The gaming world has come a long way since the early days when gaming was just being introduced to the gaming audience. It has also developed in terms of cost and funding each game. In the early days PACMAN for the 2600 game console, also known as the Video Computer System (VCS) was made for $100,000. However in the 21st century that would probably cover for the staffs wages, this brings me to another point; there was only one person who was involved in making PACMAN, which took him couple of months to make. A successful game i.e. Halo can take over a year to make and would require over hundreds of people.
I hear lot of people saying that $100,000 back in those days was a lot of money compared to know as developers are spending millions in putting a game in to the market. It took about $40 million to make Halo 2 and sold over 8 million copies. The cost of making games is one of the major issues concerning the game industry as the cost will keep on rising year upon year. Also the time it takes to put games on the market is rising and will rise in the future. Final Fantasy XIII took about 5 to 6 years make, everyone was expecting the game to be faultless but it was one of the crappiest ff titles around (my opinion).
I think more and more people are going to demand their games to be released earlier, or release them a bit later but needs to be perfect. When gamers have to wait a long time they sometimes lose interest in games and simply do not buy the game, or they might just get a pre-owned copy. Pre-owned games is another problem that companies have to face now, as more people are only buying pre-owned games. This may be because the game itself costs too much or they do not see the need in buying a brand new game when they can buy it a lot cheaper.
There are a few developers who are combating against pre-owned games, Polyphony Digital have now made exclusive content available for those who buy new copies of games which I think is a good way in making gamers buy new games.
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