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Why Next-Gen Titles Cost $60
Heartless Gamer writes "Forbes.com has up an article detailing what goes into the $60 price tag for next generation games. Publishers get about a buck per copy sold. 'The remaining $59 per game goes into many hands. The biggest portion — nearly 45% — goes toward simply programming and designing the game itself. Then the console maker, retailer and marketers each get a cut. Add in manufacturing and management costs, and depending on the type of game, a license fee. Some gamemakers also have to pay a distributor to help get their titles in stores.'"
Do we really need an article to spell this out? I mean, it's not rocket science. Right now, the cost of obtaining a temporal snatcher device is very expensive. First you need to power it, then find someone who knows how to use, and then calibrate it so you can even find a Playstation 4 dev kit. Not an easy task by any means. I mean, do we even know there is even going to be a playstation 4? What happens if you snatch Rosanne's underwear instead? It might make for a happy dev team (if your team is into that), but the investors will be a little miffed.
I once worked on a project where we actually snatched one of George Lucas' fake beards. We fed-exed it back to ILM, and instead of thanks, we got a lawsuit. Not what the money men were looking for. After that incident, we switched development to xbox 360/playstation 3 which - surprise, surprise - is cheap in comparison.