So, the death of triple A?

Here's the story:

Assassin's Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson has described the latest game in the series as one of the last of the giant triple-A "dinosaurs".

Approximately 600 Ubisoft Montreal staff have worked on the project, supported by numerous other Ubi studios including Quebec City, Bucharest and Singapore, and Hutchinson told the latest issue of Edge that this type of massive production is a dying breed.



"We're the last of the dinosaurs. We're still the monster triple-A game with very large teams [and] multiple studios helping out on different bits. There are fewer and fewer of these games being made, especially as the middle has fallen out," he said.


"We really felt like this was a rare opportunity We had an experienced team, who had worked on the franchise for a while; we had the full backing of Ubisoft to make something huge; we had almost three years to do it, which is a rarity these days; the tech and the hardware platforms were both mature, which allowed us to start running instead of building base features; and the installed user base for all platforms is massive.


"Many of these factors are about to change, by choice of circumstance," Hutchinson added, "so a lot of us truly believed this was a once in a career opportunity."


Cliff Bleszinski is another to express the belief that we'll see fewer blockbuster releases each year once the next generation of consoles arrives, suggesting last December that the cost of developing major games on new hardware could prove too prohibitive for all but the biggest names in the industry.

And then Capcom recentely said:

Capcom wants less time between sequels, so is shortening development and shrinking team sizes

"We launch sales of popular series titles held by thecCompany approximately every 2.5 years. This is because the development of a single major title usually requires 3-4 years.


"In the event that there are few hits, it will be difficult to create a series title every year and earnings will be adversely impacted. For this reason, it is important either to maintain a large number of popular titles or shorten the sales cycle to ensure stable earnings.


"Among the multitude of major titles held by Capcom - such as Monster Hunter, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Lost Planet, Dead Rising and many others - we will promote shortening of the sales cycle in pursuit of further earnings stabilisation and growth."


Specifically, he went on, teams developing "major titles" will be "limited" to 100 people, "with multiple sequel titles developed at the same time".

Capcom do say they will outsource a lot of work, but outsourcing is already common in the industry. I was thinking, didn't RE5 and 6 have 300+ people working on the game? I think for RE6 the number was 350+?

We are going into the next generation - think about the massive upscaling that went on for the jump to HD consoles. With the new consoles (Wii U excluded) looking to be multiple times as powerful as 360 costs and productions would be expected to see a similar upscaling but it seems like that trend is dying out a bit. Publishers are becoming more aware of the long development times and budgets and are cutting back? AC3's director thinks 3 years is a rarity to make a game these days? We've had 4 or 5 years of development for games in the past, so the inference is that games are routinely being expected to be made in 2 years or less. Capcom is now shrinking their core team to 100 members. So do the math: RE7 will have 100 team members instead of 350 team members and they will be expected to produce the game in a shorter amount of time. We're going to have new consoles and if the scale of games goes up or the level of graphics goes up you will need more artists, testers etc inherently.

If developers are being asked to produce next gen games, not even on par with the same budget, team sizes or time allowed as they got this gen, what is going to happen to  AAA game development?

In terms of AAA big budget productions as we know them, I can only see smaller, more linear, less polished games with fancy graphics.

On the plus side, perhaps without the money to make all the cinematic bells and whistles - we'll get some more daring or innovative designs happening? What do you think about all this?