EA predicts 10% rise in next-gen dev costs

EA expects development costs to be up to ten per cent higher on PlayStation 4 than that of current generation hardware.

EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said the development cost per game could be five to ten per cent higher on PS4 than its current-gen systems, during an investor conference call this week (via Joystiq).

“On any one title, it might be five to ten per cent increases in cost, but the real opportunity comes with the ability to expand what you can do in that title,” said Jorgensen.

“Overall, you might see larger titles or larger costs because of the capability that you can deal with, but we’ll also see larger revenue streams, we believe, because of the excitement around some of those big titles.”

Presently, EA does not believe this will increase the price of retail games. Jorgensen explained that prices generally start higher at the beginning of a new hardware cycle and then fail; referring to the current generation of games starting out at $59 and falling to $49 later.

However, just this week, EA also hinted that it plans to include microtransactions in all of its future games. Though the publisher did not cite PS4 development directly, it did position the moves as a core part of its strategy to keep up with the changing games market.