Cost of next-gen game production is a burden on developers

Game developers always have a sizable stack of things to worry aboutwhen working on a new project; things like: Is my game going to be anygood? Will people buy my game? Am I making Vampire Rain? Isit too late to cancel? Of course, financial worries are always presentfor developers, who have a growing number of costs to deal with duringthe creation of a game. However, according to a recent report by BBC News,budgeting woes have escalated into a full-blown panic among developersdue to the growing cost of making games for next-gen consoles.

To put things in perspective, the article gives the example of Namco, who, in 1982, made Pac-Manfor nearly $100,000 (today, it would be about double that amount, dueto inflation). According to BBC News, the average PS3 game costs nearly$15 million to make -- and that's before any marketing is done for thegame. Not only is this bad news for gamers, as it almost ensures ourstore shelves will be stocked with sequel after buyer-recognizablesequel, but it's also bad for developers, who could go belly up afterone unsuccessful title.

As technology continues to improve andgame consoles get more sophisticated, we wonder how this price spiralwill continue to affect the industry. Will there be more safety-ensuring corporate mergers? Higher quality games? Most worryingly -- will there be too few games released to sustain the industry? The video game crash of 1983was due to there being too many games on the market -- will a situationon the opposite end of the spectrum lead to another crash? For all oursakes, we certainly hope not