Game budgets won’t stop climbing, Ubisoft warns

The costs to build triple-A content on HD consoles will not stop rising, the CEO of one of the world’s biggest publishers has warned.

Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot – whose company is building games for handhelds, motion-controllers, PCs and HD consoles – said key to meeting the challenge of rising game budgets is a diversified product range.

Asked if game budgets were still on the rise, he told GamesIndustry.biz: “Yes. I think so, on the high definition formats, yes. So we just have to make sure we get more revenue and diversify.”

Guillemot’s claim goes against the suggestion from other developers that budgets have reached a temporary plateau – with publishers eager to make tough efficiency savings to reduce risk.

Ubisoft itself offsets massive game budget costs by basing its development operations in certain regions of Canada – where tax breaks as high as 37.5 per cent are on offer.

Guillemot also believes work in TV is another method in which wider investments can be amortised.

Work in television can give studios the chance to reuse content for games, Guillemot said.

“TV work is really complementary to the games. If you can have 20 per cent or 30 per cent of your content that is created for the TV series that you can reuse in your game it’s a way to reduce the cost of the game or to do a better game," he added.

Ubisoft Motion Pictures was established in France earlier in the year.