Budgets and the Video Game Industry

[Gunstar Green]

While it may not cost as much to make Skyward Sword as The Last of Us it's certainly AAA title as far as the industry is concerned.

It's a flagship title from a first party company released on what was at the time their flagship hardware with a large marketing campaign that was highly advertised and anticipated by the mainstream as well as expected to be a best-seller months before it was even out the door.

What the budget was is kind of irrelevant. It was intended to be a "blockbuster" and even with the stretched movie comparison there are blockbuster films that cost tens of millions to produce and blockbuster films that cost hundreds of millions.

[ZeroAX]

While it may not cost as much to make Skyward Sword as The Last of Us it's certainly AAA title as far as the industry is concerned.

It's a flagship title from a first party company released on what was at the time their flagship hardware with a large marketing campaign that was highly advertised and anticipated by the mainstream as well as expected to be a best-seller months before it was even out the door.

What the budget was is kind of irrelevant.

But it's not irrelevant to the topic at hand. Mario and Zelda are the kind of games that the industry needs. Games built on a smaller controlled budget, but of high quality.

But most 3rd party publishers prefer to chase the "blockbuster" model, meaning they put a lot of money in "me too" products. Think about it, Battlefield, which started as an exclusively multiplayer series, for some reason needs a single player story option. Why? Cause other blockbuster games have it too. Think of how many sandboxes games there have been in the past generation, who didn't know what to do with a sandbox, just so they could copy GTA.



The problem seems to be that people are confused about what triple A means. Is it a sign of quality or budget? Clearly the industry itself thinks it's about budget, cause I've seen many "triple A" releases which are in reality sub-par games, while I've seen many amazing handheld or indie releases that no one in the gaming press would call triple A.

[Gunstar Green]

I wasn't arguing against that, I was just stating it's kind of silly to pretend they're not intended to compete as AAA titles when they clearly are.

But yes, I agree, both Hollywood and the video game industry need to take a hard look at themselves in regards to spending less and taking greater risks instead of spending more and doing what they know is profitable. Even though saying, "don't do what you know is profitable" isn't an easy sell to executives. Hollywood at least may or may not be reaching a breaking point here, with several blockbusters under-performing or downright flopping this year.

Though I don't know if Mario and Zelda are specifically what the industry needs, because let's be honest here Nintendo is also only doing what they know works they're just speaking to a different audience. I do however agree with what you were getting at with quality titles on smaller budgets.