Seems to me like someone needs to help steamline making games a bit these 600 man teams taking 4 years is just stupid. Plus half of these games have a pre built engine to start.
I think next gen we will see a lot more of the get the most out of your engine sequels like the Assassin's Creed 2 sequels, the FFXIII sequels and all the DLC we have seen this gen. Then have a seperate dev team working on the major sequel for that franchise. Companies are going to have to squeeze every cent out of every single project so prepare for more DLC than ever.
As for Capcom 3 RE games this year isn't enough for them? They are doing fine really, I think their spacing of sequels have been great. It could suck if they start to make more smaller quick cash in games than they already do.
Don't they put out an Assassin's Creed every year? Where does this 3-4 year develpment cycle come from?
Most games only take two years, except for the very few studios who have the luxury of choosing longer cycles (like Rockstar).
AAA games like AC and COD are churned out every year with extremely high production values and I don;t see that changing.
If you look, for example, at something as simple as tree and organic material production. When Fable came out they likely spent months on that, as did any game with a lot of foliage. Now everyone uses SpeedTree, problem solved. That's months of development a team can now spend on AI.
Increased tech makes people more productive, not less so.
And you laughed at Archie's and my luddite activism, Aspro. 
Power to the player.Foolz said:And you laughed at Archie's and my luddite activism, Aspro.
Foolz said:And you laughed at Archie's and my luddite activism, Aspro.
Still laughin'
aspro said:
Still laughin'
We've taken down Ubisoft, and Sega USA/Europe.
Sega Japan is our next target, then we'll see who's laughing.
aspro said:AAA games like AC and COD are churned out every year with extremely high production values and I don;t see that changing.
Just because a new game in a franchise is released every year does not mean that it has only had 1 year of development. The publisher has very obviously staggered development and timed releases to achieve this, like how COD has alternative dev teams making the games to give themselves some breathing room. Given how linear and forced COD is, it's not a great example of a AAA production as the scope is very limited. It's almost an example of what next gen games with smaller teams and less time to make them will produce. Ass creed 1 and 3 have seen relatively long development times, I think Brotherhood was said to crib heavily from AC2 settings from what I read.
aspro said:Increased tech makes people more productive, not less so.
That's true to an extent Pro but it's not going to make up for a drop from 350+ team members and 4 years to 100 team members and 2 or less years. On next gen hardware where you need higher quality, more detailed assets i.e you need more artists as a Durango dev said he had to double the art team to make Durango assets and that doubled the budget of the game to a point where he was complaining. So you will still see AAA scope games but fewer of them.
Imagine the jump from N64 to Gamecube, you would not expect an N64 development team to be able to make a high end Cube game with less staff and less time than it took to make an N64 game.
Imagine the jump from Xbox to Xbox 360, you would not expect an Xbox 1 development team to be able to make a high end 360 game with less staff and less time than it took to make an Xbox 1 game.
Granted 3D game development is not in those pioneering days anymore and the process is much more bread and butter, but you still need loads of people to make a "monster production" today. Here we have the directors of Gears of War and Assasins Creed saying that you are going to see less AAA games next gen.
You cannot ask developers to make next gen games with less time and less staff than you make current gen games and expect them to work miracles. Something, somewhere has to give. I do not think that graphics will suffer as they are the candy in games enticing us kids and with next gen GPGPU's and optimised engines you should be able to produce sharp effects and a high IQ.
So something else has to take a hit. Logically that has to be game length or scope as there is nothing else that can be easily cribbed. Unless they want to chop off multiplayer modes which I would be happy about (this won't happen).
travo said:Don't they have different Ubi teams working on the ACgamers at the same time? If so, it's entirely possible to have three year cycles.
Not sure all the games had cycles like that, maybe 1 and 3 but not the rest. Wikipedia has Montreal listed for all but two of the games and those two are non-specified.
I'll buy that there wll be less AAA titles next gen due to higher develpoment cost.
Have we even considered the possibly of games costing $70 -$80 next gen?
Or make different games, not just your action adventures. Different genres.
So, the death of triple A?
Here's the story:
Assassin's Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson has described the latest game in the series as one of the last of the giant triple-A "dinosaurs".
Approximately 600 Ubisoft Montreal staff have worked on the project, supported by numerous other Ubi studios including Quebec City, Bucharest and Singapore, and Hutchinson told the latest issue of Edge that this type of massive production is a dying breed.
"We're the last of the dinosaurs. We're still the monster triple-A game with very large teams [and] multiple studios helping out on different bits. There are fewer and fewer of these games being made, especially as the middle has fallen out," he said.
"We really felt like this was a rare opportunity We had an experienced team, who had worked on the franchise for a while; we had the full backing of Ubisoft to make something huge; we had almost three years to do it, which is a rarity these days; the tech and the hardware platforms were both mature, which allowed us to start running instead of building base features; and the installed user base for all platforms is massive.
"Many of these factors are about to change, by choice of circumstance," Hutchinson added, "so a lot of us truly believed this was a once in a career opportunity."
Cliff Bleszinski is another to express the belief that we'll see fewer blockbuster releases each year once the next generation of consoles arrives, suggesting last December that the cost of developing major games on new hardware could prove too prohibitive for all but the biggest names in the industry.
And then Capcom recentely said:
Capcom wants less time between sequels, so is shortening development and shrinking team sizes
"We launch sales of popular series titles held by thecCompany approximately every 2.5 years. This is because the development of a single major title usually requires 3-4 years.
"In the event that there are few hits, it will be difficult to create a series title every year and earnings will be adversely impacted. For this reason, it is important either to maintain a large number of popular titles or shorten the sales cycle to ensure stable earnings.
"Among the multitude of major titles held by Capcom - such as Monster Hunter, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Lost Planet, Dead Rising and many others - we will promote shortening of the sales cycle in pursuit of further earnings stabilisation and growth."
Specifically, he went on, teams developing "major titles" will be "limited" to 100 people, "with multiple sequel titles developed at the same time".
Capcom do say they will outsource a lot of work, but outsourcing is already common in the industry. I was thinking, didn't RE5 and 6 have 300+ people working on the game? I think for RE6 the number was 350+?
We are going into the next generation - think about the massive upscaling that went on for the jump to HD consoles. With the new consoles (Wii U excluded) looking to be multiple times as powerful as 360 costs and productions would be expected to see a similar upscaling but it seems like that trend is dying out a bit. Publishers are becoming more aware of the long development times and budgets and are cutting back? AC3's director thinks 3 years is a rarity to make a game these days? We've had 4 or 5 years of development for games in the past, so the inference is that games are routinely being expected to be made in 2 years or less. Capcom is now shrinking their core team to 100 members. So do the math: RE7 will have 100 team members instead of 350 team members and they will be expected to produce the game in a shorter amount of time. We're going to have new consoles and if the scale of games goes up or the level of graphics goes up you will need more artists, testers etc inherently.
If developers are being asked to produce next gen games, not even on par with the same budget, team sizes or time allowed as they got this gen, what is going to happen to AAA game development?
In terms of AAA big budget productions as we know them, I can only see smaller, more linear, less polished games with fancy graphics.
On the plus side, perhaps without the money to make all the cinematic bells and whistles - we'll get some more daring or innovative designs happening? What do you think about all this?