I second this rant. But, more so from development and business point of view. It is nice to have awesome graphics, but at the cost of 10 million per game?
What we have now is just a tweak to an engine and higher res textures, voila NBA 2006. Those are no brainers, but what about those break-out games? None of the publishers or developers are willing to risk 18 month development and 5 - 10 million on game genre that is not cookie cutter FPS or 3rd person shooter.
I am scratching my brain myself as to how to minimize the development costs. These days, graphics take a lot of time and money. I believe if we cut the graphics (textures and models), we would save 60 - 75 percent of development cost and perhaps 40 - 60 percent of development time.
How? Don't know. But it has to be done. With higher res textures and more and more ram to store larger and larger areas, you have to reduce that cost and labor. I don't mind higher res and more ram, but the development must be contained within 6 - 9 months and no more than 1 million dollars.
What we have now is just a tweak to an engine and higher res textures, voila NBA 2006. Those are no brainers, but what about those break-out games? None of the publishers or developers are willing to risk 18 month development and 5 - 10 million on game genre that is not cookie cutter FPS or 3rd person shooter.
I am scratching my brain myself as to how to minimize the development costs. These days, graphics take a lot of time and money. I believe if we cut the graphics (textures and models), we would save 60 - 75 percent of development cost and perhaps 40 - 60 percent of development time.
How? Don't know. But it has to be done. With higher res textures and more and more ram to store larger and larger areas, you have to reduce that cost and labor. I don't mind higher res and more ram, but the development must be contained within 6 - 9 months and no more than 1 million dollars.