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Really great report with a bunch of data to mull over.

PRESENTATION: The State of Video Gaming in 2025 — MatthewBall.co
A (free) 220 page presentation on the past, present and potential future of the video game industry.
That is…not great.They include VGChartz as source for some of the console charts.
lmao just throw it in the trashThey include VGChartz as source for some of the console charts.
I'm a bit skeptical of some of these numbers, like I don't believe the FFXVI budget number that seems un-possible.
The Halo 6 budget also seems inflated to me, I'm wondering if that's not some sum-on-going budget or something to that effect. We know Halo had a lot of dev issues and needed a lot of rework but the cost seems a bit (a lot) too high.
It includes the cost of (re)developing the Slipstream engine, which has to be placed entirely on this game now because they shifted into using Unreal Engine for their next game.I'm a bit skeptical of some of these numbers, like I don't believe the FFXVI budget number that seems un-possible.
The Halo 6 budget also seems inflated to me, I'm wondering if that's not some sum-on-going budget or something to that effect. We know Halo had a lot of dev issues and needed a lot of rework but the cost seems a bit (a lot) too high.
I think these numbers are a bit of a mix: some is known, some has leaked, some has just been rumored
I think, for example, that the HALO one has been discussed also here on IB, as a rumor (not confirmed at all so far)
It includes the cost of (re)developing the Slipstream engine, which has to be placed entirely on this game now because they shifted into using Unreal Engine for their next game.
They were building a game with the assumption that it would go on and deliver 10 years of Halo gametime+MTX. The stated cost is entirely possible imo.
AFIK that figure included the Engine development costs.Halo Infinite at 600 million???? what a fuck?
Accuracy of this data aside, I think the trend is concerning for everyone, including games that sell very well like Sony first party. Since the overall Console population is stagnating or even shrinking currently, by and large individual sales potential of IPs also equalize at some point, but if game development costs keep rising, then the ROI continues to shrink. Now companies try to capture more revenue through services, asking higher prices/less discounts, and selling add-ons, but that still may not be enough. So either they cut back on development costs, but risk blow back from fan bases that expect a certain product, or they try to expand total sales potential but publishing outside of historic ecosystems. The end of this generation and the beginning of the next will have a lot of businesses going through paradigm shifts once thought unthinkable a decade ago.The increase in development costs are especially frightening when the series then goes through a sales contraction trend, such as Halo and Final Fantasy.
Square Enix decision to pursue platform exclusivity was particularly misguided.
I find the "high-performance" dotted line funny when the events in motion are converging toward a "good enough-performance" invisible line.
Also the inclusion of Switch Lite but exclusion of past handheld consoles is puzzling.
Kinda entertained by the notion that increasing the price of GTAVI to $80-100 is a good idea for industry growth.
can you link me to that?Seeing Switch lumped in with gen 8 always makes me shudder. The Wii U was gen 8. And what logic is there in combining the Switch Lite and Switch OLED into a segment, how does this even make sense.
Besides, an analysis of console sales would be more meaningful if it went with years instead of the arbitrary definition of generations. I think the Install Base user phantom-thief pieced something better together than what I am confronted with here when it comes to the topic of rising development costs and stagnating sales of the target platforms.
There you go:can you link me to that?