Guillemot: Next-gen dev costs to stay stable for first two years

Development costs for next-gen games on the PS4 and Xbox One will likely remain the same for the next two years, says Ubisoft’s CEO.

Speaking at an E3 press event, as reported by Gamasutra, Yves Guillemot said budgets would stay around the same levels as current-gen because developers could now work on better machines, and wouldn’t have to compress as much data.

He said however that costs would quickly rise after two years as developers take advantage of all the new features on new hardware.

"In the first two years, I expect [next generation dev] costs to remain the same because we will have the advantage of having better machines, so won’t have to compress as much data,” said Guillemot.

"But, quickly, in two years, we’ll have to spend more money to take advantage of all the possibilities these machines are bringing, and it can grow quite fast. But I think what’s interesting is that we’ll be able to create data that we will be able to reuse in other places, because we’re getting closer and closer to what you can see in movies and TV series now."