If Yves Guillemot, chairman and CEO of publisher Ubisoft, is correct, the next generation of video game consoles wonât just look visually on par with current CGI movies, theyâll be outrageously expensive to makeâmore than double current budgets.
Guillemot, according to a report from CNBC, estimates video game budgets will âaverage $60 million to makeâ next gen, when Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo issue successors to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.
The Ubisoft head honcho says that Ubisoftâs plan to help defray some of those costs would be to reuse computer generated assets from Hollywood features, something the company says itâs doing with James Cameronâs Avatar.
The prospect of $60 million game budgets sounds suspect, given the game buying publicâs acceptance of the Wiiâs generational half-step in terms of visual computing power. Iâm not running Ubisoft obviously, but wouldnât be surprised to see Microsoft and Sony (and Nintendo) make similarly shorter next gen leaps with their hardware.
