No clue how the development cost of today compares with the mid 90s and early 2000. I guess some parts have become cheaper. However, I guess it also depends if we talk about indi-development, like Wasteland 2, or some blockbuster hits like Call of Duty and Diablo 3 that can easily sell 30+ milion units. Todd Howard, if I remember correctly, has said in some interview that they have to at the very least sell 3 million games, just to get the prodction cost in. Diablo 2, sold in it's first year of release I think 1 million units, and that game was more or less a surprise, Fallout 1 sold 300 000 and it was reasonable success for Interplay. I think many development teams today, have become also substantially bigger compared to the past, a game like Battlefield can easily have a team of 100 developers. Does someone know how many pople worked on Command & Conquer 1? I would be surpried if it was more then 20. I have read Sim City 1, was made by 2 people in a garage. Granted, Sim City 1 wasn't the most complicated game out there now are the visuals on the level of anthing you see today. The biggest problem though, seems to be the marketing. In some article they mentioned that making a game like CoD can easily cost more then 200 milion dollars. And only 10% of it are the costs of the actuall development, the rest goes into marketing, advertisement and such.
I guess you could say, development of games has become a lot more complex today.
i say so
