There’s more than just these trends as well – for example, have you considered how cross gen games have become so much more prominent as time has gone on? Have you considered how so many games now launch with less content at release than their older counterparts may have had? Have you noticed how publishers around the world are now sticking with sequels over new IPs (and even when we do get new IP, it’s usually a reskinned variant on a popular existing trend, rather than something actually new)?

Of course, as players, we want the industry to walk back these kinds of degradations to our AAA game playing experience – but here’s the thing, ultimately, it is a certain kind of player’s drive towards demanding the latest and greatest cutting edge AAA tech based video games with nothing less than the most immersive possible worlds and stories that has ultimately caused the current state of things. You may not like hearing that – but the reason to blame for the state of things is the very thing so many of you love.

Ultimately it comes down to the never ending push for cutting edge tech in video games that causes these problems across the board. It manifests in three separate ways:

1. More money is needed to develop games
2. More time is needed to develop games
3. More complexity needs to be managed

Each of those three factors ends up contributing to some (or many) of the common complaints players have, so let’s go through them one by one and try to understand how exactly this is contributing to the situation on hand.

MORE MONEY IS NEEDED TO DEVELOP GAMES

More money necessary to make games has multiple effects. Budgets become massive which means a few things, but most importantly, it means that publishers become risk averse. In turn, this means that publishers are now less likely to try new and unproven things – because given the investment that goes into making these games, they need to have a certain degree of assurance of returns on that money before they allocate it to development. Effectively, this is why so many publishers now rely on franchises and sequels and re-releases and remakes endlessly – not just third parties like Ubisoft and EA, but even, for example, PlayStation is now moving to a model where tentpole releases are franchised into cross-media properties, whether it be a Ghost of Tsushima movie or a The Last of Us TV show.

But the lack of new IP isn’t the only problem that bloated budgets contribute to – it also means that when we do get new IP, it is effectively just a reskinned variant on something that already exists, just in a new setting or characters. This is most obvious with Ubisoft games. Because publishers are still sinking in a lot of money into these games upfront – so if it’s a new IP, they still need assurance that they will get returns on it, and it being a new IP has already introduced a lot of risk to the equation. Relying on tried and tested genres, mechanics, and game style is a way to alleviate that risk – but in turn, it’s why we end up with so much homogenized design across a publisher’s portfolio. And Ubisoft isn’t the only publisher to blame for this either – while the whole “Sony exclusive template” meme is rubbish, ultimately it is undeniable and indisputable that Sony’s lineup today is far more homogenized than it was back on the PS2, PS3, or PS Vita – those systems had games such as Ape Escape standing next to God of War, Gravity Rush next to Killzone, Tokyo Jungle next to Uncharted – and we got a lot of those crazy types of games. Today, the bulk of Sony’s focus goes towards a certain kind of narrative driven cinematic action adventure game, and while the other, more quirky kinds of games still exist in their lineup, they’re also far fewer in volume and overall proportion of their total output than before. Because games cost too much to develop, and taking risks on unproven or experimental stuff can be financial suicide.

This homogenization of games is still not the end of the problems that escalating game development budgets create though. The biggest one, the one that most people will agree with being a huge problem, is the abusive monetization practices we see in games across the board – pre-order bonuses, expensive special editions, DLC, micro transactions, loot boxes, season passes, battle passes, all of that. Those are all ways for publishes to cushion the risk they are taking on – because it means that with those, they don’t need their games to sell some ungodly and unreasonable amount to make their investment back, they can generate more revenue even from fewer copies sold to try and make back the cost. High budgets are directly responsible for how many publishers are trying to nickel and dime customers these days. They are why games now cost $70 (while these micro transactions and nickel and dimming schemes exist).

The move towards higher budgets has also caused other repercussions for video games as a medium and as an industry, though many of those are for the better to be entirely fair. For example, the reason most games now release as multiplatform is specifically because of the huge upfront investment that goes into the development of one – given that, limiting your audience for no reason doesn’t make any financial sense. It’s why Microsoft and Sony are releasing their games on PC too now – because with the costs being as absurdly high as they are, it is very literally impossible for their games to be profitable if they are just limited to one system – yes, even for Sony, who sell more games than Microsoft does by an order of magnitude. It’s also why so many games are cross-gen right now (including, again, for Sony) – because those games cost too much for anyone to just limit them to two systems that have collectively sold less than 25 million units. Have you wondered why Sony has its big budget AAA productions like God of War, Horizon, Spider-Man Miles Morales, and Gran Turismo 7 as cross-gen while smaller stuff like Returnal gets to be exclusive? There’s your answer – the bigger games cost far too much for Sony to be able to recoup costs if they are just stuck on PS5. With smaller fare, the investment is smaller, so the returns can also afford to be smaller in the process.

Here’s the thing, if budgets were lower, you wouldn’t see many or most of these negative factors in video games show up, and certainly not to this degree – we actually have existing examples and evidence of this on the market at this exact moment. Indie games, mid-budget games, Japanese games, and Nintendo Switch all are evidence that locking yourself to lower tech and therefore lower budgets means your games can afford to get experimental or inventive, they can afford to release without raising base game prices or having abusive monetization – it’s why those areas of the industry are the ones that gave us games as great and wildly experimental as Persona 5 or Tetris Effect or Hades or Hollow Knight or Splatoon – because when they weren’t chasing the literal latest and greatest cutting edge AAA goal, they didn’t have to worry about losing obscene amounts of money, and their creativity wasn’t as constrained as a result. You will find these to be a recurring theme in the coming points as well.

GAMES TAKE MORE TIME TO MAKE

This one is fairly self evident. At this point developers need more time per content than they did before because the resource intensiveness demanded by the fidelity of modern tech mandates it. Basically, it was easier to have a gigantic world in Final Fantasy 7 than it is in Final Fantasy 7 Remake (and that’s why Final Fantasy 7 Remake is split into parts), it was easier for Monster Hunter to launch with over a hundred monsters in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate than it was for them to even reach 50 at launch in Monster Hunter World, it was easier to have completely different and divergent quests with loads of different flavour dialog in Morrowind than it is in Skyrim, it was easier for Halo 3 to launch with campaign, co-op, multiplayer, and Forge than it is for Infinite to do so.

This is unavoidable now, because more development resources are needed to generate assets and content at the expected modern graphical fidelity level. In other words, to create a single area at the modern graphical level takes more time, effort, people, and money than several large areas may have back on the PS2 – so obviously, the amount of content available in the base game has to take a hit, because to match that insane amount of content, you’re going to need stupid amounts of time. In turn that means that it’s basically impossible to have that amount of content in your games at launch at this point if you’re following sane development cycle windows (unless you’re Rockstar and can afford to take ten years to develop one game). In other words, this is what causes the longer development cycle windows now that we see, and the numerous delays that we see – they have to happen, because there’s no other way to develop games with a reasonable amount of content (which is still a step down from the previous games in a lot of cases), at the expected fidelity levels. Remember how on PS3, Naughty Dog put out three Uncharted games and The Last of Us, while on the PS4, we only got one full Uncharted game, one The Last of Us game, and an expansion for that Uncharted game? Remember how on the Xbox 360, Bethesda put out Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, but on the Xbox One, we only got Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 (as well as a few dozen Skyrim ports to be fair)? Remember how on the Xbox 360, we got Halo 3, ODST, Reach, and 4, and on Xbox One, we only got 5 and the Master Chief Collection? Yeah, that’s why

And this is why we see so many games launch with lower amounts of content compared to their predecessors as well – because the smart thing to do ends up being launching with a low content base and then building on it.

Tying this back to the previous point about budgets, this is also the reason that games often launch so buggy or undercooked these days, it’s why Fallout 76, Cyberpunk, Sea of Thieves, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Battlefield 2042, Destiny 2, you name it, all launched with such a dearth of content and so many problems – because the longer you develop something, the more exponentially higher the cost is going to get, which means that, combined with the increasing development times thrown into the equation, at some point the financially sound decision is actually to just release the damn game, get some immediate returns, and use those to continue development.

And here’s the thing, just like with the previous examples, we know there are existing counterpoints to these trends – in those same areas in fact. So many (not all, but many) indie games, Japanese games, and Nintendo Switch games all stand as a counterpoint to this bunch of trends – it’s why Shin Megami Tensei 5, Persona 5, NEO: The World Ends With You, Hollow Knight, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Hades, all launched with so much content right off the bat (in most cases matching or exceeding their predecessors). It’s why so many of those (such as Smash or SMT5) had reasonably contained development cycles. It’s why they launched so polished – because again, when you are not chasing the literal latest and greatest, you end up freeing yourself creatively in a lot of ways.

MORE COMPLEXITY NEEDS TO BE MANAGED

This again is relatively easy to understand. Because of just how many moving parts there are in games now, owing to the expectations for the latest and greatest from players across the board, you open up a ridiculous amount of possibilities for errors and failure in your games. So many things working together not only means there’s a lot more things going wrong, but also that, combined with the previous two points, you’re left with far less time to address far more errors than you had before. So again, given the logistical, financial, and resource reality that developers and publishers are faced with, they just opt to accept a certain degree of jank as the necessary price for being able to deliver games on the expected AAA level in reasonable time frames and then patch them up as errors are reported by crowd sourcing them to their big player base. This in turn is what leads to the extent of buggy and broken releases we get these days. I’m not saying that it’s good to charge players for buggy products – I am saying that the fiscal and logistical reality of the situation literally leaves them with no other choice.

Here’s the thing, then – the current drive towards cutting edge AAA games, with the latest and greatest tech, and escalating budgets and development resources, is unsustainable and untenable. It is extremely harmful for the video game industry, in fact – other than the many issues I noted above, this never ending drive towards the cutting edge has caused many studio closures and bankruptcies, it’s what causes developers to look for acquisitions for financial security, it’s what causes so many franchises to be discontinued because they can’t meet the ever increasing threshold for sales necessary to justify investment, it’s what has led to such fewer games coming out on the high end than before, and with so many more problems. At some point, the insanity of pushing for and demanding newer and better tech needs to stop – games already looked great on the PS4, they already looked great on the PS3, in fact. There was no immediate need for a next gen to raise the tech baseline and development costs again just yet, when five of the top six rated games of last generation – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2, Persona 5 Royal, The Last of Us Remastered – five of those were made for functionally Xbox 360 level tech and visual fidelity. Games can still be great without needing the absolute latest and greatest cutting edge tech. They have been great all this time. This drive for the latest tech every few years, before there is any actual need for it, has done nothing but harmed the games we get as a result. At some point this insanity needs to stop.

Hopefully the industry just realizes that before it is too late.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Over the last few years, AAA game development has gotten more and more out of control. Games now take hundreds of millions of dollars to be made, with teams of hundreds working on them, months spent on bug testing (to no avail, because the games are still shipped broken, often with extensive day one patches), with multiple delays, and years long development cycles, and only franchise games being made, due to the high risk involved in AAA game development.

It’s a total mess, and something needs to be done before the bottom falls out of the games industry. This isn’t just something I’m saying- the director of Uncharted, Amy Hennig, shares this sentiment as well.

Suggesting that something has ‘gotta give,’ when it comes to AAA game development, Hennig described her own time at Naughty Dog, and the stress that went with it, in an interview with Idle Thumbs’ Designer Notes podcast (via GamesIndustry.biz). “[It was] really hard. The whole time I was at Naughty Dog – ten-and-a-half years – I probably, on average, I don’t know if I ever worked less than 80 hours a week. There were exceptions where it was like, ‘Okay, let’s take a couple of days off,’ but I pretty much worked seven days a week, at least 12 hours a day.” Hennig also said that the lifestyle that goes with AAA game development is not worth it.

She discussed how AAA game development works at large, noting that the cycle has become untenable, and something needs to give.

“When you go to pitch a game like this, it’s like, ‘Well it better have this many hours, and you’d better have this mode, and you’d better do this.’ Or we could go, ‘You know what, we’re gonna make the best fucking six hour game you’ve ever seen. And that’s all it is. And could you please make that $40?’

“We’re definitely at the point where something’s gotta give… And my hope was that different means of distribution, the fact that everything wasn’t bricks-and-mortar and in a box, it would be that. And I think in some quarters that’s true, but I think for AAA development we’re still stuck in that rut, and the ante keeps getting upped.

“I mean, Uncharted 1; a ten-hour game, no other modes… you can’t make a game like that any more.”

She’s definitely right about that- about all of that. AAA game development is brutal on the developers, and has led to most of the games industry being stuck in a stagnant rut. With the mid tier of game development having died out last generation, high end console gaming is in serious danger of becoming too unsustainable for most companies to bother- and if you think that’s alarmist thinking, you only need to look at the rise of mobile gaming, and just how many companies are content with focusing on that over AAA games.

“We’re all hardcore gamers at Volition, and at the end of the day I don’t care how much a developer spent on a game – it doesn’t matter to me. Its $60 of my money either way, so I don’t care if he only spent $80 million versus $200 million. What’s the best game – that’s what’s going to get my money. But that makes it really tough, because in my opinion gamers buy fewer games because of these $60 price points. If I’m going to buy six games a year then I’m probably just going to buy six of those $200 million games and call it a day – I don’t have to worry about anything else.”

He went on to add that this phenomenon forces game developers to be more conservative:

“You can’t really innovate much any more, because the games are so expensive publishers don’t want you to take chances. That means you’ve got to do the best you possibly can and spend a ton of money or you’re going to do things that possibly won’t be the best they can be, in which case people won’t buy it and they’ll just go buy the game that did cost all that money.”

But, Boone acknowledged that with the incoming next gen console boom, there is hope for change:

“But now with all these different sorts of platforms – even with next gen now – I’m hopeful that this means they can come up with different price points. It’s certainly the implication from what we’re hearing from Microsoft and Sony – that there’s more ways to distribute games and more ways to price games.”

How do you feel about current console pricing? Let us know in the comments below.

Now Oddworld will be revived in the form of New ‘N’ Tasty, which looks to remake the original game and evolve it further. We spoke to Gilray about the same, and also asked his take on everything from PlayStation 4 development to the future of AAA and indie development.

Ravi Sinha: When Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee first came out, it was a huge departure from many platformers and action games of the time, mixing in stealth and puzzle solving over straight up violence. How has the evolution of the franchise since then influenced the decision to remake it as New ‘N’ Tasty?

Stewart Gilray: It hasn’t really. We’ve effectively rebooted the company as a self-publishing indie. As such we felt it would be a great idea to introduce a newer audience to the franchise with our original title, but obviously not a “port” of it, but a proper ground up remake with new features for a new generation.

Ravi Sinha: It’s interesting because the Oddworld franchise started out on PlayStation, with Munch’s Oddysee being exclusive to the Xbox, and now New ‘N’ Tasty will be on all platforms except Xbox. What are your thoughts on this turn of events through the history of Abe?

Stewart Gilray: Actually, we will be on Xbox if we can find the right way for us to release on that platform. And with Microsofts recent indication of a self-publishing route we’ll see what they propose for that, so it’s highly likely we could be on that platform too.

Ravi Sinha: Oddworld New ‘N’ Tasty has been in the news for much of the criticism leveled against Microsoft and their policies when it comes to indie developers, including Just Add Water. Could you tell us a bit more about the current situation and whether we’ll be seeing New ‘N’ Tasty for the Xbox One or Xbox 360 in this lifetime?

Stewart Gilray: As I mentioned before, we’d like to be on the hardware, it just depends on how they move forward with self-publishing, time will tell.

"Unity has been a breathe of fresh air, compared to the previous engine. Unity is so modular and so so easy to work with, it took us around 3 months to get back to where we were before the switch, but we’ve made massive time savings thanks to the switch."

Ravi Sinha: Sony has undertaken an altogether different approach with the PlayStation 4, pushing for tie-ups with indies and self-publishing. Will you be looking into hooking up more with Sony in the future or will the focus be on multiple platforms for now?

Stewart Gilray: As far as I’m concerned we’re platform agnostic, meaning we’ll go anywhere if they’ll have us. I’d also like to stress that “indie” isn’t word that is special to Sony as far as “self-publishing” goes. They treat everyone the same, if you’re Ubisoft or a tiny 2 man company, it’s all the same, there is no difference.

Ravi Sinha: Speaking on the current state of AAA gaming, with EA CCO Richard Hilleman estimating that there are about 25-30 studios working on AAA games worldwide, what are your thoughts on indie-gaming in that regard, especially with all the new trends coming forward such as crowd-funding via Kickstarter? Will we continue to see a further dwindling of AAA studios and a further rise of the indies?

Stewart Gilray: Interesting question, I think we’re going to see larger, quality titles from Indies, which might be considered as AA or something, AAA doesn’t really stand true now as it once did I don’t think. New ‘n’ Tasty looks amazing, to the point some have called it AAA, but yet, we’re a small 16 man team, so it’s an interesting proposal as I said. Same with titles such as République from Camouflaj, it’s indie, yet doesn’t seem like it.

Ravi Sinha: It was announced that the development was switched over the Unity Engine over the Unreal engine. What benefits does Unity provide in terms of development? How has it helped in bringing the vision of New ‘N’ Tasty to fruition?

Stewart Gilray: Not sure where that came from, we’ve NEVER used the Unreal engine and never will. We did switch to Unity at the end of 2012, but I’m not going to discuss which engine that was. Unity has been a breathe of fresh air, compared to the previous engine. Unity is so modular and so so easy to work with, it took us around 3 months to get back to where we were before the switch, but we’ve made massive time savings thanks to the switch.

"Currently there’s no plans for a multiplayer mode, but who knows what we might do in that space in the future."

Ravi Sinha: New ‘N’ Tasty will be built from scratch. Considering the offbeat gameplay that Abe’s Oddysee provided, what can we expect with the remake?

Stewart Gilray: It’s the same old loveable gameplay from the original, there are SOME tweaks and changes, there will be some surprises and I’d like to keep them that way for the moment, but I think new and old players alike will be more than happy.

Ravi Sinha: Can you please tell us about the enemies in the game?

Stewart Gilray: The main physical enemy are Slig’s these are basically guards of the might Mullock, who’s a nasty piece of work Glukkon. He runs a big corporation that are basically harvesting the indigenous populous of Oddworld for food. Along the way in your game you also meet those indigenous species who, to be fair, are still wild animals, Scrabs and Paramites, they don’t make friends easily as such they will try and kill Abe.

Ravi Sinha: Will New ‘N’ Tasty feature a multiplayer component? Maybe a “Capture all the Mudokons” mode?

Stewart Gilray: Currently there’s no plans for a multiplayer mode, but who knows what we might do in that space in the future.

Ravi Sinha: What are your thoughts on developing on the PS4? How does the unified system architecture and the massive 8GB GDDR5 RAM helps you to make a better video games product?

Stewart Gilray: It means we don’t have to worry so much about stuff, the fact that the memory operates at around 172GB/s is amazing, so we can swap stuff in and our as fast as we can without it really causing us much grief. It also means we can do a lot of lead development on high end PC’s without having to worry overly about RAM limitations or graphics features our target platform DOESN’T have. Granted we are working on other platforms that do have those restrictions but the Unity Engine has helped minimize those.

"Completely, it’s [PS4] a highend PC with extras, by that I mean the DDR5 RAM, the fact it doesn’t have an OS such as Windows on it taking up MUCH of the system resources, leaving us developers access to pretty much the entire hardware, meaning we can do more at with better performance than an equivalent PC spec."

Ravi Sinha: Can you please let us know how are you using the DualShock 4’s share button and touch pad?

Stewart Gilray: To be honest we’ve not finalized design for those yet, but the Share button is more of a system thing, for sharing captured video that the system captures automatically, I believe.

Ravi Sinha: Can you please let us know what kind of puzzles the players can expect in the game? And how long will the final game be?

Stewart Gilray: It’s a platforming puzzle title with puzzles based around that concept. There are some music based puzzles too and a good few timing ones. As for the final play length, I’m not actually sure yet, but I’d say at least 8hrs.

Ravi Sinha: Do you plan to give players character customization options? Can players earn skills as they progress through the game?

Stewart Gilray: There are a couple of skills that Abe earns through the story, but these are a part of the story progress of the title. There’s nothing from a true customization point of view.

Ravi Sinha: There are a lot of developers out there who claim the PS4 to be a high end PC. Now as someone who is developing the game on both the PS4 and PC, do you think this notion holds true?

Stewart Gilray: Completely, it’s a highend PC with extras, by that I mean the DDR5 RAM, the fact it doesn’t have an OS such as Windows on it taking up MUCH of the system resources, leaving us developers access to pretty much the entire hardware, meaning we can do more at with better performance than an equivalent PC spec.

Ravi Sinha: Is there any update on Stranger’s Wrath 2? Will we indeed see FangusKlout leading his sheep on a brutal route to salvation in the coming years, regardless of the success of New ‘N’ Tasty?

Stewart Gilray: I’d say there’s a likely chance of Fangus and other titles turning up at some point 😉

And according to Raymond, in an interview with Digital Spy, the rising costs of AAA titles are going to become a problem sooner rather than later. “I think the big question to me, as the expectations of these big triple-As keep on growing and the consoles become more powerful and teams get bigger, is how do we keep the costs in line.

“That’s for sure one of the things that is going to stifle innovation eventually. Anytime you want to make a big triple-A, you’re spending, let’s say $100 million, you’re not going to want to take a chance. It’s got to be, I’m making the next Call of Duty or the Assassin’s Creed and I know it’s going to make ‘X’ amount, so we’ll make money. I think that’s the tougher thing.

“I think it depends on what type of game you’re making, but all games I think we have to invest in tools to make people more efficient, to perhaps make 10 times the amount of content that we were making before with the same amount of effort. That’s the only way we’re going to keep up. So there has to be a big investment there.

Of course, game development as a whole has changed. Some of the most successful titles of our time have come from indie developers, including Minecraft and Terraria. Digital distribution is on the rise, even for big-name games like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.

“The reality is the industry is changing, the way people are consuming games is changing, the expectations are changing. More stuff is online. What does that mean? There are some games like The Walking Dead which are starting to have interesting episodic [content], but that doesn’t apply to all games. What’s the business model that makes sense to you? What’s going on with free-to-play, what does that mean for the console market?”

Raymond stated the example of Team Fortress 2, saying that, “I think that’s a great business model to investigate for some games.” Namely one that doesn’t affect game balance but still gets players enthusiastically involved for customizing their characters.

Speaking to MCVUK, one retail head stated that, “The core gamers will be out in force at launch. But after that it’s going to be hard convincing consumers to spend £350 to £430 on a new console as many of the best games will be available on machines they already own. That’s made even more complicated when you consider that games like GTA V, Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Gran Turismo 6 are only available on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.”

Many of the upcoming AAA titles will also be available on the current generation. As Dixons PC games buyer Simon Urquhart puts it, “I think there will be a ‘wait and see how much this affects me’ attitude to the next-gen from gamers.

“If they aren’t seeing an immediate difference in the server populations and gameplay features, then it’ll be tough to justify the expense. Killer apps are always tipping points for owners of legacy consoles and until dates on those are released, gamers will be patient – especially if they have a PC and an Xbox 360.

“Sony and Microsoft are going to have to work hard with publishers to make use of the new features of the next-gen. That being said, there is a whole new audience for the ‘family entertainment hub’ that both are trying to reach.”

“Publishers seem to be covering every angle by bringing their titles out on current and next-generation formats. As a publisher you wouldn’t want to put all your eggs in the next-gen basket straight away, especially as Microsoft have just announced record sales of the Xbox 360,” according to Games Centre MD Robert Lindsay.

“If consumers are feeling the pinch, and with quality titles still being released on current formats, the customer transition to next-gen might be slower this time around.”

But there will also be a push to get the best versions of the games available, which will of course be on the PS4 and Xbox One. Some games, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, even has content exclusive to next gen consoles.

As Asda games boss Craig Thirkell states, it’s going to be more about getting the stocks right. “It’s going to be a difficult and sensitive time inventory-wise to plan this right with the publisher – for them and us. We welcome the appearance on both current and next-gen, but getting the mix right will be key to making any money with the risk of poor availability versus overstock.

“Personally I don’t see any reason not to upgrade. Gamers are gamers – they want the latest and greatest and if it look and plays better on next-gen then I think they will trade up. PC gamers think nothing of paying out £300 every two years or so on graphic card upgrades just to keep up with the cutting edge improvements in gameplay and frame-rate.

“I also think there will be a lot of trade-in opportunities this year as we find a proportion of gamers buying current-gen titles until they are launched on next-gen, especially in the two months running up to launch.”

“What is true today is that there are fewer AAA games being built than at the same point in the previous generation. I’ve done some calculations that say there were about 125 teams in the industry worldwide working on what I’d call a AAA game on a console, and that was 7 or 8 years ago.

“That number today is well south of 30; probably in the 25 range. What’s interesting is that, if you look at the composition of those teams, the numbers are exactly the same: those 125 teams became 25; the size of the teams increased by a factor of four. It seems things will stabilize heading into the next generation though.

Of course, this is due to the increase in visual quality and ever demanding nature of consumers for the biggest, best and most explosive title out there. “This has everything to do with the standard definition to HD change. If you look at the math, that change is about content – richly about content – and as we evolved, our costs went substantially up.

“And the number of people on teams with that kind of vision went up by necessity. I don’t see that kind of content-oriented change coming in this next generation of platforms. As a result, I think we were on a path that made me nervous, but it seems to have stabilised.”

But the publisher isn’t done yet. According to Microsoft Games Studio head Phil Spencer in a short response on Twitter:

@TheLocksus Yea, we still have exclusives to reveal.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) July 1, 2013

There is a chance we could see titles like the next Banjo-Kazooie and Gears of War along with a new Fable. However, there’s also a chance that Lionhead Studios and Rare could be bringing out entirely new IPs for the Xbox One.

As for where these exclusives will be revealed, our money is on Gamescom. Expect a few announcements before then as well. Which exclusives are you looking forward to, or wish that Microsoft would announce?

As of now, the discounts haven’t been revealed, but the games that will be available are quite impressive: Assassin’s Creed III, Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands 2, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Bulletstorm, Command and Conquer Red Alert 3, Crysis, Crysis 3, Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga, Dragon Age Origins, Far Cry 3, Far Cry Instincts Predator, Forza Horizon, Gears of War: Judgement, Hasbro Family Game Night 3, Hitman Absolution, Kinect Sports 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Lego Batman 2: DC Superheroes, Lego Lord of the Rings, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Rising: Revengence, Monopoly Streets, Perfect Dark Zero, Prey, Rockstar Table Tennis, The Orange Box, Tomb Raider, Witcher 2, WWE 13 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Stay tuned for next week as pricing information becomes available.

Attending a Gamelab conference session in Barcelona, Spain, Assassin’s Creed creator and former THQ Montreal creative director Patrice Désilets talked about how the future of the gaming industry is digital.

“Right now we are at a crossroads in our industry. But I don’t believe the AAA blockbuster will die. Maybe the way it is distributed will change, but it won’t die.” In reference to the reversal of the Xbox One’s policies, Désilets stated that, “Yeah, games come on disc, and I get it guys you were really pissed off. But, deep down, nobody cares about not having CDs any more. The future is digital, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

As of now, Désilets is busy fighting a lawsuit against Ubisoft following his termination from the company after their purchase of THQ Montreal.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz