Making big time video games is expensive. Really, really, really expensive. It needs big time money. Double the big time money from the last generation, actually.

Robert Walsh heads up Krome Studios, one of the biggest indie studios on this blue planet we call Earth, and points out the very obvious: Game budgets are way up.

"I think that's one thing that the press, to a certain extent, is forgetting," said Walsh tells industry site Develop. "They're saying sales have increased over ten percent since last year or whatever; I mean, dev costs have probably doubled or tripled in the console transition."

Skyrocketing development costs means skyrocketing sales are need to stay in business. "Thinking about just the volume of sales that are required to recoup a twenty or thirty million dollar game," he adds, "I mean, you're talking many millions of copies." Back in the PS2 days, Walsh explains, there weren't that many games that costs tens of millions of dollars.

Wonder how long this trend can continue...

Interview: Krome's Robert Walsh [Develop via GameBizBlog]

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