Ex-PlayStation boss reveals AAA publishers aren’t signing as many games as the jump from PS4 to PS5 doubled the price of development for very little improvement
Ex-PlayStation boss reveals AAA publishers aren’t signing as many games as the jump from PS4 to PS5 doubled the price of development for very little improvement
36 Comments
Then why bother
This happens every generation. That’s why PS2 had nearly twice as many games as the PS3. However, I fail to see see how a relatively small graphical improvement from PS4 to PS5 justifies doubling the development costs.
How about the focus less on bullshit like Ray tracing and focus on gameplay and Dialogs instead
I’ll give an anecdotal counterpoint. We ported POSTAL 4 to ps4/5 and the cost to port was extremely expensive because of the work to get it running properly on ps4. Turns out it wasn’t worth it because ps5 sales dwarfed the ps4.
Edit: words
I’m sure there’s some truth behind this, but I suspect (as with most things) that the context has a lot to do with it.
For example, if the MSRP of $70 vs. $60 is accepted by consumers – will that impact this? Is the devkit expense for the PS5 more expensive? Are the technologies that developers want to use being supported how they want them by Playstation? Does the financial uncertainty of the coming year make new investment less likely to happen? Is there data about PS4 vs PS5 daily active users that makes creating PS5-specific titles a problem?
There could be SO much more to this than what’s in the article.
When you see some of the incredible work that small teams are publishing with UE5 and Unity 6…I gotta question if this is truly an issue of “development” costs. It sounds more likely that the development environment for large corporations is riskier in many ways and the financial environment is tenuous enough that risk-taking isn’t something they can engage with.
Just a continuation of AAA gaming becoming too expensive/big to succeed. Similar to Hollywood. These companies need to make changes or die.
It’s been clear to me for a long time that the limiting factor for visual/simulation fidelity in games isn’t one of technology but of budget.
What use is photorealism if creating the content and assets for it is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming? Dev time and team sizes don’t scale infinitely and the customer base doesn’t either. They can’t all be GTA 6.
I already dread the coming age of overusing generative AI. Even if a big AAA publisher says they don’t use it, someone in their layers of asset outsourcing will.
Doesn’t this set the precedence that PS6 will most likely be the peak victim of diminishing returns then? I’m curious to how this will affect next-gen and the overall toll on game development with Studios being acquired and left to die left and right, inflation, layoffs etc. This is honestly concerning.
omg the signs are real, these mfs are going to start using AI (the worse kind of it) in development. prepare for slop incoming smh.
“Doubled”? What the hell are they doing over there?
The thing about E33 is it’s not just beautiful graphically and artistically, but also very clearly knew where to cut scope to achieve what they did.
Like almost all the monster designs have no humanoid face whatsoever, this saves on things like animating them etc. The world map has the camera angled in a way that makes the world seem big without actually rendering and designing big environments. They used their budget in a smart way to both look cutting edge without incurring cutting edge costs.
Somehow, i don’t believe the “doubled costs” BS. There is no valid reason for this.
You do not need 2x more code or 2x more assets or 2x more story.
It’s still the same architecture.
More like an excuse to increase prices or reduce workforce etc.
Then, just do stylized graphics. Not every game has to have hyper-realistic graphics.
Its funny “very little improvement” but you look at death stranding 1 vs 2 and theres a clear improvement and also runs amazing even on standard ps5.
Imo the issue partly is the lack of project management skills. There are quite a few studios that release new titles, in good shape, with consisten time gaps.
Id software release since 2016 3 dooms, and in the meantime helped with starfield and Indiana Jones.
Guerilla Games since 2017 released 2 mainline Horizon Games, VR title and a lego title.
Blizzard releases CoDs like a factory.
Insomniac since 2018 released 2,5 spidermans and ratchet and clank game.
Even ubisoft is throwing up assassin’s creed games constantly.
You may say some of these games are not good, or interesting, but if we will except some bad pc ports from this list, then most of these games were released with content and acceptable technical state. And all these studio have one thing in common – they use their propietary tech, which they know very well, and also they put reasonable scope on the games.
But recently we have an avalanche of new, unexperienced studios, or old studios that are forced to get out of their comfort zone, and they all get an impossible task of producing a hit AAA game with a shit tone of budget. And there’s a big suprise when Concords fails, or when development hell of Dragon Age Veilguard or Avowed hits the final product quality and sales.
Easy fix, stop chasing more realism with every new game and just make fun, great games like Astro Bot. Let the CDPR, Rockstar, and Bethesdas make these big games. Everyone else should run reasonable, sustainable projects.
Like back in the day, not every game had to be on par or better than the current Final Fantasy or Metal Gear. We had game series like Bomberman and Ghouls and Ghosts that were iconic all the same. You don’t need every game to be AAA.
They’ve done very little to justify these ballooning budgets. Not every game has to be GTA 6. Deeper mechanics would be a lot more interesting than things like photorealism and yet the latter is what draws attention.
I’m so curious what it would cost to make a game like a slightly better looking San Andreas today.
Maybe stop hiring 5000 people to work on every game and you wouldn’t have so many issues.
i just don’t believe these sorts of things anymore. Expedition 33 is the best game i’ve played in years with nearly a 10/10 in almost every category you can rate a game on. and they did it all with a smaller team and it was the first title out of that developer. if a brand new Sandfall Interactive can do it with less people with less experience and only the funding afforded a new studio, there’s no reason other more well funded well established developers can’t. and yeah this article is talking about PS5 specifically, but if Expedition 33 in the exact same state it is currently in was released as a PS5 launch title, then it would be one of the most praised launch titles in video game history. a lot of money is being poured into cutting edge high quality expensive graphics when it turns out, just having a style that looks nice is way more important.
Any debates about this online are actually complete waste of time. No matter what anyone says there will always be plenty of gamers that complain about games not looking next gen enough for them or that X game is too short to pay full price because they only think X amount of hours is worth it.
It’s just pointless because most gamers/sheep are influenced too much by other peoples opinions and drama and controversy generates more engagement for social media influencers/grifters etc so they will always jump on the most inconsequential things and make a big deal out of them.
It’s a weird time to be a gamer though because the opposite is also true and cheaply made garbage games can also be massive successes simply because gamers/sheep are influenced by stupid memes etc.
How did the jump between generations double the cost of development when the games are minimally different. These companies need to fix their budgeting instead of begging us for more money.
I just don’t see how. Storage space is a major part of what held older games back. Such limited disc space. Most newer games benefit heavily from higher quality textures and models to make them look “better”. RDR2 released on PS4, never got a PS5 update and still looks significantly better than most PS5 releases.
So stop spending so much. And just make a game that looks half decent but is very fun to play. Devs need to accept the fact that gamers are kind of over this “Look how many polygons and triangles we have!” idea and just want to play games that aren’t buggy, tedious messes. Spend less but focus on actually making the game good. That takes brain power, not money.
For example: Black Ops 6 had a team of around 3000+ people from 8 studios working on it. The budget was around 700 million. There is NO reason why Black Ops 6 needs that many people or that much budget. Absolutely no reason. It is a first person shooter game, that is still a buggy mess almost a year later. Too much money spent on too much useless, and too many opinions on what the game should be. Strip all that back and get back to bootcamp.
That was definitely the problem, Shuhei. Not the fact that Ryan and Hulst pushed the dumbest idea in Sony’s gaming history, derailing multiple titles, fucking over studios and double dipping with forced cross-gen releases.
that ex playstation boss not revealing that they forced all their studios into making shitty live service games 1 of which was closed down after 2 weeks, 2 or 3 others already failed, 2 more people already don’t like and are bound to fail and like 7 more were completely cancelled before anyone saw anything?
because thats the actual reason ps5 as a platform is pretty dead for own exclusive games.
Luckily here are Tons of indie games and quite a few AA games coming out every month. Steam had 18k plus games added last year alone.
If we can get that looooong console cycle like the 360/Ps3 generation, that’d be awesome
Probably AA are the way to go, you can make some really good games with UE 5.4 (Expedition 33) with a considerably lower budget
Double A is the way forward. Triple A is too expensive and too large of teams to be able to make an actually coherent game.
Clair Obscur proved this
Can we go back to the 360/PS3 era of game development? Perfect combination of cost, dev time, visuals and fun
Art direction stomps all.
Graphics have plateaued. And honestly are not interesting. Gameplay is what matters. Nothing looks better than god of war 2018, last of us 2 or hell, metal gear solid 5
Hellblade 2 maybe and look how useless that game is.
It really is such a waste at this point to try and keep up with the joneses in terms of graphics. Just make cool games that looks like PS2-PS3 era, spend way less money on the art, and things go a bit better.
We’re getting LESS AAA games, their prices have been raised to 80$ and the hardware as well is getting pricier. All of this and games have not gotten much better. Why would anyone still buy consoles is beyond me.
This next gen we’ll see a even bigger jump in subs services and cloud gaming.
I replayed Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) recently and I don’t think games ever need to look better than that.
Nah. Resources allocation problem. Can’t make a good game when you’re focused on cramming any revenue generators you can inside.
What is stoping them from making games like they would on ps4 and just reaping the benefits of better hardware? (Serious question no technical expertise here)