As the next generation of gaming looms forth (with the Wii U set to lead the charge when it comes out this Sunday), some development teams are already working on the “next level” of games. However, it won’t be an easy transition, as Epic Games thinks that the development costs of said games will be on the rise – whether publishers like it or not.
Speaking today at the Montreal International Game Summit, Epic Games’ chief technology officer Tim Sweeney talked about the escalation of costs. He even pointed out how the three minute Samaritan demo from Game Developers Conference 2011 took a while to make, spanning four months across 30 people.
“If we extrapolate that into creating an entire game, we were worried that the cost would go up by a factor of three or four or even five in the next generation,” stated Sweeney. “And of course, we felt that was not acceptable.”
The company was able to offset costs by improving a production pipeline, but there’s still a question of where future development may go.
On the flip side, Ubisoft thinks there’s room aplenty in the development cycle, and it won’t go overboard on coast. At least, not the first two years it makes games. “We don’t know about the third year where we will take advantage of the full capacity of those consoles. We will probably have to spend more money at that time,” said Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot.
We’ll see where this next generation takes us…
