That might not quite be true. You can’t have 1000 people make Hollow Knight overnight. It’s like the old adage of 9 mothers making a baby in one month.
The closest thing would be to split the studio internally into 10 small teams, and have them each make a game over a long period of time; maybe that’s what you were implying.
The latest Call of Duty game, Blacks Ops 6, is estimated to have a budget between $450,000,000 and $700,000,000. 1/10th of that budget ($45M to $70M) is still more than the entire development budget for The Witcher 3 at $35,000,000. The only thing they would likely need to cut back on is their marketing budget of $35,000,000.
You could probably make a hell of a lot of AAA games for the same price as GTA 6.
This is an interesting point. With the decline in AAA game quality over the past… 5 (?) years, i wonder what percentage of them are garbage vs not. Because IMO, I’ve seen very very few that even twinkle, let alone shine, and i love blockbusters (though 2025 is shaping up wonderfully)
Large studios could make smaller games. Fund 10 games for the price of 1 big one. Expect at least one or two to be absolute gangbusters.
That might not quite be true. You can’t have 1000 people make Hollow Knight overnight. It’s like the old adage of 9 mothers making a baby in one month.
The closest thing would be to split the studio internally into 10 small teams, and have them each make a game over a long period of time; maybe that’s what you were implying.
Well, yeah, that’s how you do it. No reason to have one AAA sized team for ten small games.
I don’t think a flood of low effort games is the solution you think it is…
The latest Call of Duty game, Blacks Ops 6, is estimated to have a budget between $450,000,000 and $700,000,000. 1/10th of that budget ($45M to $70M) is still more than the entire development budget for The Witcher 3 at $35,000,000. The only thing they would likely need to cut back on is their marketing budget of $35,000,000.
You could probably make a hell of a lot of AAA games for the same price as GTA 6.
It’s what indie games already are. Following Sturgeon’s law, 90% of indie games are garbage. We venerate the 10% that aren’t.
This is an interesting point. With the decline in AAA game quality over the past… 5 (?) years, i wonder what percentage of them are garbage vs not. Because IMO, I’ve seen very very few that even twinkle, let alone shine, and i love blockbusters (though 2025 is shaping up wonderfully)