Guerrilla Games: PS4 dev costs "not as scary as maybe some people have led you to believe"

Herman Hulst of Guerrilla Games, creators of Killzone, has indicated the PS4 development costs aren’t as bad as first feared.

Guerrilla announced Killzone: Shadow Fall alongside Sony’s new console in New York last night. Although the new hardware’s price is yet to be confirmed, Hulst confirmed his team has increased slightly.

”I can very simply share with you that when we did Killzone 2 and 3, we probably maxed out with a team size of 125. We have 150 now, so it’s marginally bigger,” he told Gamasutra.

”This is about a two-and-a-half year development cycle, which is roughly similar. It includes a hardware transition, so that explains potentially the six months of extra time.”

”It’s actually quite comparable. But if you look at the scale of what we’re doing and the detail in not just the assets but the more believable detailed animation and things like that, the effects, I think a lot of the effort has gone into tools. Making sure we can develop smart.”

Hulst also indicated Guerrilla continue to learn from development across the Killzone series.

”We’ve also learned a thing or two in previous installments on the PlayStation 3. So it’s not, in terms of the cost, it’s not as scary as maybe some people have led you to believe.

There’s more art outsourcing, but that’s not necessarily very expensive. We’re outsourcing between double and triple (from previous games). There’s a lot of art.”

Such comments provide potentially good news for devs, many of whom were understandably fearful of next-gen costs, especially after a difficult year of closures across the games industry.