Search Results
7/11/2025, 7:44:11 AM
>>715129431
Big studios were always going to be at the mercy of the ugly calculus of the industry's big publishers. The HD age came first and then the digital revolution a few years later when Steam opened up to third parties and Xbox Live Arcade helped the burgeoning indie movement. If you want to make big projects you had to have been fed and supported for the last twenty years by a major publisher because they controlled retail access and press exposure. Look at how many new AAA studios get created and then have collapsed after a decade of development with nothing to show for it. Concord most infamously. Haven with Freegames will no doubt be another example, Jade Raymond already jumped ship. Initiative and Perfect Dark. Too many studios are mistaking organic growth with just hurling bodies and money at a problem. Only success story of a young studio I can think of off the top of my head is Machine Games, made from ex-Starbreeze devs, and outside of Indiana Jones they mostly just made midbudget single player first person shooters, well within their wheelhouse. Ironically if they weren't so busy with Indiana Jones, Quake and wrapping up the Wolfenstein trilogy they'd probably be a good fit for Perfect Dark.
Though Yoshida's recent comments about budgets doubling from PS4 to PS5 had me reeling. I knew shit went bad going from 6th gen to HD era(e.g. hundreds of thousands/single digit millions, to 360/PS3-era 10-50 million, and then Xbone/PS4-era 50-100M+).
But considering how absolutely trivial the visual improvement has been on newer consoles vs more meaningful stuff like better framerates and faster loading, the fact that the already blistering budgets of something like Horizon, a PS4/PS5 game with $212 million on its budget, doubling when it's only a PS5 title, and possibly scraping over half a billion as we angle towards PS6/Xbox 720-level games? Fucking christ.
Big studios were always going to be at the mercy of the ugly calculus of the industry's big publishers. The HD age came first and then the digital revolution a few years later when Steam opened up to third parties and Xbox Live Arcade helped the burgeoning indie movement. If you want to make big projects you had to have been fed and supported for the last twenty years by a major publisher because they controlled retail access and press exposure. Look at how many new AAA studios get created and then have collapsed after a decade of development with nothing to show for it. Concord most infamously. Haven with Freegames will no doubt be another example, Jade Raymond already jumped ship. Initiative and Perfect Dark. Too many studios are mistaking organic growth with just hurling bodies and money at a problem. Only success story of a young studio I can think of off the top of my head is Machine Games, made from ex-Starbreeze devs, and outside of Indiana Jones they mostly just made midbudget single player first person shooters, well within their wheelhouse. Ironically if they weren't so busy with Indiana Jones, Quake and wrapping up the Wolfenstein trilogy they'd probably be a good fit for Perfect Dark.
Though Yoshida's recent comments about budgets doubling from PS4 to PS5 had me reeling. I knew shit went bad going from 6th gen to HD era(e.g. hundreds of thousands/single digit millions, to 360/PS3-era 10-50 million, and then Xbone/PS4-era 50-100M+).
But considering how absolutely trivial the visual improvement has been on newer consoles vs more meaningful stuff like better framerates and faster loading, the fact that the already blistering budgets of something like Horizon, a PS4/PS5 game with $212 million on its budget, doubling when it's only a PS5 title, and possibly scraping over half a billion as we angle towards PS6/Xbox 720-level games? Fucking christ.
Page 1