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Razor Blade Games?
Oxygen99 writes "There's a story on the BBC News website regarding the financial impact on game developers of the next generation of consoles. The article states that while the cost of producing games increases exponentially as new technology comes online, consumer prices stay approximately the same, leading to an unsustainable financial environment for many small developers. With many small development teams already hurting from the crippling costs of development for the X-Box, GameCube and PlayStation 2, what happens when the X-Box2 or Playstation 3 arrives? Are the days of small scale game development over? Will we ever see a new Jeff Minter? Will the games industry go down the route of the razor manufacturers where consoles are almost given away with the games?"
It's too hard to make Beowulf clusters from old Gillettes.
Just like everything else in technology these days, the answer is to send the development to India and have the salary costs, which are generally 90% of any technology company's expenses, decrease by 1/10. Or you can hire 10x the number of developers, take your pick.
Not sure if you were trying to be funny or not, but in (pretending?) to miss the point you've sure made a good one of your own.
The unofficial
every game coming out of the pipe would be the same, homogeneous product, using the same libraries, graphics, sounds, whatever.
You just described the standing state of Shoot 'em Up Games(tm) for the past two years.