Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima shared his thoughts that next-gen videogames development costs could rise steeply for teams that fail to manage their scope. "It's possible to make many things more realistic, but that doesn't mean you should," he said. "You have to prioritize, and that is what's going to separate the teams that succeed from the teams that don't. A very deep, 20-30 hour game might need a bigger team and take three or four years."
Kojima also pondered if it is better to "test the waters" by releasing a smaller version of a game before spending too much money on a large next-gen game.
"[But] I think there's a different way of tackling this problem: something similar to a TV series, where you can use pilot episodes to test the waters before you jump completely into the project ... It can be distributed via download channels, so the player can try it out before production continues. Something like that wouldn't take that long to create, maybe a year, and if it's successful, you can continue."
