If Yves Guillemot, chairman and CEO of publisher Ubisoft, is correct, the next generation of video game consoles won't just look visually on par with current CGI movies, they'll be outrageously expensive to make—more than double current budgets.

Guillemot, according to a report from CNBC, estimates video game budgets will "average $60 million to make" next gen, when Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo issue successors to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.

The Ubisoft head honcho says that Ubisoft's plan to help defray some of those costs would be to reuse computer generated assets from Hollywood features, something the company says it's doing with James Cameron's Avatar.

The prospect of $60 million game budgets sounds suspect, given the game buying public's acceptance of the Wii's generational half-step in terms of visual computing power. I'm not running Ubisoft obviously, but wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft and Sony (and Nintendo) make similarly shorter next gen leaps with their hardware.

The Next Generation of Gaming Consoles [CNBC]

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