Chris Deering says AAA titles need to cost £70 to support industry

Time to duck!

I fully agree!

Of course, I won’t buy them until they cost less than €40.

If the industry stopped thinking it was the movie business, then games wouldnt cost so much to develop

Got a pic of his face and full name…..just entered it in my death note he should die of a heart attack in about 32sec

COming from a guy who is a former President of Sony in Europe who went to Board of Management for Codemasters who employs 400 people. Now 70 million/400 what do we have here obviously everyone won’t get that much but he sure as hell will with that type of flow….

THis right here the “high cost” of making game is what will kill the industry

i’m suiting up for the shit storm as we speek.
Ican see their point but i ain’t paying £70 for a game. No matter how good the value is.

@ Grimrita: Your comment is made out of nonsense and pure fail. Have you noticed how games look prettier and have got more complex since the PSOne era? *That’s* why they cost more, dummy.

Except Mass Effect and Halo 3 had a 30 million budget

He’s totally right. And my wallet doesn’t like it.

Dream on, expect alot more pirates if games ever cost that much.

thank god he at least realizes people won’t spend that much

it seems to me like this is more an internal problem. Then discuss it among yourselves and find a new solution since you already know noone’s a berk enough to spend that shitload for a fucking videogame

£70? i choke at spending £50, at £70 your levels of piracy (for 360 atleast) would be astronomical

£70, more than the cart days? Sounds like they don’t want to sell them. I bet at £70 for normal edition even MW2 would falter.

Deering is talking out of his arse. If Hollywood can make a profit during a cinema run for a £100 million movie at £10 a pop, then other branches of entertainment should take note.

It’s the industry’s fault for letting it get out of hand. Instead of pulling back a little and not throwing money hats at everyone they’d probably have the same end result and not spend so much money.

I’m certainly not going to pay more than £35 for a standard game.

@ Harry

Where did you get that ‘fact’ from?

@Harry: cinema is much more mainstream than videogames.

Don’t be stupid Harry. How many more people go to the cinema that play games? A LOT more. There about 150 million viewings at a cinema in the UK alone, and for the movie industry the UK is small fry. Films in cinemas are a damn sight easier to distribute, and to a lot more countries too.

New releases in shops, even with RRP of £45, are usually £40… the EXACT same price as Megadrive games were 15 years ago. Except £40 then is worth about £51 now. And costs have gone through the roof,(about 100 fold) so has developement time, and the increased user base is no-where near enough to compensate.

So the costs have gone up 100 times, the price has, really, dropped £10, and the userbase hasn’t gone up enough to balance it out.

Game prices need to go up, end of discussion. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t have an understanding of basic maths and costing.

What Lutz said, only with an added alternative option of “costs need to be reduced, heavily”. Gaming’s sustained a level RRP all these years because it’s been a (massive) growth industry, with tens of millions more new customers entering the market every year. That’s going to start to plateau very very soon indeed.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand we’re off!

Lutz rampage.

It’s not my fault costs have gone up, it’s not my problem, but I won’t pay more than £35 for a normal release, I bet I still get to play all the games I want.

yea those console games cost sooo much to make these days lol

AAA game – £40 + DLC 1- £10 + DLC 2 – £10 = £60.

AAA game – £70 + DLC 1- £10 + DLC 2 – £10 = £90.

@BDH

Thats all games not just consoles.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/crysis-budget-revealed

PC exclusive game was 22 million to make

Why not just make it £100 you giant cock! Someone please silence this joker. £70! Perrr-lease! How to kill the industry in one fowl swoop. Please publishers don’t listen to this man

There is a reason why he is no more with SOny and now just a paper pusher for Codemasters….

GREED…it eventually brings down all Giants!!

Lutz has it right. Deering is speaking the truth so I don’t know why he’s getting shit for it. He’s saying stuff you don’t want to hear, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Gamers are fucking retarded. Gah.

And listen to someone who doesn’t know the difference between foul and fowl…

Costs can’t realistscally go down that much. What’s the single biggest cost in developing a game? Staff Wages.

Team of 100, over 3 years. Each one earning, let’s go easy and say on average £30k PA. That’s £9million on wages alone. For a team of 100, which is small fry. If that was your only cost, and you sold the games to the publishers at £30 a pop (Which is MASSIVELY over what they actually go for) they’d have to shift 300,000 just to break even on staff wages.

Staff wages won’t go down because game design is a highly skilled job. It’s not something you can walk into after school/college. To get on the bottom rung you’re going to be a graduate at best, and even then you’ll need training as sure as shit uni won’t be teaching you half of what you need to know.

Game prices will only remain static if the cost to make them reduces. This will only happen if staff take paycuts (not likely) or games become easier to develope/code, which given the increasing speed, power, and complexity of machines is also equally unlikely.

If games here in the staes went up another $10, I certainly wouldnt be buying new games very often, but i don’t buy them now. It would be even less.
I wait and buy it used or cheaper, or I rent it from gamefly.
I think Bethesda has done it the best of about any developer. They licened the Gamebryo engine, and have been using it since Morrowind. They take the improved engine features of each gamebryo relase, add their own, and release a new game, and it always looks great. Then they have small teams work on DLC, and release it while working on their next project, and each new DLC adds more money to the original cost of the game. Oblivion DLC is still selling like crazy, and that game has been out since 2006.

I think most DLC is crap. I made a AAA FPS, now Im going to release nothing but MP maps as DLC. That works for some games like Halo3, COD series, or GOW series, but for lesser known high end titles, a map pack isnt necessary if there arent a ton of people playing multiplayer.
It would be great if more companies did what Rockstar did with GTA4, and the first DLC. It used the city again in a whole new story. More games should add that type of DLC, story driven single player or co-op play.
I bought the collectors edition of Oblivion and Fallout3, and I own all the DLC, Bethesda made alot of money off of me, and they didnt have to ask even more for the original game.

Also, doesn’t this guy look like a Sean Connery era James Bond villan?

And when you hear Epic and Valve discribe that it doesn’t require behemoth teams and out of control budgets to make great games the whole price hike excuse becomes a little offensive.
Get your studio in order or run out of money.

@ fearmonkey. i had the exact same thought. seeing as he used to be the boss of sony it’s quite fitting.

FAT HARRY WAS RIGHT! make love not war http://www.zootube365.com/

Fuck this guy.. I ain’t paying that shit.