Epic Games recently treated us to a demo that unveiled the power of Unreal Engine 5, running on a PS5. Lumen in the Land of Nanite showcased the potential of what games could possibly look like on next-generation consoles. However, Playstation CEO Jim Ryan revealed in a recent interview with gamesindustry.biz that to get games looking like this, we could see a slight rise in development costs.
Jim Ryan:
“I think, to the extent that the technology enables the graphics side of it to become more interesting and life-like, [the games] will become slightly more human intensive and capital intensive to produce. So yes, we think there probably will be an increase in development budgets.”
He goes on to state that he doesn’t believe costs will see “a massive increase,” but clearly thinks that costs will rise slightly. We can assume that the same goes for Xbox Series X games as well. It’s not that surprising given the recent demo’s graphical fidelity, but what’s more interesting is the effect this will have on the cost of games in the future. There have been arguments, even this generation, that games should cost more. The upgrade in visuals could potentially push the standard pricing of games a little higher.
Of course, this is just speculation on my part. The only way we find out for sure is when the console is finally in the hands of the public. We’ll simply have to wait until then.
