4 ms·
I am floored at how cheap games are these days. Ultima IV had a street price of $50-55; in 1985. That's ~$130 in 2019. Teams were far far smaller then. Of cour
by tibbon 7y ago
I am floored at how cheap games are these days.
Ultima IV had a street price of $50-55; in 1985. That's ~$130 in 2019. Teams were far far smaller then. Of course a "successful" game was also a far different standard; as within 4 years of release it had sold only 400,000 copies; despite being a pretty great game.
Whenever people talk about how expensive games are I feel very very old, because games (and the systems) used to actually be expensive.
The C64 was an amazing budget system, and was originally $595. That's like $1600 today. Yes it was a "computer" as well, but people balk at the price of $300 systems today and call $1000 computers too expensive.
- trilila 7y agoFrom what i gather, what most people find expensive are addons that you have to pay for, to be able to continuously play the game.
- HNisCurated 7y agoThey did this to me. And I never went back to consoles or AAA producers.
- trilila 7y agoGood. As a wannabe indie game developer, this pleases me.
- mr_crankypants 7y agoTeams were so much smaller. Ultima IV was about as big-budget as a video game got. Here are the credits for the DOS version: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/ultima-iv-quest-of-the-avatar/credits https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/ultima-iv-quest-of-the-av... 19 people, total, for the original development and production on the Apple II version, plus the PC, Atari and Amiga ports.
- kbumsik 7y ago> 19 people, total Still it was much smaller. Witcher 3 dev team is about 250.
- mr_crankypants 7y agoAccording to https://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-is-how-much-the-witcher-3-cost-to-make/1100-6430409/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-is-how-much-the-witch..., 240 is just the number of in-house staff. The full count of people who worked on the project came to more like 1,500.
- celticmusic 7y agowhat people miss is that the audience is far FAR larger than it used to be, so studios make up it up in volume. Game studios today make more than game studios 10 and 20 years ago.