In Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot’s vision of the future, games will be just like playing modern CGI movies. Unfortunately that means they’ll cost as much to make, too.
Though nobody knows when (or if) we’ll see the “next generation” of games and if we’ll be using our hands, arms, feet, eyes or minds to control them, but Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot is sure that they’ll offer quite the experience. “The next generation is going to be so powerful that playing a game is going to be the equivalent of playing a CGI movie today,” Guillemot told CNBC.
Unfortunately CGI movies take a lot of money to make, and if you’re making a game that’s on par with a CGI movie, well, you can presume that’s going to be just as, and maybe even more, expensive. Guillemot estimates that development costs will triple for the next generation of games, with big-budget titles costing an average of $60 million. For the record, that’s how much the first Ice Age movie cost to make.
Though he’s psyched for games to take that next big leap, he’s not quite ready for his company to completely plunge in, though he knows it’s inevitable. “For us, the current machines are very powerful and we can do high quality work,” Guillemot said. “I’d like to stay with this generation as long as possible, but my customers will want the best machine possible.”
In the meantime, Ubisoft is pursuing strategies for a future where the kind of big-budget games they produce will cost more than a pretty penny. For its upcoming Avatar game, Ubisoft is cutting costs by reusing resources used in the James Cameron film that provides the game with its source material.
