http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050725/255013.html?.v=1
Whatif Productions' GameProcessor(TM) Platform Delivers Sophisticated Gaming Solution While Solving the Problem of Escalating Development Costs. Can It Revive the Small Game Studio?
BELMONT, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 25, 2005--When the U.S. Navy Recruiting Command unveiled its newest recruiting tool earlier this July, it was a PC game called Navy Training Exercise (NTE): Strike and Retrieve, the first freely downloaded "advergame" employed by the Navy to target technically savvy recruits, aged 17-24. Developing a game to reach this demographic is the brain-child of Campbell-Ewald Advertising (Warren, MI), which handles the Navy recruiting account. A firm six-month schedule and sophisticated production goals required that Campbell-Ewald and the Navy employ a new approach to game development. Their needs brought them to Whatif Productions, a middleware software company in Belmont, Massachusetts, with an exclusively efficient video game platform.
Whatif'sŪ secret weapon in NTE: Strike and Retrieve is not the underwater craft in the game itself, or the exotic creatures and machinery that must be configured, outwitted or destroyed, but a new development platform called GameProcessor that cuts dramatically the time and cost of creating a new game. GameProcessor enabled Whatif to deliver NTE: Strike and Retrieve with a team of nine developers in six months, which is well below the time and resources usually required to develop a sophisticated 3D game targeting state-of-the-art PCs. When Whatif was founded in 1997, small, low-budget teams of game developers were still common in the industry. But now a typical AAA game costs $5-10 million to produce, takes 18-36 months and involves large teams of artists and programmers. Industry pundits are predicting costs of $20-30 million per game for major productions on the next generation consoles, and the President of Nintendo has warned that the industry could "implode" from escalating costs.
I had no idea it costs that much to produce a video game. I guess the Navy is competing with the high tech industry to recruit young technically savvy people. What will they think of next?
Linear Mode
