The next generation is going to be expensive – I’ve spoken about that one before. And it’s becoming a more frequent vibe around the block as game companies start talking about what it will cost them. Namco announced that they are developing tools they can use across platforms in order to make game development cheaper. In short, even the publishers are getting into the middleware act. With Criterion claiming that half the games in development are using Renderware, it’s pretty obvious current development is costly already and the next one will cost a bundle.
The problem is that the games industry grew faster than its audience. While games sales break records every year and ELSPA, the ESA and other Industry seers and promoters love the emergence of a casual gaming crowd, the hardware race is a much faster, far more aggressive one. Specs mean power and power means more dazzle, depth and immersion – even Half Life had solid system demands for its day. We tap into this stream of thinking and we look as hardware screams ahead, snapping and spitting at each other like a bizarre pit-bull race. Hence anything hardware is part of this cycle, and the consoles are no different. I’d like to have vindicated the PC at this point; alas it’s probably most to blame. But PCs don’t impress the masses – they want consoles.
Problem is they don’t want it as fast as hardware likes to evolve. I swear, technical singularity will happen when we develop an AI-powered GPU…
Anyway, that means game development gets more costly, because there’s so much more to do these days when you develop a game. Think of it this way: a game is a canvas – as the technology improves, the canvas gets bigger and there are more and more colours. But to crunch out a portrait to pay the rent with, you need more and more artists to make it in time. And it helps throwing more money at the problem, but not if your costs are growing faster than your audience.
The publishers have seen this coming and they started to crank the brake, pacing themselves. While many think Microsoft will take the market share if they release their next console first, few are talking shop about games. In fact, they are quite hush about the whole topic – more so than usual. Maybe it’s not to spoil the specs of the next consoles, but publishers can’t help but to tease the public with concept art, obscure renders and strange game names, but little has arisen there. All I really know is that I’ll need a Microsoft Next or Sony PS3 if I want to play Silent Hill 5.
That means there will be less high-calibre games for the next generation – at least until the audience catches up (and I suspect it will be far slower than the PS2’s phenomenal popularity). First thing will be a lot more standard games. By that I mean the console games that are impressive, but they don’t really stand up to the behemoths that dominate the charts. That’s because studios will focus more on games that are faster to make – that means sticking to what you know and not pushing the envelope too much, at least in the sense of the hardware. Polyphony might not spend as much time polishing car models as they did for GT4. Or at least the increments in graphic improvement of these games will be far more incremental. Every now and then there will be an awesome spike where a blockbuster, screaming glory game appears, pushing all the boundaries. Kind of like the current industry, just more torrent. But they’ll cost a lot to make and they had better make a lot of money. But just in case they don’t, there’s the cash from the cheaper, safer games.
Licensed games - and I accept this is a difficult scenario to imagine - are also likely to be far more common. I think they’ll become a lot better, but there will be more of them while the market experiments with what brings in the masses. Expect some interesting peripherals as well. But there is a definite shining light. Amidst all of this licensing, downgrading and gambling, we can probably expect more experimental and different games. Titles like Rez will appear a lot more and I suspect the puzzle genre will get a serious foothold in the release schedule. Alas, we’ll have to tolerate more rhythm games, a lot of them with pop star endorsements and their mugs on the packaging, but just don’t buy those.
And I swear – I can smell a Tony Hawk MMOG. Or GTA online. And maybe even Mr. Miyamoto’s interesting version of Pacman…
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