alt Hacker NewsOne big problem is that good GPUs are not getting cheaper. They are both getting more expensive and becoming rarer at the consumer level, because everyone is on laptops of phones. As Sweeney points out, the game industry can't coast on improving hardware performance.
Epic is in the over-optimization business. With enough complexity, you can get performance up, at a high development cost. The results are truly impressive. See a GTA VI trailer.[1] The cost is high. Development cost for that game was around US $1.5 billion. That's 3x the cost of the most expensive movie ever made. It's more than the Super Bowl.
It will be interesting to see if AI generation can bring costs down. There's endless low-end AI crap, but here's a animation to watch - Kono Express.[1]. This was done by an animator Disney made the mistake of laying off. So he's in the process of replacing Disney Animation. He's turning out about half an hour of finished material per month, all by himself. It's up to Hollywood animation standards. He's combined Unreal Engine and AI to do this. Do we really need Disney's high-cost operation any more?
> Development cost for that game was around US $1.5 billion.
but is it making the game any better? Or is it just gold plating?