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Development costs have gone up. Even if the cost of hiring individual programmers has remained constant (and I don't have evidence one way or another there - w
by jparise 16y ago
Development costs have gone up.
Even if the cost of hiring individual programmers has remained constant (and I don't have evidence one way or another there - we'd have to consult something like Game Developers' annual salary survey and apply the appropriate adjustments), development teams have definitely grown in size. Bigger teams mean more developers (from all disciplines), including additional management and QA staff.
There are also other cost areas to consider, such as licensing fees and devkit costs, but I'm afraid that I can't share specific numbers there.
- dman 16y agohttp://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs - That suggests that game dev costs have nearly tripled over the last ten years. I also think the same timeframe saw the cost of a game go from ~20 to ~60. Admittedly I always bought games a fair bit of time after they got released, so my recollection on game costs might be biased / incorrect. Also - cost of devkits has in fact gone down. Suggested by the page that I linked to, and I know for a fact otherwise. At least the PS3 devkit and the Nintendo DS devkit are very reasonably priced.
- ShardPhoenix 16y agoNew AAA games have never cost as little as $20. The increase is more like 50 -> 60.