Just Cause dev warns of market’s triple-A sickness

Christofer Sundberg, the creator of the Just Cause series, has said that triple-A game development has failed to evolve alongside technology.

"It’s really not healthy at the moment," the Avalanche Studios founder, who is currently working on Mad Max, told GameSpot. "Games have evolved, technology has evolved but as businesses we’re still stuck where we were 15 years ago. As budgets grow, risks increase.

"The publishers are nervous because they have to project a game being a massive hit three years into the future and the developers are frustrated because they need to be flexible to every move the publishers make. It’s impossible to make everyone happy in the current equation.

"Very few traditional $60 games make any money, and what used to make sense doesn’t any more. Publishers and developers very rarely see a return of investment from a five to eight hour long game.

"The investments in a triple-A game these days are huge and even if everyone of those two million people bought a copy each, most big games would not break even if they were next-gen exclusives."