhEhEhEINSTEIN that was all due to poor management, games that suffer from long development and delays etc stem from poor management. Just look at how Neil Cuckmann exploited wokeness to gain a management position and than tried to make people sign illegal contracts.
Having an early access to these big AAA games could help recoup their profit. Basically pricing Spider-Man 2 at like $100 to get the game a couple of days earlier (maybe add exclusive outfits for early access too?) and then the rest would buy the $70 game on release day.
Sony has a very serious Budgeting problem. Starfield a vastly bigger game/New IP cost about 200 Million to make and that's a massive game. Yet a rehash copy Pasted Spiderman 2 cost 315 Million? Sony has TERRIBLE management
Spider man 2 is a technically better game it is like minimal low screen starfield has little screens around every corner and haschak graphics the graphics and starfiller terrible we just look at it looks like Plato
I think the model is going to have to incorporate staggered releases to as many platforms as possible with minimal effort in porting. This way they can sell you the same game 2-3x for those high upfront development costs
So instead of just releasing the game on PC & cloud day one so more ppl can play it, your solution is for them to sell you the same product 2-3 times? Smh. 🤦🏾♂️
I'm hopeful and looking forward to "double A" being the direction. Gameplay is the driving force of games, and we can get more awesome games, if the games themselves don't take so long to be made, and I think that with a AA mindset, that can be the future. This would also play into subscription models.
The industry has lost sight of making good games and is more focused with 4k, flashy visuals, big worlds, etc. We just need good games, even if they aren't hundreds of millions of dollars in budget.
No one asked Sony to piss away so much money. I liked Spider-Man 2 but 350 mil was clearly not worth it. It’s clearly not worth it when indie titles is where most of the new ideas are coming from anyway.
Money laundering operation honestly crazy how the budget literally tripled from spiderman 1 otherwise where did the money go it didn't go into the game it hardly has more content than spiderman 1.
@@conor6436 Okay, I'm a dope, but I still didn't blow a third of a billion on something that's not going to make significant profit. I'll take dope over money burning yahoo.
As a casual gamer, i often find myself staring at games like spiderman 2 on my ps5, and thought “did i just finished the similar games like this before?” That feeling comes quite often nowadays when i playing several expensive games. Pick example like FF7 remake as well. Its beautiful on graphic but its FF7 i have been finished more than 20 years ago. Perhaps the problem with Sony and majority of gaming industry is that they might lose focus on how to make good game. Graphic is important but we supposed to get playing experience by playing game, not only feast on eyes. Take example. I finished game on switch titled dredge. Its about fishing, story of fisherman who lost his memory, dragged on strange islands and dangerous sea. Mechanic is simple yet engaging. Story is deep and make me want to know more. As result i have been finished the game. But same feeling, I cannot get when i playing titles such as spiderman, call of duty, or any other big names games. Just keep me entertaining around 30-1 hour then i find myself wont be back to the game. Perhaps those gargantuan budget better spent to ensure how gamers can get entertaining gaming experience rather than focus on cinematic or graphic. Theres movies and cinema for that purpose.
I think the first question that has to be answered is why are budgets increasing so much. The making of a game does not depend on a certain material for manufacture, it's 99% man-hours, and the investment on equipment is not made every year. So is it just bad time management that ends up as needing to increase workflow or is it just too much rework being done on the project.
Sony lead the charge of amazing graphics = amazing game. They trained their audience who now have a tantrum if a reflection in a puddle doesn't look like a mirror. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
No, "Puddlegate" is an Xbot thing. Nowadays, the only thing you hear from Xbox fans is how good everything looks and how much better RT is on Xbox. PCMR constantly fellate themselves over pathtracing. Sony and Nintendo are the two big fanbases least concerned with with graphics because they have it worse than Xbox and PC. Xbox is also on PC now, pushing limits with games like MFS. You can't compare Sony releasing GoW:R "a PS4 looking game" and Spider-Man 2 "barely an improvement" according to Xbots, and Microsoft ONLY showing off the graphics of Hellblade 2 and conclude that PlayStation fans are more fixated on graphics than Xbox fans. We know which company/fanbase is more concerned with graphics. Nice try, though.
8:20 What’s interesting is the Steam Deck has restored my love of gaming and just having fun. Setting the games to low or medium and just sitting back and having a great time has been my focus instead of thinking about Ray tracing, 4K, frame rate, and using those as a measure of a good game. I’m perfectly fine with dialing back these things if the games are fun to play and a relaxing escape from reality.
I'm slightly confused on where all that money is going. Sure the employees need a monthly salary but beyond that, motion capture existed on ps2, so did writing, investing in new tech. Sony did invest a lot in an ESG department though that's basically a waste of money. But i don't see how it's a expensive as it is. Ps3 games were cheaper and high production and effed included multiplayer in a lot of their games
50 million consoles sold. Avg of 3 million copies of IP sold, per title. Something needs to change. Nowhere near enough consumers play the bigger budget games and it's concerning 😮
I think this situation is also why we see devs going the "micro transactions" way a lot more and we see useless remastered that are just cash grab at the end.. They are trying very hard to make this profitable a little bit more than it really is
No. When Microsoft started with that trash a decade ago everyone beelined for it immediately. It's been rampant ever since. It has never lessened as you believe it.
I've said it for a while the games don't need to be this high budget, Indie developers are showing that you can make a game that's mainly and primarily fun and not This omega blockbuster With all the shinies Bells and whistles. And a lot are able to innovate despite their low budgets
Games will continue to skyrocket in cost for Sony and Microsoft because these are first party games, they want are more than just a video game. They are used to show to consumers that their 10+ teraflop console with the fastest SSD thingy that costs $500 is worth the price. They want to show to the public that their first party games are the premium and “only in our ecosystem” kind of thing, as a bragging rights. They want to show to other developers what is possible on their console, kind of a working demo for others to jump in, the same way Gears of War popularized Unreal Engine or even the latest Mario game such as Odyssey or even Mario World. As a first party producer they won’t scale back. I think that’s why Nintendo doesn’t produce a more powerful console, to control costs and keep them down and even then Odyssey and TotK look amazing. Except Pokémon, not because they don’t want to make better but because I don’t think Game Freak knows how to make most out of the system 😂 not that they need anyway, they keep selling.
Scaling back the budget could to lead to actual innovative games. too much of game budgets go into graphical fidelity and effects. The last two Zelda games felt more groundbreaking even though it had less impressive visuals.
Not when these AAA studios are filled with diversity hires and all they care about are social credit scores, you'll just get a woke game with a lower budget.
I don’t think the gaming industry is growing much more than it already has. Developers and publishers need to manage expectations going forward. I remember when it was announced that the budget for Destiny was $500 million on a 10 year project. I wonder how much that budget has ballooned to by now.
I feel like gaming is just getting onboard with looking at budgets. We've been seeing budgets for films for what the past 20 to 30 years? Like common knowledge lol, with much higher budgets to consumer ratios, still they make bank. My point, we're talking about 150 million, a game charged at $70....and how many copies were sold in the first week 😂 do the math john your overreacting a bit. 😂 yeah just looked its 6.1 million copies sold by nov 11. Their doing fine 😂😂 277 Million profit, enough to make their next big hit or a couple smaller titles
Regarding ray tracing reduction to save money, it actually costs less to use ray tracing because traditional baked-in lighting takes longer to implement.
It’s nice that we have Sony studio games that have massive budgets. I like everything from indie to blockbuster AAA. Though, I’d like Sony to have a few small teams that make some smaller games as well. Sony can get the financial return they want by continuing to sell millions of copies of games and making movies/shows of games, as well as sell dlc. Perhaps one or two live service games that are at least somewhat successful. And continue to be smart about partnering with successful live service games, especially if Sony can’t get a big live service game of their own.
They need to learn how to properly market their smaller games as well. I have no idea what they could be going for now. They are getting showed up by Nintendo on that front.
I've long held the position that studios need to scale back on the budgets and the focus on realism and scale in their games. At the current average size of a AAA studio, we can get smaller, more interesting games releasing far more frequently and without the studio needing to weigh them down with microtransactions and other nickel and dime features in order to recoup the costs.
Sony delaying games and firing developers and MBG saying he's quitting gaming if Microsoft wins this generation Sony have no leader, Getting sued for 8 Billion for ripping their customers off, TLOU 2 Factions gets shelved, Ponies begging for Blade to come to PS, The top selling game on PS right now is COD a ( Xbox ) game, Jim Ryan said PS can't survive without COD, Wolverine gets leaked, and they got hacked, And in the leak Wolverine documents 📃 Sony said they're concerned about Microsoft acquiring Activision, PS Portal is a flop, PSVR2 a flop, and their exclusives aren't making them that much money like they thought they would, Sony forced Insomniac to cut their budget for Spider-Man 3, Jim Ryan sold his stock in Sony Damn Sony is down bad 🤣
It is a big problem. Because they are also only releasing one game per generation vs 3 or 4 games from the PS3 era. Also, the sales for the sequel games have dropped significantly. Horizon Zero Dawn sold 24 million. But those sales were all based on hype and marketing. The game ultimately was ho-hum because the sequel Forbidden West only managed to sell 8.4 million. That's a huge drop. You want your sequels to sell more or it will be the death of the franchise and studios. We saw that happen on PS3 with Resistance, Killzone, Motorstorm etc. Spider-Man 2 has sold 5 million and you said it needs 7 million to break even. It became clear they are in trouble when Sony for the first time has decided to release these "exclusives" on to the PC platform in or to boost sales. They are one step away from releasing them on Xbox as well or face massive layoffs or simply the games being scaled back in quality. There is a limit to how many copies a game can sell at the end of the day. And if that doesnt cover the cost plus turn a decent amount of profit to fund the next 5+ year project then they are up shit creek without a web shooter. 😊 The days of the console exclusives could be over....And then there is little ol Nintendo sitting in the corner enjoying 64 million copies of Mario Kart 8 sold. A Wii U port that probably cost them pittens to make and still costs the same price to buy as it did almost a decade ago.
I can’t help but place the blame primarily on gamers. They demand AAA games have perfect stories, voice acting and the primary demand they make that is causing this: gamers demand all these games be 40 hours at MINIMUM! I’m more than happy to pay full price for a great 16 hour game. Not only would this cut costs significantly, but we would get much more frequent releases from our favorite developers instead of one 60 hour game a decade with 20 hours of filler
Indeed. I'd say most are ignorant about how much a lot of it costs as well, and they demand the best graphics. I can't count how many times I've seen people in the comments section of a game say "LoL dA gRaPhIcS lOoK LiKe A pS2 Gaem lolololroflk kek!!" I put a lot of the blame on gamers.
Some of the best selling games are not graphical master pieces. Not every game has to resemble real life. Hifi rush did really well. You have games like Fortnite and Minecraft. The new Mario game wasn't a massive game, and neither was the new Sonic. You can make good games without them being visual masterpieces. Also, I wouldn't them chilling it with the annoying cut scenes every five seconds!!! 😡
Oh no, another thing that is collapsing... again... cmon! Nothing lasts forever, look at Blockbuster. The current system had its peak years ago and now it's not sustainable and it's gonna evolve into something else, just like everything else. Why so dramatic about this? Things are always changing, dying or evolving. Nothing new.
I'm fine with cutting back on budgets. Jank is no big deal. Also, you don't need to go over the top with the voice acting, as long as I don't have to read everything. For some reason everything is one extreme or the other these days. Budgets don't need to be $300 million dollars or $300 thousand. There is some middle ground there. Also, scaling back could help reduce the time between games as well. Making games didn't used to take 5 years plus. IMO games peaked in the 360 era, just give me more of those games with updated graphics (i.e. updated lighting, resolution, and textures).
People always say they need to make smaller games, but the only game that really worked was Miles Morales? (Which already had a good asset base from SM1 and is a huge IP). Sony has created a large part of its current fanbase with these ultra expensive with ultra realistic graphics narrative games. The moment they reduce any part of this strategy, a lot of people will complain. The first thing everyone comments when a big game is announced today is: "Oh, the graphics aren't good enough", "Oh, this game doesn't run in 4k60" and so on. Nowadays we already have discussions if a game is not at least 60 hours long with cutting-edge graphics and gameplay. Imagine what would happen if Sony focused on 8~12 hour games costing 50~60 dollars. What they need to do is start exploring new markets for talent and stop focusing so much on the hubs (California/Washington). Jason Schreier made a tweet saying that the average salary of a dev in California ranges from 60 to 100 thousand dollars per year. Just do it: ~80 thousand x 450 people x 48 or 60 (months of development).
Spidey 2 is 20 hours. Three seven hour games at $50 each? The multiplayer would need a cloud based Game as a Service infrastructure to work. This can't work at all.
I’m so glad you mentioned Ninja Theory. One of my favorite devs as they aim for an “independent AAA” approach instead of traditional AAA. They basically aim for high production values but keep their game mechanics simple and approachable.
The more games merge with cinema and evolve into immersive storytelling, the more the video game industry will suffer from the same problems Hollywood is going through. Don’t just make content. Watch the budget. Don’t chase trends. Hire good writers. Don’t rely on good graphics. And most importantly… don’t get political
I think the developers looking into use of AI to handle more tasks that can be automated is going to free up devs to become more like AI managers that will handle how the code is being written, which will allow for more efficient and streamlined workflow, which won't necessarily decrease budget hours but will increase productivity, allowing them to maintain the development times.
Sony technically still owns Spider-Man. They just rent him out to Disney under certain conditions. So, licensing fees aren't the problem. We've all seen how these Silicon Valley office employees 'get things done'. They have free Starbucks, massage/nap stations and do about 15 minutes of actual work before it's time to clock out. I don't blame corporations for 'crunching' their employees. It's probably like herding entitled cats.
Great insight Jon. You should do a similar video on Xbox and their multiplatform approach. I think Sony might benefit from putting back catalog stuff on Nintendo and Xbox years later.
I think that there will be a shift towards using AI to help aid or replace costs spent on motion capture, game models, etc.... I think the reason games cost so much is that they have become actual productions that need scripts, actors, sound tracks, and so forth whereas in the past the focus was more on having interesting game mechanics and gameplay with. People also expect games to have more happening in terms of the open world for example, enemies on screen, rpg elements ,multiplayer modes, and so on. Combine this with a bad economy , increased prices, and poor purchasing power and you will get a crash. 1. Either the standard of what a good game is needs to be lowered 2. Finding ways to cut production costs
i think companies like sony should do much more smaller budget games like nintendo for example. super mario wonder cost 1 million to make and sold way more than spiderman 2 which cost 300 million to make...
I have really enjoyed my time with Spider-Man 2...with the exception of some of the side missions everything's been great...but I can't understand how this game had a budget 3 times larger than Spider-Man 2018 and actually used all of it. I feel like 2018 was the stronger game out of the 2 in many ways.
@@frankvandermerwe1487 yeah, i've got no issues with inclusivity and stuff like that but this felt like it was forcing so hard to insert social agenda's. 2018 is likely one of my favorite games of all times, I'm a huge spidey fanboy so I was really looking forward to SM2, and like I said I'm still loving the game but it's nowhere near 2018's level.
@@mikeodell511 2018 is special because it was novel, and the best feeling spiderman game ever made at the time. It actually felt like you were doing spiderman things - Unlocking new gadgets, solving crimes with the police, back and forth banter between Yuri and Peter, swinging around the city, doing combat challenges, with a really well written story to tie it all together - it all felt great and unique, the first true rvial for Arkham City imo. Spiderman 2 severely lacks that novelty. It just felt like an open world game where I trudged through the main story and swung around and did side missions. Sure it's great overall, but it doesn't have the same magic the first game has. The gameplay was better than 2018 in most ways, except for some perplexing reason, Insomniac removed all the unique gadgets from the first game, and gave us 4 here. It was one step forward, a few steps back. You can also tell Imsomniac are REALLY driving their own personal political agendas in this game. Developers need to start realizing they aren't some agent for social change, and hitting us over the head with their ideology is a terrible idea. by cramming that stuff in for the sake of it, it detracts from the purity of the experience. SM2 was good, but they could have done far better
Spiderman 2 is not worth 300 million... holy hell thats sad that it cost them that much to make.... Its basically a big DLC for Spiderman remastered.... oof. Btw sony owns Spiderman.... not Marvel. Marvel actually basically temp licenses him for collaborative movies.
Surely these budgets are mainly the cost of developers working on the games as it’s all digital so there’s no materials involved. The more detail, the longer the story and the more complex the framework then the more developers you need and the longer it takes. Studios just need to diversify with their portfolio of games and releases to cater for everything from simple puzzle games through indies and a few AAA’s instead of everything shooting for the stars.
The cost to produce games has been rising for 40 years yet the prices managed to hold steady at $59.99 for the most part. Corporate greed has finally hit the gaming industry.
Are you sure its steady at $60 There hasnt been day 1 dlc(cut content) or exclusive skins to buy day 1 Microtransactions time saver bundles battlepasses etc
@@imo098765 I'm talking since the days of NES through until about PS3. I bought Ghostbusters 2 on NES for $59.99 in 1990, and paid the same for GTA V on PS3 in 2013.
A lot of us gamers want our games to be bigger and better than the next one. How much money do you think that costs? Also Spider-Man 3 is a projected 2028 game. The year where the next ps6 is rumored to launch. The base price will definitely be more than $70.
GTA V and Skyrim were both huge games and were nowhere near the development cost or time of modern games. Unfortunately, I think it's everyone's adversity to "jank" and Digital Foundry analyses that are driving these costs. Seriously, I am fine with jank, baked lighting, and b level voice acting, if the game is fun.
@@Not-Great-at-Gaming Too much focus on trying to build a big budget movie instead of a game is Sonys problem. Spending millions upon millions on marketing, millions upon millions so you can have the famous voice actors, millions upon millions because there is 1000+ people when you know you don't need that many people to make a good game. Like its crazy how theres solo developers making good games that are better than AAA now.
You would think Sony would have come up w/ more inventive ways to make back the $315 million budget, like releasing multiple steelbooks that comes w/ it’s own 6 month timed exclusive DLC. After 6 months you can buy it from the store. After 6 months release a new steelbook that comes w/ the entire game + newest patches, and all the DLC on a physical disc, and sell it for more than $70.
I wouldn't disagree with you, but I don't think Sony sees physical as their future (or any company for that matter)....once physical media is history, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will have complete control over game sales, prices and distribution and they will charge as much as they like, and you will like it (or miss out)
@@plu_Tony_um Yeah, i wouldn't be surprised if one day, we see digital only games release for $200-$300 at launch, and hold that price for a couple months, and once companies are sure all the well off gamers have bought it, they lower it to something more reasonable. Rockstar could probably get away with something like for GTA VI now, and a lot more than 1 million people would buy it at that price.
Apple set a precedent for lowering distribution costs & paying more for less. These industries take a page from each other. I bet that when things go all digital, the justification would be "because of the environment."
As a PC gamer I can certainly appreciate great gfx in a game and imo console has really caught up to PC in gfx; I feel there's too much emphasis on gfx when it really should be more about the game play. From Software took a lot of heat from the Souls community for not pushing Elden Ring into next gen gfx but their priority was game play NOT gfx and that's my point. Sure we should encourage gfx evolvement but at this point its being forced which costs more $$$. If you look at Alan Wake 2 and Avatar both those games heavily focus on gfx to sell the game but the game play speaks for itself which is not particularly very good but it sells because it's "SHINY" and ppl are stupid. Kinda like console gamers who wanted 4K 30fps instead of going w/ 1440p or 1080p 60fps; obviously we are past that now w/ these last gen consoles. Imo most console gamers are lazy and stupid.
I haven't read the leaked slides in detail but im curious if Sony funds 100% of the budget. For movies there are countless other production partners to help with the funding. Another great example of a really good game with a reasonable budget was Control with a 30 million budget.
Personally, I think Sony and Microsoft have trained their customers that if they just wait a couple of months, they can see their games heavily discounted. The price increase really only affects the die-hard players of a franchise. If they want to improve their revenue especially on new releases, I think they should go more the Nintendo route of never discounting the games but put them in like a voucher program where if you buy two or more games, even new releases, you can receive them at a slight discount.
@@antiquecardboard Unfortunately, once you train your customers to wait for sales, it is hard to train them out of it without expecting a short term loss. And with Sony and Microsoft cancelling projects, I don't think they are in a position to take a loss.
Devs and game directors make up for a majority of the budget. A way to fix it is if they either paid the same and allow WFH at all their studios or lower the pay rate across the board for all higher ups.
I miss the ps2 days when we had more games than we knew what to do with. Seriously, the ps2/og xbox era was a great time to be a gamer, why? Because it was just about the games. They need to figure out how to get back to making tons of high quality games. I think they need to utilize artificial intelligence to its fullest extent to get this done. Games, thats all i want or care about is freaking games!!
We need more AA games across the board. Games that aren't pushing the hardware to the limit but have creativity and fun as the top priority, and don't need a six year development cycle.
I actively hunt for AA games as I want shorter, complete games with a creative polished twist
AAA games largely contributed into game production skyrocketing and also game price increasing
Here’s 2 problems with that. AA games at AAA prices would be an issue.
Hi-Fi Rush is a great game at 30.00. At 70.00, it’s a nope.
Also, once gaming stops pushing the envelope, why would someone upgrade their hardware?
This is mostly a Sony problem, because Game Pass is full of great AA and AAA games at a decent subscription price, and Xbox can subsidize their gaming budgets with it.
We got plenty of them. You just ignore them
@@juliothom2408130 dollars a year is a decent price when you can't download them?
I think studios may have to work on small experimental games as a supplementary income source, instead of purely focusing on triple A titles - essentially the old Walt Disney approach: make really cheap entertainment, which would fund the animation blockbusters
Or fund small game projects, and slowly build up the small projects into full fledge Tripple A games AFTER the success of the small project wins over fans.
Whils listen less to investors as they know nothing of gaming, not totally ignore them but they want money so tell them to be patient and let the golden goose lay the eggs and not cut it open. Which would mean reject Gaas since it is over flooded with Gaas.
Sony killed their Japan Studio, the only one with "experimental" titles.
Yeah, compared to the new Disney approach which is to release over budgeted sub par content and to get political
Xbox did this with Hi-Fi Rush
@@gphunter99Xbox & Nintendo do it. Sony is the only platform holder that only has AAA insanely bloated budget games.
I don't think the gaming industry will crash to levels seen from the '80s, but it'll certainly go into what I would probably dub as a video game recession where a lot of bigger studios either reorganize or purge and only certain major studios still hang on because their business model seems to be far less impacted by that said recession.
I mostly agree wit you, except in one point: I think the industry is already going through a recession. Otherwise, how would you explain the massive layoffs we saw during the last year? I'm not entirely sure its due to games' poor performance. Happy new year!
Why would it crash? Seems to me and rational folk that Sony's the one crashing NOT Nintendo or Xbox.
Its CLEAR there will NEVER be a gaming crash.
EVERY gamer no matter where u look is very happy that digital games are illegal to resell and would be happy to pay $200 for a game and for it to immediately be worth $0. Gamers would rather wait 2 years for a digital game to be cheaper than resell it a couple weeks later and getting most of their money back, then buying it to keep when its $10. They do NOT realize thats an option.
Its like on PC, 98% of games STILL have the 4 main types of stutter (shader, traversal, loading and pipeline) which are worse on any system that isn't $10000, yet gamers say "NOPE I CAN CLEARLY SEE STUTTERS BUT I WILL CHOSE TO IGNORE THEM CUZ PCs ARE JUST BETTER BRUH."
That would be the best.
@@UA-camCensorsSony's in first place lol So if first place is crashing then Nintendo & Xbox have already crashed 😂🤣
Nintendo is not a graphical power house yet they are making games that sell and people like.....my point is graphics is not the main way to make games as long as it looks decent and its fun to play should be enough but it looks like this big companies are loosing the focus of gaming. i hope Sony finds a way to get back on track i really do. theres a reason Nintendo has been around for as long as it has.
The tech media cannot acknowledge this as it would expose themselves as frauds to actual gamers.
I also imagine Nintendo may only really blow the budget on their biggest titles like Zelda BOTW and Super Mario Odyssey, and they likely use titles like Zelda Skyward Sword HD and NSMBU DX to help build revenue for their console and game development. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe alone probably funded the development of TOTK and then some.
But Nintendo will sell you the same game 4 times over and never offer a discount on the price because they are a trash company that wants to rob you of your money.
8:07 sums it up. NOBODY realizes the obvious, not even these "expert" content creators. Things like ray tracing will enable new game mechanics. I feel like I shouldn't state the obvious as they are basically billion dollar ideas cuz again NOBODY realizes this.
And game devs know that gamers do NOT care about innovation. You are implying gamers just want the most featureless, generic and boring game possible and that COMPLETELY TRUE.
@@Evilskyworshippers Ray Tracing is a gimmick just like HDR and 3D
The (AAA) industry isn’t sustainable.
It’s absolutely out of control. They make so. Much. Money. 💰And yet they can’t recoup.
The money is going to the wrong places. And shareholders asking for more year after year and publishers promising the same is just a destructive spiral.
Jonathan gets a few things wrong:
1. Sony's games do not need to break even or even make a profit. They are there to sell consoles. And they do. This is Sony specific though and does not hold for other publishers.
2. Everyone always says that they want developers to have good salaries and games to be delayed if they are not finished/polished. You cannot have it both ways.
3. The main cost is labor cost. The longer it takes to make a game, the more expensive it is. But the main reason for long development times is not that the games are too complicated to make but that the industry forgot how to get games out the door. It's bad management and lack of focus, self-indulgence and feature creep. Insomniac might be the exception here since they actually seem to know what they are doing and ship games in a timely manner. If you look at Suckerpunch for example, it cannot take that long to make a stupid GoT sequel (if that's indeed what they are working on). The fact is, they don't know what they are doing. The same with Naughty Dog. It wasn't the multiplayer project that makes us wait forever for a new game, nor was it the remasters, since not too many people were involved in those projects. It's the fact that they lost the ability to actually make games, to have a vision that is realistic and focus solely on making that vision a reality. Basically, they are sitting on their asses all day, smelling their own farts.
I don't think that ballooning budgets are a problem for the industry. It's not one for the film industry and neither will it for the games industry. Publishers compete with each other and those able to focus and have good management will be able to outcompete the other guys. The bigger problem is that the AAA industry becomes less and less likely to take a risk and similar to movies almost all games will be some safe BS iteration of the franchises that we had a billion times over. Innovation will come from smaller productions, AA or Indies. And there is more than enough room for those to exist. The same why the memorable films are not the new Avengers or Avatars, but smaller productions. They do not make the same kind of money of course, but they do not cost as much as well. So in conclusion we should expect the AAA industry to be a lot more shallow in the future, but the good games and innovation will not go away, there is a place for them in the market.
@@SecularTranshumanist Consoles aren't where the money comes from. Ignoring Nintendo,consoles are usually sold at a loss. Game sales and online subscriptions are where the real money is.
@@jeffreywilliams1347 I am aware of that. It's not moving consoles to make money from consoles, it's moving consoles to get the console owners into the ecosystem and have them spent money on the PS store. That's where the money comes from. If a first party game makes a small loss or just about breaks even that's an OK outcome for getting a million more people into the ecosystem.
I wonder how much of the budgets goes to management.
Insomniac had 2000 people for Spidey 2. That is a lot.
Not that much
How many were contractors?@@neilwilson5785
I don't think a crash will happen, but the bubble is gonna burst and video games will see a much needed recession.
Nintendo will do just fine. It's Sony and Microsoft that will have to change
@@mrbisshie where did you get that figure?
@@mitchjames9350 Never mind, it was bull shit.
@@MrHalo087MS is fine 😂😂😂
I'd rather them focus on the quality of each game over the quantity of each game. Like I'd take a short but sweet game over a long game just for the sake of it. Some of my favorite games are more focused experiences. Not everything has to be a massive open world 30+ hour game.
Spiderman 2 was a short but sweet game and it still cost $315 million dollars, which is more than most massive open world 30+ hour games.
@@jimmythegamer2231 I wonder if majority of it was for marketing, they are reusing the same map with an added area and upscaled assets from the previous game so what could drive up the cost.
@@jimmythegamer2231 It's still yet another open world game. They take a lot of time and money to make. I'm personally sick of open world games.
@@mitchjames9350 This is what I dont get, its re-used assets, map design, layout. kept the same base animations as the previous 2 games. Its noticeably shorter than Spiderman 2018
but it costs over 3x the amount. Are you telling me salaries in the last 5 years at Insomniac has tripled?
We have just now reached this breaking point in the movie industry. Billions were lost this year alone in that industry.
But 2 or 3movies killed at the box office and the rest were meh
That is because of bad writing that pushes woke crap that the majority of people don't want to see. Go back to good writing and good stories and stop preaching about all the woke crap. Not hard to figure out.
@@BrianHall-Oklahomausing the word “woke” unironically won’t make people take you more seriously
@@plankton2878but he is correct
@@plankton2878Not people that don't matter like you, anyway.
Everything is too expensive
Nintendo is the winner here, no need to develop high graphics because they are focused on casual & fun games. Switch 2 just need to use current Mario Odessey graphics but crank up high Ray Tracing on it likes Fortnite RT on PS5. Win for Nintendo ❤
Ghost of Tsushima had a budget of 60 million...
We need some smaller games, too, like Gravity Rush and Concrete Genie. But bring back stuff like Killzone, Resistance, Infamous, Twisted Metal.. just on a simple, smaller scale.
You guys say stuff like this but there is a reason why Sony ditched games like killzone, resistance, twisted metal, etc..they were only selling like 1 or 2 million copies on an install base of over 100+ million. Who would continue to develop games that no one buys
@@MarcusM334
Death Stranding sold 5 million, they green lit a sequel.
Days Gone sold 8 million, they were denied a sequel.
What's up with that?
...
But my point is they have a bunch of old IPs, and as I was saying they should bring them back, just budget tighter.
A simple multiplayer of Killzone. Smaller scale version of Infamous. Twisted Metal as a GAAS would be compelling.
Obviously not expecting a 50 million budget for a new Gravity Rush lol
Get your math right. If a game cost 95 million to make, the break even is selling 5 million copies, this includes advertising. Spiderman 2 needs to sell about 15 million copies to break even.
I don't get why the videogame industry can't just do what the film industry does:
Reduce the budget and have the creatives figure out how to get the most out of less. It worked for the original Deadpool movie. And if I am being frank. . . I don't see why Ratchet & Clank PS5 needs soo much more polish, so much higher visual fidelity and such greater budgets than Ratchet & Clank PS2.
I don't think expectations are the problem, or even profit margins. I think the problem is the higher ups are handing out too much "mess-around" money to their studios. Games are going overboard. Simplify the end result won't result in a worse experience but will result in a more manageable end product to make.
Maybe the PROBLEM of the budgets being so high is because they keep growing their studios too much to where you have a thousand people working on a game that should only take 100 people. . . where all THOUSAND of those developers need to get paid. I'm sorry, but if that's the issue, segment them. Split the teams up and have them work on more projects, all with lesser complexity _(not lesser "scale" necessarily, but just lesser "complexity")_ to develop.
Doing this results in more frequent output, FASTER output, and cheaper budgets. This is how PS2 era became so well received by the public.
- Reduce project complexity.
- Reduce studio team sizes (by splitting one team into multiple, each working on separate projects to result in higher output. DO NOT JUST DO LAYOFFS!).
- Reduce the budget for these games. People will buy them regardless anyways.
There, I fixed the gaming industry for ya. Easy. 1 title alone simply cannot feed infinite mouths. If you have too many mouths to feed, you gotta have the excess mouths work on something else. Over-staffed. Over-budgeted. Over-done. That's the issue. The solution: Downscale.
I also think the story campaigns are getting too long these days. Sure it's nice to get the odd 60-100hr jrpg with a highly complex deep story, but general games I'm fine being at the 7 to 12 hours mark, as they used to be on ps1 and PS2 era times. Most games don't need to be 40-50 hour slog fests. The replay element could come with New Game+ modes.
Nah they'll just lay off for easy numbers on a sheet
I don't usually comment but I had to on this issue. The gaming budgets are INSANE and you are correct, I feel we've hit a ceiling when it comes to pumping money in VS a game looks. I may be in the minority but I'm fine with 1080p as long as it runs at 60fps. That is all I care about. Another thing to look at is THE INDIE SCENE, the games have WAY smaller budgets, are stylized and in a lot of cases look "worse" in comparison but do amazing sales wise. This tells ME that if you have a vision, a creative idea, a path in mind you don't need to spend hundreds of millions to wow us! This may just be my old school way of thinking but having tons of games come out, they all look pretty/flashy/gritty what have you, but it seems to me in a lot of ways they are visually similar enough and will just get jumbled together in the minds of people.
I mean, most indies don't do amazing sales-wise. Most of them either sell decent but not great or sell poorly. Only a handful of indies ever actually manage to permeate into the mainstream and sell gangbusters. But maybe most indies don't need to sell amazing due to their often very small amount of staff and their limited budgets.
look at a indie game called otxo, its a black and white graphic style that is a suped up hotline miami with a increcible soundtrack, i had more fun playing that than most triple A games with photorealistic graphics. im very happy the indie scene is alive and well. not just that but also there is retro new games for old systems still being made. castlevania symphony of the night is getting a sega mega drive port by a youtuber developer and it looks impressive. of course its not going to sell millions but the passion is there
@spankrocketgaming294 Passion is what makes games great, not 100's of millions of dollars. But once in every blue moon, you'll get that Final Fantasy 7 type of game.
Well said @josh6520. I could not have said it any better and in fact you said pretty much where I stand on this subject as well. I think the industry is at a crisis point as to where do we go next with regards to game prices. Its getting out of hand.
I like video games. I am 41 years old. I’ve been playing video games since I was six years old. It’s getting to the point now that it is not worth my time. The value is just not there anymore honestly. Now they’re discussing on how to remove physical video games and give you only digital video games at which point they could remove from your library. I’m sorry but it might get to the point where I won’t need to play video games anymore. Maybe only the retro video games we’ll see.
I think marketing budget is what has increased the most after the pandemic ended... companies are fighting for a lower cpa (cost per acquisition) in market channels
I think the pandemic was part of the problem with these expectations with Stockholders. There was a boom in Video gaming and they now expect that to continue. People arent staying home anymore. They need to face reality
There's a number of things I believe they should do. The more the better.
First one is obvious. Smaller scope. Personally I find returns have been seriously diminishing since seventh gen. Performance issues aside, I find PS3/360 game absolutely fine. And today, performance should not be an issue even at much higher resolutions.
Second, Art direction over technology. This is what sets a game apart, not things like ray tracing
Third, ditch the licenses. Really, was it worth it to Sony to lose money in order to have the game be Spider-man? Keep the design and game play and focus on licenses you own or create new ones. I'd certainly be more intrigued by new franchises over the ones we've been getting for decades now.
Fourth, stop antagonising part of your audience. If you need every consumer dollar you can get, why continue with the ideological agenda? That just loses you part of your audience. Stay neutral and the loss from the lunatic twitter mob is likely to be smaller. Be really welcoming of *everyone*
A big thing they can do is drop the woke esg nonsense, that will help substantially as I was put off with the woke stuff in Forbidden West of the portrayal of men.
Well said 👏
So Sony must follow the twitter mob and make no Woke games anymore. What about the idiots that are making woke the pinpoint of theyr lives. Grow up there are not only strait people in the world. Everybody has the right to life his lives as they please.. But no the anti-woke mob denails them to do that. They want people to only living as strait as they are. Its logical that "woke" people are defending theyr lifestyle. Everyone has the right to live his/here life as they please. And games and movies dont want only please the anti-woke movement they will show the world as it is. Fuck the anti-woke mob....
Insomniac/Sony definitely lost a sale from me for their ideological pandering and Peter Parker redesign in the Spiderman 2. I loved the original on PS4.
Okay, but whose fault is that?
Theirs.
Stockholders want more year after year and publishers promise the same.
It’s not sustainable.
Also marketing budgets are just absolutely out of control.
The industry makes so. Much. Money.
But it doesn’t go to the right places.
Spoiled gamers especially the one whos pressuring the ps6/5th gen xbox console to come earlier
Capitalism
@@garrettbot143No
@@garrettbot143 cute.
I've been saying this for years. These entitled gamers complain about the dumbest things and have so many fuxking options on what to play these days, a triple A game needs to sell 10 million copies now just to make a profit. I'm only nervous that when this escalates, the only company still standing will be the creatively bankrupt one that has $2 TRILLON to afford to continue to take loses until there's no choice but to buy an Xbox and subsribe to gamepass for $500 a year.
People may hate it, but this is why companies like Sony need some successful live service games and/or mobile games to fund their AAA projects in the long term. It has come to the point where AAA games, especially singleplayer ones with zero microtransactions, are starting to become unsustainable. Hell, even some once-successful live service games like Destiny 2 are starting to become unsustainable as well.
The fact that a game with a similar $300 million dollar budget to Spiderman 2 can sell 6 million copies and be considered a flop that made zero profit is insane and is not a good sign.
Sony either needs to release some very successful live service games/mobile games, start selling their games on more platforms (e.g. PC, cloud, and mobile), or both to remain viable as a business. Because at this rate, the Wolverine game is gonna cost like $450 million to make and require 10 million copies sold to break even (considering Spiderman 2's budget is 3x larger than that of Spiderman 2018 over a 5 year gap).
Exactly, they don't have much choice in the matter (if they want to maintain sustainable), the gaming industry is moving fast into mobile, cloud, PC etc, 2024 is the year they'll have to start making big moves in those directions.
or you know they could just scale back on their games and not have their budgets balloon up to a rediculous amount
seriously tho, ps4 tier games still look and play good in the current day, they havent aged at all, this current push for better graphics is kinda unecessary imo, the only thing the ps4 and xbone gen were missing out on was better load times
@lemon5000-tj6nv or they could stop licensing the Marvel IP = stop MCU(ing) the gaming industry. Related but isn't this why cinema & TV collapsed because of that IP (oversaturation), ballooned budgets & feeding into nostalgia & pop-culture.
@@lemon5000-tj6nv I mean I agree but I think part of the increased budgets is just due to inflation, and the fact that Insomniac is located in California where wages are some of the highest. The fact that Miles Morales didn't cost that much less than Spiderman 2018 despite being half of what Spiderman 2018 is in terms of length is maybe an indication of that.
Also, you know how it is: if one publisher continues to make PS4-level games exclusively on next-gen hardware while another publisher releases multiple cutting-edge PS5-level games with insane graphics, then people will criticize the other publisher for not having insane graphics in their games. People always compare everything.
I had no idea Hellblade was made on a budget of only $10 million!
No wonder MS wanted to acquire them. I'm sure Hellblade 2 costs quite a bit more, but there's no way they suddenly spent Spider-Man 2 levels of money.
I wish the industry would pivot and make slightly smaller games (from 30-90hrs to like 15-50hrs) for big budget games. That's still a 70$ experience in my book if the game is quality.
Spiderman 2 is 15-50 hours big budget game.
Absolutely fucking not. If you gonna raise the damn price, you gotta fucking reflect on that with content and quality.
There’s already backlash on games that are short in length. This is the industry where the hardcore customers are too passionate to the point where they would find anything to nitpick a game.
If scaling games back means that more casuals quit, then good. Gaming as a niche nerdy hobby would be amazing to have again.
Casuals in gaming have done nothing but brought
-Microtransactions
-Lootboxes
-Games as a service
-The same lame sports games every year, etc.
I say bring on gaming become niche again.
There was no reason why Spider-Man 2 should have been 315 million +
Not every game needs to be a AAA blockbuster. Nintendo has figured that out and Xbox is slowly learning with games like Grounded, Pentiment & Hi-Fi Rush. Sony pigeon holed themselves into making only blockbuster games and conditioned their consumers to expect the same.
The fact that they are having to layoff people from Insomniac tells us its some serious mismanagement going on at Sony.
All I'm hearing is "projected" "expected" "expectations" which amounts to nothing but word of mouth or in other words "I believe this, and I think that, but to be honest I really dont know anything"
Click bait....
I'm hoping scaling back games leads to more innovation in the forms of more varying and creative art styles and world design as well as more focus on gameplay, story, and unique mechanics.
Seeing smaller games from Xbox like Hi-Fi Rush, South of Midnight, Pentiment, and Grounded makes me hopeful
Also Marvel's Blade having stylized, non-hyperrealistic graphics will probably allow it to be cheaper than something like Spiderman
@@jimmythegamer2231Hi-Fi Rush was very likely being made for Switch at first. South of Midnight might as well not even exist yet. Give it a few years. We'll see how it goes.
@@jimmythegamer2231 and Hi-Fi Rush failed financially. I love the game especially given how optimized it is and how cool it is.
People complained about unfinished AAA games and then buy them anyways.
@@jimmythegamer2231 A little bit but not as much as you'd think. Even Breath of The Wild cos a hundred something million at release date in 2017.
@@kicapanmanis1060 it didnt fail financially because you missing the point of gamepass. Its about keeping players subscribed and gaining more subs.
Hi-Fi Rush did its job, it made alot of noise, had a few million players
I do think the phrase "time is money" is very apt in many cases, there have been so many examples of games being in development for say 6+ years but only having less then half of that being actually productive not to mention having to restart development. And i do think that is a management issue
I think and hope that eventual use of AI can generally be a good thing. That is if it's used as a tool to streamline projects. It do a lot of lazy legwork that talented people can then trim or micromanage to curate content. Games are getting so hard and long to make, so if AI can trim this down, I think this could be the solution.
@@skycloud4802 One of my big bugbear in many games is the Procedural generation which can and cannot work but really depends on the game....but i think Procedural generation + AI could make it a lot better
Halo Infinite comes to mind. How much time and money was wasted making that game?
That’s what I was thinking it comes down to poor management.
@@EhEhEhEINSTEIN that was all due to poor management, games that suffer from long development and delays etc stem from poor management. Just look at how Neil Cuckmann exploited wokeness to gain a management position and than tried to make people sign illegal contracts.
Having an early access to these big AAA games could help recoup their profit. Basically pricing Spider-Man 2 at like $100 to get the game a couple of days earlier (maybe add exclusive outfits for early access too?) and then the rest would buy the $70 game on release day.
Yep can’t wait for last of us remake, 3 days early for $100. God of war director cut collection. Great idea!
That's what xbox does, and it seems to work. They do that with all their exclusives. You hit it on the money, my guy
@@krazyd0nut404I sometimes get impatient and do the same.
Sony has a very serious Budgeting problem. Starfield a vastly bigger game/New IP cost about 200 Million to make and that's a massive game. Yet a rehash copy Pasted Spiderman 2 cost 315 Million? Sony has TERRIBLE management
Spider man 2 is a technically better game it is like minimal low screen starfield has little screens around every corner and haschak graphics the graphics and starfiller terrible we just look at it looks like Plato
I think the model is going to have to incorporate staggered releases to as many platforms as possible with minimal effort in porting. This way they can sell you the same game 2-3x for those high upfront development costs
So instead of just releasing the game on PC & cloud day one so more ppl can play it, your solution is for them to sell you the same product 2-3 times? Smh. 🤦🏾♂️
also instead of making a $70 game that lasts 60 hrs. Split that game into 3x 20hrs games and sell them for $70 each.
@@spazco8669 🤦
@@mattstansbeary3068 Apparently the concept of irony is beyond some people.
I'm hopeful and looking forward to "double A" being the direction. Gameplay is the driving force of games, and we can get more awesome games, if the games themselves don't take so long to be made, and I think that with a AA mindset, that can be the future. This would also play into subscription models.
The industry has lost sight of making good games and is more focused with 4k, flashy visuals, big worlds, etc. We just need good games, even if they aren't hundreds of millions of dollars in budget.
No one asked Sony to piss away so much money. I liked Spider-Man 2 but 350 mil was clearly not worth it. It’s clearly not worth it when indie titles is where most of the new ideas are coming from anyway.
$314 million for a linear campaign that barely makes it into the double digits in hours. That's insane.
It wasn;t just a campaign you dope
Money laundering operation honestly crazy how the budget literally tripled from spiderman 1 otherwise where did the money go it didn't go into the game it hardly has more content than spiderman 1.
@@conor6436 Okay, I'm a dope, but I still didn't blow a third of a billion on something that's not going to make significant profit. I'll take dope over money burning yahoo.
As a casual gamer, i often find myself staring at games like spiderman 2 on my ps5, and thought “did i just finished the similar games like this before?”
That feeling comes quite often nowadays when i playing several expensive games. Pick example like FF7 remake as well. Its beautiful on graphic but its FF7 i have been finished more than 20 years ago.
Perhaps the problem with Sony and majority of gaming industry is that they might lose focus on how to make good game.
Graphic is important but we supposed to get playing experience by playing game, not only feast on eyes.
Take example. I finished game on switch titled dredge. Its about fishing, story of fisherman who lost his memory, dragged on strange islands and dangerous sea. Mechanic is simple yet engaging. Story is deep and make me want to know more. As result i have been finished the game.
But same feeling, I cannot get when i playing titles such as spiderman, call of duty, or any other big names games. Just keep me entertaining around 30-1 hour then i find myself wont be back to the game.
Perhaps those gargantuan budget better spent to ensure how gamers can get entertaining gaming experience rather than focus on cinematic or graphic. Theres movies and cinema for that purpose.
Nintendo spends a fraction of what Sony does for game development and they pay their devs. better.
I think the first question that has to be answered is why are budgets increasing so much. The making of a game does not depend on a certain material for manufacture, it's 99% man-hours, and the investment on equipment is not made every year. So is it just bad time management that ends up as needing to increase workflow or is it just too much rework being done on the project.
Inflation
Wow companies are really letting people talk them into paying more for less and these UA-camrs are helping to push there greed
Sony lead the charge of amazing graphics = amazing game. They trained their audience who now have a tantrum if a reflection in a puddle doesn't look like a mirror. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
No, "Puddlegate" is an Xbot thing. Nowadays, the only thing you hear from Xbox fans is how good everything looks and how much better RT is on Xbox. PCMR constantly fellate themselves over pathtracing. Sony and Nintendo are the two big fanbases least concerned with with graphics because they have it worse than Xbox and PC. Xbox is also on PC now, pushing limits with games like MFS.
You can't compare Sony releasing GoW:R "a PS4 looking game" and Spider-Man 2 "barely an improvement" according to Xbots, and Microsoft ONLY showing off the graphics of Hellblade 2 and conclude that PlayStation fans are more fixated on graphics than Xbox fans. We know which company/fanbase is more concerned with graphics.
Nice try, though.
No Ratchet and Clank until 2029 is sad.
8:20 What’s interesting is the Steam Deck has restored my love of gaming and just having fun. Setting the games to low or medium and just sitting back and having a great time has been my focus instead of thinking about Ray tracing, 4K, frame rate, and using those as a measure of a good game. I’m perfectly fine with dialing back these things if the games are fun to play and a relaxing escape from reality.
So you found out why the Switch sold so well
I'm slightly confused on where all that money is going. Sure the employees need a monthly salary but beyond that, motion capture existed on ps2, so did writing, investing in new tech. Sony did invest a lot in an ESG department though that's basically a waste of money.
But i don't see how it's a expensive as it is. Ps3 games were cheaper and high production and effed included multiplayer in a lot of their games
50 million consoles sold. Avg of 3 million copies of IP sold, per title. Something needs to change. Nowhere near enough consumers play the bigger budget games and it's concerning 😮
I think this situation is also why we see devs going the "micro transactions" way a lot more and we see useless remastered that are just cash grab at the end.. They are trying very hard to make this profitable a little bit more than it really is
No. When Microsoft started with that trash a decade ago everyone beelined for it immediately. It's been rampant ever since. It has never lessened as you believe it.
@@ReachStudioPro Microsoft didn't start microtransactions, third-parties like EA and 2K did.
I've said it for a while the games don't need to be this high budget, Indie developers are showing that you can make a game that's mainly and primarily fun and not This omega blockbuster With all the shinies Bells and whistles. And a lot are able to innovate despite their low budgets
If they can make Ghost of Tsushima for $60 million then they can learn to cut down some of the budgets for these other AAA games.
The AAA bubble is going to burst - go back to making games that have gameplay!
Games will continue to skyrocket in cost for Sony and Microsoft because these are first party games, they want are more than just a video game. They are used to show to consumers that their 10+ teraflop console with the fastest SSD thingy that costs $500 is worth the price. They want to show to the public that their first party games are the premium and “only in our ecosystem” kind of thing, as a bragging rights. They want to show to other developers what is possible on their console, kind of a working demo for others to jump in, the same way Gears of War popularized Unreal Engine or even the latest Mario game such as Odyssey or even Mario World.
As a first party producer they won’t scale back. I think that’s why Nintendo doesn’t produce a more powerful console, to control costs and keep them down and even then Odyssey and TotK look amazing. Except Pokémon, not because they don’t want to make better but because I don’t think Game Freak knows how to make most out of the system 😂 not that they need anyway, they keep selling.
Scaling back the budget could to lead to actual innovative games. too much of game budgets go into graphical fidelity and effects. The last two Zelda games felt more groundbreaking even though it had less impressive visuals.
Not when these AAA studios are filled with diversity hires and all they care about are social credit scores, you'll just get a woke game with a lower budget.
It’s a numbers game, as with EVERYTHING in this world its only going to get worse. With everything. Sorry to be Debby Downer.
I don’t think the gaming industry is growing much more than it already has. Developers and publishers need to manage expectations going forward. I remember when it was announced that the budget for Destiny was $500 million on a 10 year project. I wonder how much that budget has ballooned to by now.
I feel like gaming is just getting onboard with looking at budgets. We've been seeing budgets for films for what the past 20 to 30 years? Like common knowledge lol, with much higher budgets to consumer ratios, still they make bank. My point, we're talking about 150 million, a game charged at $70....and how many copies were sold in the first week 😂 do the math john your overreacting a bit. 😂 yeah just looked its 6.1 million copies sold by nov 11. Their doing fine 😂😂 277 Million profit, enough to make their next big hit or a couple smaller titles
Regarding ray tracing reduction to save money, it actually costs less to use ray tracing because traditional baked-in lighting takes longer to implement.
It’s nice that we have Sony studio games that have massive budgets. I like everything from indie to blockbuster AAA. Though, I’d like Sony to have a few small teams that make some smaller games as well. Sony can get the financial return they want by continuing to sell millions of copies of games and making movies/shows of games, as well as sell dlc. Perhaps one or two live service games that are at least somewhat successful. And continue to be smart about partnering with successful live service games, especially if Sony can’t get a big live service game of their own.
They need to learn how to properly market their smaller games as well. I have no idea what they could be going for now. They are getting showed up by Nintendo on that front.
I've long held the position that studios need to scale back on the budgets and the focus on realism and scale in their games. At the current average size of a AAA studio, we can get smaller, more interesting games releasing far more frequently and without the studio needing to weigh them down with microtransactions and other nickel and dime features in order to recoup the costs.
The big issue is that the general public doesn't want that.
Sony delaying games and firing developers and MBG saying he's quitting gaming if Microsoft wins this generation Sony have no leader, Getting sued for 8 Billion for ripping their customers off, TLOU 2 Factions gets shelved, Ponies begging for Blade to come to PS, The top selling game on PS right now is COD a ( Xbox ) game, Jim Ryan said PS can't survive without COD, Wolverine gets leaked, and they got hacked, And in the leak Wolverine documents 📃 Sony said they're concerned about Microsoft acquiring Activision, PS Portal is a flop, PSVR2 a flop, and their exclusives aren't making them that much money like they thought they would, Sony forced Insomniac to cut their budget for Spider-Man 3, Jim Ryan sold his stock in Sony Damn Sony is down bad 🤣
It is a big problem. Because they are also only releasing one game per generation vs 3 or 4 games from the PS3 era. Also, the sales for the sequel games have dropped significantly. Horizon Zero Dawn sold 24 million. But those sales were all based on hype and marketing. The game ultimately was ho-hum because the sequel Forbidden West only managed to sell 8.4 million. That's a huge drop. You want your sequels to sell more or it will be the death of the franchise and studios. We saw that happen on PS3 with Resistance, Killzone, Motorstorm etc. Spider-Man 2 has sold 5 million and you said it needs 7 million to break even. It became clear they are in trouble when Sony for the first time has decided to release these "exclusives" on to the PC platform in or to boost sales. They are one step away from releasing them on Xbox as well or face massive layoffs or simply the games being scaled back in quality. There is a limit to how many copies a game can sell at the end of the day. And if that doesnt cover the cost plus turn a decent amount of profit to fund the next 5+ year project then they are up shit creek without a web shooter. 😊 The days of the console exclusives could be over....And then there is little ol Nintendo sitting in the corner enjoying 64 million copies of Mario Kart 8 sold. A Wii U port that probably cost them pittens to make and still costs the same price to buy as it did almost a decade ago.
I can’t help but place the blame primarily on gamers. They demand AAA games have perfect stories, voice acting and the primary demand they make that is causing this: gamers demand all these games be 40 hours at MINIMUM! I’m more than happy to pay full price for a great 16 hour game. Not only would this cut costs significantly, but we would get much more frequent releases from our favorite developers instead of one 60 hour game a decade with 20 hours of filler
Indeed. I'd say most are ignorant about how much a lot of it costs as well, and they demand the best graphics. I can't count how many times I've seen people in the comments section of a game say "LoL dA gRaPhIcS lOoK LiKe A pS2 Gaem lolololroflk kek!!"
I put a lot of the blame on gamers.
Some of the best selling games are not graphical master pieces. Not every game has to resemble real life. Hifi rush did really well. You have games like Fortnite and Minecraft. The new Mario game wasn't a massive game, and neither was the new Sonic. You can make good games without them being visual masterpieces. Also, I wouldn't them chilling it with the annoying cut scenes every five seconds!!! 😡
Maybe if we weren't trying to push 4K so much, but instead pushing frame rate & bit rate, I'm sure things wouldn't cost as much for developers.
Oh no, another thing that is collapsing... again... cmon! Nothing lasts forever, look at Blockbuster. The current system had its peak years ago and now it's not sustainable and it's gonna evolve into something else, just like everything else. Why so dramatic about this? Things are always changing, dying or evolving. Nothing new.
I'm fine with cutting back on budgets. Jank is no big deal. Also, you don't need to go over the top with the voice acting, as long as I don't have to read everything. For some reason everything is one extreme or the other these days. Budgets don't need to be $300 million dollars or $300 thousand. There is some middle ground there.
Also, scaling back could help reduce the time between games as well. Making games didn't used to take 5 years plus. IMO games peaked in the 360 era, just give me more of those games with updated graphics (i.e. updated lighting, resolution, and textures).
Hey spawn wave, happy new year 🎉
Does anyone ask Why is cost that much? Same engine, same devs so what's going on that every sequel has to cost so much more?
When aren't they?
People always say they need to make smaller games, but the only game that really worked was Miles Morales? (Which already had a good asset base from SM1 and is a huge IP). Sony has created a large part of its current fanbase with these ultra expensive with ultra realistic graphics narrative games. The moment they reduce any part of this strategy, a lot of people will complain.
The first thing everyone comments when a big game is announced today is: "Oh, the graphics aren't good enough", "Oh, this game doesn't run in 4k60" and so on. Nowadays we already have discussions if a game is not at least 60 hours long with cutting-edge graphics and gameplay. Imagine what would happen if Sony focused on 8~12 hour games costing 50~60 dollars.
What they need to do is start exploring new markets for talent and stop focusing so much on the hubs (California/Washington). Jason Schreier made a tweet saying that the average salary of a dev in California ranges from 60 to 100 thousand dollars per year. Just do it: ~80 thousand x 450 people x 48 or 60 (months of development).
Spidey 2 is 20 hours. Three seven hour games at $50 each? The multiplayer would need a cloud based Game as a Service infrastructure to work. This can't work at all.
I’m so glad you mentioned Ninja Theory. One of my favorite devs as they aim for an “independent AAA” approach instead of traditional AAA. They basically aim for high production values but keep their game mechanics simple and approachable.
Well not no more now that Microsoft owns. U can't be independent and owned by Microsoft at the same time
The more games merge with cinema and evolve into immersive storytelling, the more the video game industry will suffer from the same problems Hollywood is going through. Don’t just make content. Watch the budget. Don’t chase trends. Hire good writers. Don’t rely on good graphics. And most importantly… don’t get political
A lot the budget go's to sweet baby ink
I think the developers looking into use of AI to handle more tasks that can be automated is going to free up devs to become more like AI managers that will handle how the code is being written, which will allow for more efficient and streamlined workflow, which won't necessarily decrease budget hours but will increase productivity, allowing them to maintain the development times.
I just do not understand HOW Spider-Man 2 cost so much. It reused so many assets from the first game
Sony technically still owns Spider-Man. They just rent him out to Disney under certain conditions. So, licensing fees aren't the problem. We've all seen how these Silicon Valley office employees 'get things done'. They have free Starbucks, massage/nap stations and do about 15 minutes of actual work before it's time to clock out. I don't blame corporations for 'crunching' their employees. It's probably like herding entitled cats.
You do know that sony has movie rights but not video games rights
@@otogigamer I know they still partly own him, that would be pretty stupid for Sony to sell off their cash cow just to rent him themselves.. meh..
Im not supporting that splitting a completed game into two parts. I'll buy the complete edition on sale lol.
Great insight Jon. You should do a similar video on Xbox and their multiplatform approach. I think Sony might benefit from putting back catalog stuff on Nintendo and Xbox years later.
graphical fidelity has nothing to do with innovation. Innovation = new gameplay loops. period.
I think that there will be a shift towards using AI to help aid or replace costs spent on motion capture, game models, etc.... I think the reason games cost so much is that they have become actual productions that need scripts, actors, sound tracks, and so forth whereas in the past the focus was more on having interesting game mechanics and gameplay with. People also expect games to have more happening in terms of the open world for example, enemies on screen, rpg elements ,multiplayer modes, and so on.
Combine this with a bad economy , increased prices, and poor purchasing power and you will get a crash.
1. Either the standard of what a good game is needs to be lowered
2. Finding ways to cut production costs
i think companies like sony should do much more smaller budget games like nintendo for example. super mario wonder cost 1 million to make and sold way more than spiderman 2 which cost 300 million to make...
You should probably get your facts straight before sounding like a idiot.
That can only happen when they have a cashcow IP like Mario and Pokemon.
I have really enjoyed my time with Spider-Man 2...with the exception of some of the side missions everything's been great...but I can't understand how this game had a budget 3 times larger than Spider-Man 2018 and actually used all of it. I feel like 2018 was the stronger game out of the 2 in many ways.
I honestly dont know wtf went through Insominac's head(s) when they came up with those side missions. They were so bad
And agreed, I much prefer spiderman 2018 (I'm a tremendous playstation fanbaby btw)
@@frankvandermerwe1487 yeah, i've got no issues with inclusivity and stuff like that but this felt like it was forcing so hard to insert social agenda's. 2018 is likely one of my favorite games of all times, I'm a huge spidey fanboy so I was really looking forward to SM2, and like I said I'm still loving the game but it's nowhere near 2018's level.
@@mikeodell511 2018 is special because it was novel, and the best feeling spiderman game ever made at the time. It actually felt like you were doing spiderman things - Unlocking new gadgets, solving crimes with the police, back and forth banter between Yuri and Peter, swinging around the city, doing combat challenges, with a really well written story to tie it all together - it all felt great and unique, the first true rvial for Arkham City imo.
Spiderman 2 severely lacks that novelty. It just felt like an open world game where I trudged through the main story and swung around and did side missions. Sure it's great overall, but it doesn't have the same magic the first game has. The gameplay was better than 2018 in most ways, except for some perplexing reason, Insomniac removed all the unique gadgets from the first game, and gave us 4 here. It was one step forward, a few steps back.
You can also tell Imsomniac are REALLY driving their own personal political agendas in this game. Developers need to start realizing they aren't some agent for social change, and hitting us over the head with their ideology is a terrible idea. by cramming that stuff in for the sake of it, it detracts from the purity of the experience. SM2 was good, but they could have done far better
Spiderman 2 is not worth 300 million... holy hell thats sad that it cost them that much to make.... Its basically a big DLC for Spiderman remastered.... oof.
Btw sony owns Spiderman.... not Marvel. Marvel actually basically temp licenses him for collaborative movies.
BTW Sony does NOT own Spider-man. They only have the movie rights. Disney owns everything else.
Surely these budgets are mainly the cost of developers working on the games as it’s all digital so there’s no materials involved. The more detail, the longer the story and the more complex the framework then the more developers you need and the longer it takes. Studios just need to diversify with their portfolio of games and releases to cater for everything from simple puzzle games through indies and a few AAA’s instead of everything shooting for the stars.
Why would someone buy a ps6. If game developers aren't going to continue, making their games look better and better.
Sony looking at Nintendo profitting in its AA portfolio wieh less cost and higher overhead.
Thats the way to go. Graphics is too ambitious nowadays.
The cost to produce games has been rising for 40 years yet the prices managed to hold steady at $59.99 for the most part. Corporate greed has finally hit the gaming industry.
Are you sure its steady at $60
There hasnt been day 1 dlc(cut content)
or exclusive skins to buy day 1
Microtransactions
time saver bundles
battlepasses etc
@@imo098765 I'm talking since the days of NES through until about PS3. I bought Ghostbusters 2 on NES for $59.99 in 1990, and paid the same for GTA V on PS3 in 2013.
They make these incredibly expensive games and target such a small audience... What were they expecting to happen?
I would rated have games slices go up with more bigger budget than them down sizing into a cap Nintendo game
Not surprised. Saw this problem coming. This is on Sony.
A lot of us gamers want our games to be bigger and better than the next one. How much money do you think that costs? Also Spider-Man 3 is a projected 2028 game. The year where the next ps6 is rumored to launch. The base price will definitely be more than $70.
GTA V and Skyrim were both huge games and were nowhere near the development cost or time of modern games. Unfortunately, I think it's everyone's adversity to "jank" and Digital Foundry analyses that are driving these costs. Seriously, I am fine with jank, baked lighting, and b level voice acting, if the game is fun.
@@Not-Great-at-Gaming Too much focus on trying to build a big budget movie instead of a game is Sonys problem. Spending millions upon millions on marketing, millions upon millions so you can have the famous voice actors, millions upon millions because there is 1000+ people when you know you don't need that many people to make a good game. Like its crazy how theres solo developers making good games that are better than AAA now.
You would think Sony would have come up w/ more inventive ways to make back the $315 million budget, like releasing multiple steelbooks that comes w/ it’s own 6 month timed exclusive DLC. After 6 months you can buy it from the store.
After 6 months release a new steelbook that comes w/ the entire game + newest patches, and all the DLC on a physical disc, and sell it for more than $70.
I wouldn't disagree with you, but I don't think Sony sees physical as their future (or any company for that matter)....once physical media is history, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will have complete control over game sales, prices and distribution and they will charge as much as they like, and you will like it (or miss out)
And bring back physical booklets and artwork inserts for a slight premium charge.
@@plu_Tony_um Yeah, i wouldn't be surprised if one day, we see digital only games release for $200-$300 at launch, and hold that price for a couple months, and once companies are sure all the well off gamers have bought it, they lower it to something more reasonable. Rockstar could probably get away with something like for GTA VI now, and a lot more than 1 million people would buy it at that price.
Apple set a precedent for lowering distribution costs & paying more for less. These industries take a page from each other. I bet that when things go all digital, the justification would be "because of the environment."
As a PC gamer I can certainly appreciate great gfx in a game and imo console has really caught up to PC in gfx; I feel there's too much emphasis on gfx when it really should be more about the game play. From Software took a lot of heat from the Souls community for not pushing Elden Ring into next gen gfx but their priority was game play NOT gfx and that's my point. Sure we should encourage gfx evolvement but at this point its being forced which costs more $$$.
If you look at Alan Wake 2 and Avatar both those games heavily focus on gfx to sell the game but the game play speaks for itself which is not particularly very good but it sells because it's "SHINY" and ppl are stupid. Kinda like console gamers who wanted 4K 30fps instead of going w/ 1440p or 1080p 60fps; obviously we are past that now w/ these last gen consoles. Imo most console gamers are lazy and stupid.
I haven't read the leaked slides in detail but im curious if Sony funds 100% of the budget. For movies there are countless other production partners to help with the funding. Another great example of a really good game with a reasonable budget was Control with a 30 million budget.
Sony makes the most money of the big three but is the least profitable. Just think about that. They need some new management
I will not pay for Corporate Bloat.
Do not forget that 3rd party studios have it even harder since they have to calculate with approx. 30% platform fee.
Personally, I think Sony and Microsoft have trained their customers that if they just wait a couple of months, they can see their games heavily discounted. The price increase really only affects the die-hard players of a franchise. If they want to improve their revenue especially on new releases, I think they should go more the Nintendo route of never discounting the games but put them in like a voucher program where if you buy two or more games, even new releases, you can receive them at a slight discount.
I'm glad you aren't running Sony! I like my months-old cheap AAA games. :) You make a lot of good business sense though.
@@antiquecardboard Unfortunately, once you train your customers to wait for sales, it is hard to train them out of it without expecting a short term loss. And with Sony and Microsoft cancelling projects, I don't think they are in a position to take a loss.
they could go less realism more stylized. Does wonders for Nintendo.
Devs and game directors make up for a majority of the budget. A way to fix it is if they either paid the same and allow WFH at all their studios or lower the pay rate across the board for all higher ups.
Trying to figure out why Spiderman 2 had triple the budget of the first!
I miss the ps2 days when we had more games than we knew what to do with. Seriously, the ps2/og xbox era was a great time to be a gamer, why? Because it was just about the games. They need to figure out how to get back to making tons of high quality games. I think they need to utilize artificial intelligence to its fullest extent to get this done. Games, thats all i want or care about is freaking games!!
we could go back to that era if publishers consider making AA games