It's no secret that the cost of developing games has skyrocketed over the past decade, and as games become increasingly larger, the situation is becoming unsustainable for so-called AAA games. But perhaps awareness is spreading that it's better to release smaller, more focused games?
This spring, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was a huge success, receiving sky-high ratings and excellent sales, despite being produced by a small team at a relatively low cost, and today marks the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong which is also expected to be a huge hit with cheaper than usual development.
Now it is reported that Cronos: The New Dawn, which we reviewed yesterday and awarded high ratings, was also very inexpensive to develop. Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno says:
"We have also noticed considerations about the costs of creating Cronos at the level of over PLN 100 million, I can assure you that the development budget was certainly not so high, and despite the fact that we are counting on very good sales results, the break-even threshold is not at such a high level as analysts indicate."
100 million zloty is equivalent to approximately £20.5 million/€23.5 million, and Babieno claims that the costs are less than that. This is incredibly low in these times when it is not uncommon for development costs to be well north of £/€100 million.
If Cronos: The New Dawn becomes a success, it seems reasonable that more developers will start to consider the possibility of reducing the size of their games somewhat, in order to be able to release more and slightly more concentrated products. What do you think about that?
Cronos: The New Dawn launches for PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series S/X tomorrow.