advertisement
Click Here

Next-gen dev costs to hit $60 million - Guillemot

By Tom Magrino, GameSpotPosted Jun 16, 2009 12:39 pm PT

Ubisoft CEO says the cost for creating games for new consoles will double due to technical potential, OnLive could usher in new cycle earlier than expected.

As the technical capabilities of gaming consoles have increased with each subsequent generation, so too has the price to make games for those systems. Current-generation AAA game development is a pricey affair indeed, with Guerrilla Games telling a Dutch newspaper that its top-tier PlayStation 3 shooter Killzone 2 cost upward of $21 million. And according to Ubisoft chairman and CEO Yves Guillemot, that trend will continue with the arrival of the next generation of gaming consoles.

Yves Guillemot

Speaking to CNBC, Guillemot said that he believes creating upper echelon games will cost on average $60 million, due to the increased investment in technology necessitated by the technical potential of the new consoles. "The next generation is going to be so powerful that playing a game is going to be the equivalent of playing a CGI movie today," he said. Headcount is likely to be another factor spiking costs, with Ubisoft saying in May that more than 450 people are working on Assassin's Creed 2.

A number of analysts, including Wedbush Morgan Securities' Michael Pachter, believe that the next round of new consoles will arrive in 2013 at the earliest. However, Guillemot believes one factor that could advance that window is OnLive's on-demand game-streaming service.

"If somebody comes out with online--if OnLive manages to make this work--we will have a next generation of systems sooner than currently planned," he said. Ubisoft, along with Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Warner Bros. Interactive Studios, THQ, and several others, announced that they would support the service with new games when it launches later this year.

Having debuted the publisher's own Wii-based movement sensor during Ubisoft's E3 2009 press conference, Guillemot also expressed optimism over Microsoft's and Sony's new wave of camera-based motion sensing.

"[Microsoft's Project Natal] is one step, but quickly they will take the other step [of releasing new consoles]--pushed by the environment," he said. "For us, the current machines are very powerful, and we can do high-quality work. I'd like to stay with this generation as long as possible, but my customers will want the best machine possible." Guillemot went on to tell CNBC that he expects the new motion-sensing technology to expand the core gaming audience by 20 percent.

Lastly, Ubisoft's foremost executive addressed the publisher's ambitions in the massively multiplayer online gaming space. According to Guillemot, Ubisoft was outbid by Atari for Star Trek Online developer Cryptic Studios last year, but the publisher is still interested in establishing a foothold in the space.

"We know it can be a disaster or a very profitable business," he said. "It's a part of the business we want to be in...but we have to find the best place to invest." Notably, as part of Ubisoft's acquisition of the Tom Clancy brand in March 2008, Guillemot said that the publisher was interested in adapting the military franchise to a massively multiplayer online environment.

396 Comments

  • BattleforAzerot

    Posted Jul 19, 2009 1:57 am PT

    Doesnt the fact that games get harder and more costly to make mean that one day they are gonna hit a wall from where its almost as good as impossible to climb over ? I mean some game developping teams area made out of hundreds of people , when like doom 2 had just few people , dont remember how many excactly.Same time costs rise more and more.But how much more can they handle ? I doubt they will make a games in future when they would cost like billion dollars And talking about consoles , they are currently DirectX 9 machines , the DirectX11 comes this year and by the year 2013 the PC games might be so fast that consoles cant handle them at all ? Many games have features that console ones simply dont have because of the hardware limitations.Or maybe the console versions look so primitive next to a PC game counterpart that the PC version looks more like a sequel ? If you look at the corrent consoles and compare its hardware to a PC , it turns out xbox360 and PS3 have graphics cards equivalent to 7800Gt or 7900Gt , which in computer terms is old and slow.

  • Cillerboy

    Posted Jul 16, 2009 9:59 am PT

    i think they should let the current-gen consoles live a lil longer than up to 2013 to give them a better chance to achieve their capabilities such as ps3's capabilites, project natal for 360 and.. um...more 3rd party games for the wii!

  • sgtdrog

    Posted Jul 4, 2009 11:30 am PT

    That is the main reason why I hate console gaming (the hardware constraints). I either want to see one console gaming machine or NONE. Pc games almost don't have any hardware limitations because the hardware is advancing faster than the software can. And is sicking listening to people say "I want this game but its only for (insert any console here).", that almost never happens with PC games. Even if your machine only meets a games "Minimum Requirements" you can still play the game and get (what I think is) the most important aspect of the game: the story. Everyone is focusing on graphics but it doesn't seem like too many people care about the story or plot anymore. Most "gamers" now days just go for the best looking "twitch shooter" they can and then complain cause its "too much like other games".

    I dunno where I'm going with this.... I could rant forever.

  • Mawy_Golomb

    Posted Jun 27, 2009 9:11 am PT

    It actually is quite possible that development costs will skyrocket. If GTA IV can handle $100 million, and if Microsoft and Sony want gimmicky devices for their consoles, along with better graphics, then why consider it false?

    Oh, how video games must follow Moore's Law. It is all about the graphics, isn't it? I am greatly beginning to dislike mainstream video games. If anything, I think that a lot more people will eventually cater to indie gaming because innovation has been so underappreciated by corporate companies. It is funny because we are also approaching the uncanny valley, since people can easily spot mistakes within games' graphics now, more than ever and expect them to look perfectly photorealistic.

    This is so pathetic. People had might as well go ahead and play around with graphics technology or create their own computer art, if they feel so intrigued by games, most of the time due to their graphics.

  • Apex3835

    Posted Jun 25, 2009 10:33 pm PT

    I agree with ClawedMonkey

  • wars45

    Posted Jun 23, 2009 12:19 am PT

    dont think so .when the most exspensive game to date is 30 mill . how can u say a game will cost 60 mill when the new gen is not even out . and they havent got the hardwher . if the games was going to cost 60 mill . ther will not be a lot of games about

  • ClawedMonkey

    Posted Jun 22, 2009 9:34 pm PT

    I'm all for a new generation of consoles.

    The current gen. consoles are already years old and have mostly been pushed as far as they can go. We can't expect to see any further graphical enhancements or complexity in our games because of their hardware limitations.

    This article over exaggerates the production costs for games that may appear on the next gen of consoles. Its really not that much more effort to push up the polygon count and texture resolution. In fact, the poly count and texture res. is often slashed from already developed content as an optimization to maintain decent frame rates on current gen consoles.

    My point is, games are already ready for the next generation of consoles. Most of them on the PC have the graphics options available, they're just disabled on the consoles as an optimization because of the hardware limitation.

    I've only really mentioned graphics, but there's also still the limitations of the CPU...

  • W3En

    Posted Jun 21, 2009 7:00 pm PT

    I don't see how they are so expensive, PC games were running games that looked like "next-gen" now in 2007.... and most PC games are cheaper than their Xbox or PS3 counterparts!

  • ZippyDSMLee

    Posted Jun 21, 2009 8:20 am PT

    All the more reason to wait till tis cheaper and refine the skills you have with current systems, not to mention start back on gameplay instead of focusing solely on graphics......

  • FinalDuo1886

    Posted Jun 21, 2009 3:07 am PT

    @maybock3000 I agree. It looks like I'm going to invest back into PC games again, cause $60 my limit as well.

  • bennae66

    Posted Jun 21, 2009 12:11 am PT

    im happy to let this cycle last longer. bring on natal!

  • Tygraph

    Posted Jun 20, 2009 10:26 pm PT

    Umm...Ubisoft makes quality games. And Microsoft produced games are always of quality. It would be nice if everyone woud stop putting money signs in the names like they put out effort just for the cash. Like Splinter Cell and stuff wasn't a great franchise and Halo wasn't good...

  • JunkyMcMuffin

    Posted Jun 20, 2009 7:30 am PT

    Where going to end up payin a minimum of $100 for next gen games.

  • ColonelRadec

    Posted Jun 20, 2009 7:08 am PT

    I hope they come down with the price for the dev kits so that it might help drop the prices of games.

  • glendarach

    Posted Jun 20, 2009 12:35 am PT

    i disagree, the reason why this generation was a shock for most developers was the change from single core, to multi-core etc, the next generation of consoles will be much much more powerful, but will use the same tech, just it will be faster, more cores, etc.

  • maybock3000

    Posted Jun 18, 2009 9:49 pm PT

    I refuse to pay more than 59.99 for any game, great or not. The gaming industry had BETTER NOT raise their prices on games for the next gen. Remember 3DO? Remember when they charged 99.99 per game? Well, that's one big reason they went under. People won't be making more money in 2013 either. The costs of living are going up in every aspect of our lives, taxes are being raised, and on and on. I fear that the gaming industry might be in trouble by 2013, because people will have less money due to having to pay more to survive.

  • BladedNuiasnce

    Posted Jun 18, 2009 8:43 pm PT

    @ Timstuff
    you are so wrong, most people wont be buying indie games because they, most of the time, suck! I think most people would be more willing to spend $70 on 1 good game, than $70 on 3 crap games!

  • Autolycus

    Posted Jun 18, 2009 12:38 pm PT

    Yawn get a clue. these analyst are just as useful ans CEO's of a company... (aka they are a waste of company resources and a waste of life)

  • plm3d_basic

    Posted Jun 18, 2009 11:39 am PT

    Well, the price for making summer blockbuster movies continue to go up but the ticket prices haven't jumped to $15-20 yet so I seriously doubt games will jump in price to $70. But the amount of content will undoubtedly be reduced and a lot of studios will make the extra profit off of DLC which would have been originally in the game but is now separate. It's already happening.

  • anomaly3001

    Posted Jun 18, 2009 10:59 am PT

    Look people ya'll don't get it! Look at all the ps3 and xbox 360 games out! Only a slight handfull of those games costs millions to make. for example only the exclusives, but for some reason all games cost 60 dollars! These developers need to find cheaper ways to produce games rather than just throw money around and hope to make their money back off of profits! I have a feeling the people in charge of these studios don't know what they are doing. Perfect example! Should Haze, Too Human, Ghost Busters, Tomb Raider underworld, Terminator salvation, etc. cost $60 dollars no because these games suck and there are about 10games developed to 1 blockbuster game that suck! This is not fair for the consumer that even if your game sux u can sell it for $60 dollars just to make your money back. People who paid money for Haze feel me!

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction Quick Links

Summary | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Answers | Forum | Check Prices

Check Prices: $57.99 – 59.99

GameStop $59.99 SHOP ›
Best Buy $59.99 SHOP ›
eCOST.com $57.99 SHOP ›
advertisement
Click Here

Related Content

Matches based on text similarity.

advertisement
Click Here

Related Unions

advertisement