Dev budgets â??doubled or tripledâ?? from last gen

Though the games market continues to grow defiantly, dev costs are growing faster.

That was the underlying conflict expressed by Robert Walsh, CEO of indie giant Krome.

Walsh states that, while the games press is largely supportive of the industry’s encouraging performance, to a certain extent it is overlooking the fact that dev budgets are rising rapidly.

“I think that’s one thing that the press, to a certain extent, is forgetting,” said Walsh in an interview with Develop.

“They’re saying sales have increased over ten percent since last year or whatever; I mean, dev costs have probably doubled or tripled in the console transition.”

Walsh feared that the industry as a whole was “struggling”, and added that the rising budget demands in game development places the stakes at an all-time high.

“Thinking about just the volume of sales that are required to recoup a twenty or thirty million dollar game,” he said, “I mean, you’re talking many millions of copies.”

“To go back to the PS2 days, not too many people were making ten million dollar PS2 games.” 

The full interview with Walsh – where he discusses 360 family games, digital content and platform exclusivity – can be found here.