Is AAA gaming over the zenith? Are extremely expensive and elaborate games such as Gensin Impact or Cyberpunk 2077 A thing of the past? Yes, they are when it comes to Mark Harch. He is the head of Saber Interactive and has a hit on Steam with Warhammer 40.00: Space Marine 2.
That is the thesis: The head of Saber Interactive says in an interview (via Gamefile):
I think the age of AAA games, which cost $ 200 million, $ 300 million or $ 400 million. It is not necessary, it is not appropriate.
I don’t know how best to say it … but I think that if something has contributed to the fact that so many have lost their jobs, it is the budgets in the area of several hundred million.
Space Marine 2 shows in the video which content will come in the next few months
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AA+games are much cheaper than AAA, only a quarter cost
What is the alternative for him? The CEO sees his own game “Space Marine 2” as an example of how it works.
Such games could be made for a quarter of the budget of an AAA title. Then maybe people say that that is not AAA, but AA+, but still. That is a solid game and much cheaper than what others pay.
Concentrate on the core and reduce superfluous painting
Why is the game so much cheaper? In an interview with IGN, the chief creative of Saber, Tim Willits, explained:
According to Tim Willits, however, it is about concentrating on the essentials and doing it as much as possible.
What Willits does not mention, but what certainly helps: Many successful games no longer arise in the metropolitan areas of the United States, where wages are high, but arise in low-wage countries, where work often becomes “outsourced”.
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Which games would no longer exist? WIf the CEO keeps right and the studios stop putting games with a budget like $ 100 million upwards, such games would be a thing of the past:
That is behind it: The problem with the enormously high costs is that games then have to achieve a crazy high sales figure so that they are not a flop. That is why the players are then created as big and wide as possible in order to reach many. But that does not seem to work, as some gigantic flops have recently proven. It wateres down the uniqueness and manuscript of a game if you want to address a maximum wide audience.
To make matters worse, successful players in recent years have not disappeared, but bind their players in the long term. This makes it even more difficult for extremely expensive games to record their production costs again. Because even a game like Gensin, which appeared in 2020, still has thousands of players today. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 captivates tens of thousands: new MMORPGs can only dream of this: Role play entertains his fans stable on Steam for 1 year