Yes. Just one look at a modern day game budgets is enough to see that times have changed a lot.
However, I think that development cost isn’t the only metric at play here. While games do cost a lot more to be made, there is also a lot more games being sold, because the market is so much bigger than in the past.
While in the past the gaming industry was a comparatively small, it is now the biggest grossing entertainment industry, outshining the music and movie industry combined.
According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020. This includes revenue from console games, PC games, mobile games, and esports. To put that in perspective, the music industry was valued at $19.1 billion in 2020, while the movie industry was valued at $41.7 billion. That means the gaming industry is making more than three times as much money as the music industry and almost four times as much as the movie industry.
While of course not all of that is from pure sales, I would argue that the market is a lot more profitable than it used to be, potentially more than offsetting the development cost of the games.
Yes. Just one look at a modern day game budgets is enough to see that times have changed a lot.
However, I think that development cost isn’t the only metric at play here. While games do cost a lot more to be made, there is also a lot more games being sold, because the market is so much bigger than in the past.
While in the past the gaming industry was a comparatively small, it is now the biggest grossing entertainment industry, outshining the music and movie industry combined.
While of course not all of that is from pure sales, I would argue that the market is a lot more profitable than it used to be, potentially more than offsetting the development cost of the games.