Games 2000 - the future

The "current" history of games

In the 00's Games are becoming ever more expensive to make and require usually somewhere between 50-200 people to make a successful game, however with this a game that’s a 'hit' can reap in many more millions in profits for the producer. A good example of this which I sourced from http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/crossplatform.ars/2 shows the comparison between developer costs and profits of two of the most successful games of their time. The first being the 1982 release of Pac-man for the Atari compared with the 2004 game halo 2 for the Xbox. Pac-man cost only $100, 00 usd to make but sold over 10million copies and $30 each, and was written by 1 programmer over a few months, where as Halo 2 needed 190 staff of artists, programmers etc and cost more than $40 million usd to make, but sold for $50 a time and to use its full capabilities needed a subscription to Xbox live online service for up to $20 a month. This just showing that games are increasingly becoming more expensive to manufacture but are turning over roughly the same profits as 20 years a go.

This leads me to my next subject which is the increase in power and technology of consoles. With the introduction of "next gen" consoles, the Xbox 360 being the first in November 2005 (I debate whether or not it is next gen) and the ps3 well this blog is a little late so coincidently today in approximately 12 hours in the US will be on sale. I have learnt to believe some people have been queuing since the 6th of November for this, eherm I won’t say any more. The Nintendo Wii is also set for release in December which will no doubtable take Japan by storm with its innovated new controller which, I think is awesome and its what Nintendo do best by showing you don’t need ridiculous budgets and ridiculously real graphics to be a hit and stay true to just having good, new and exiting games.

I think form here things can only get better and more expensive and soon enough i'm sure there will be thousands of game artists working on matrix like games where they appear real by accessing the mind. Either way it’s good, more jobs for me ha-ha.
I think there will be some significant pressures on the gaming industry if the hardware continues to increase in power as it could drive smaller companies out of existence, I’m willing to bet Nintendo won’t be around in 20 years time and I’m pretty sure Google will have there own platform out by then too.