They no longer have to make and ship cartridges to distribute them. They just let you download said game. The margins are insanely large. Add in they not longer subsidize consoles and release a new one every few years... yea. also the technology isn't improving that much as we have reached a pretty big limit on screen size etc. No more big innovation to make graphics look perfect- it is just art style now and most of the games reuse what works.
The hardware margins are insanely large, but how can you calculate the software costs? Software engineers aint cheap. I’m not defending I’m just understanding that its not free to sell video games. I’m not buying an 80$ game.
80$ likely pays for around an hour of one engineers time, if that
Unity, development engines specific to the consoles etc. They no longer have to build from the ground up when a handful of companies rent out their well built engines that make development way cheaper. Less employees needed. Way less expensive employees needed.
You know what, I always thought Nintendo owned their own game engine.
I know developers can make cross-platform games with certain game engines. But I'm pretty naive, so I assumed for some reason that the console owners didn't, since they knew more about the hardware.
Of course, it started that way. But better tools have come out.
I am sure Nintendo makes their own, as do the other consoles because they get to license them out. But for most AAA game development? usually not anymore.
Companies like Epic don't rent out their engines for free. They're trading a higher up-front cost and risk that they can't get the engine built properly for a percentage of their revenue. The more successful the game is, the less they save by licencing an engine. To the point where a lot of big AAA releases lose money overall (which is why they make their own engines still).
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u/Loud_Interview4681 1d ago edited 1d ago
They no longer have to make and ship cartridges to distribute them. They just let you download said game. The margins are insanely large. Add in they not longer subsidize consoles and release a new one every few years... yea. also the technology isn't improving that much as we have reached a pretty big limit on screen size etc. No more big innovation to make graphics look perfect- it is just art style now and most of the games reuse what works.