Ubisoft's CEO Talks Next-Gen Dev Costs & Motion Controllers News

The pressures related to the costs of developing AAA Xbox 360 or PlayStation3 title are widely known, with suggestions that such a title can cost anywhere between $20-30 million.  Such figures mean that games have to shift considerably more then before just to break even, which coupled by the fact that the vast majority of sales occur in the first couple of weeks leads to a higher risk of titles failing commercially. 

Speaking to CNBC, Ubisoft's Chairman and CEO Yves Guillemot has talked about the next-generation of consoles and claimed that the development costs of top-tier titles are likely to double to $60 million.  Naturally this means that such games will have to shift even more copies to break even, or could result in higher prices to the consumer or lower profit margins for the publisher.

To make up for the threat of costlier games, Guillemot does at least suggest such next-generation titles will be worth it, visually at least.  "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," predicts Guillemot.

Guillemot moves on to discuss the impact that motion controllers are likely to have on the games industry, staking the claim that Ubisoft will be "in the thick of motion controlled games for all systems".

As much as 80% of the French publisher's family titles are expected to support the controllers, although Guillemot expressed some reservations that such controls would work with the likes of Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed.

"The current pad for gamers is giving them a lot," Guillemot says. "They play for hours, so they don't want to get up and down. They don't want to be tired after five minutes. These games are about reactivity."