Are games becoming too expensive to make?

[fishbowlhead]

Most games companies have massively lost perspective in terms of projects. It's been moving more and more to a divide between indie scale and AAA scale projects for years and the loss of AA titles has created a chasm in the market for affordably budgeted but much more regularly released titles. Much like many calling for Ridge Racer 8, it wouldn't need to be a big benchmark title, just well budgeted and priced and you could make a nice little earner out of the series again much like Asphalt has etc. MS can spend years and multi-millions making Forza Motorsport 9 but I'd probably get more from a fairly unambitious and not too highly budgeted Blur 2 followed by a Blast Corps 2 etc. Variety and budget management, win for all.

Blame streamers and yourtubers for all this. 1000hrs minimum gameplay or its crap mentality, morons, this just leads to bigger and bigger games with pointless fluff. Look at AC valhalla, absolutely ginormous and who’s going to ever finish it all?

On the other end of the spectrum you have Returnal which is sensibly sized but stupidly hard and virtually no one ever finishes it.

Devs need to find a better balance all round i think on size and difficulty, this will in turn help them plan and budget more efficiently.