Hideo Kojima suggests video game pilots to combat rising next-gen dev costs

Legendary developer Hideo Kojima has come up with an interesting idea for combating rising video game production costs: the video game pilot.

With the next-generation of consoles on the horizon, publishers are faced with potentially increased development costs. One way around this, the Metal Gear creator told Edge, would be to release a video game pilot to test the waters before full production begins.

"There's a different way of tackling this problem," he said, "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."

A number of publishers have said they expect development costs to rise as they create games for the PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox.

EA CFO Blake Jorgensen recently said the development cost per game could be 5-10 per cent higher on PS4 than on current generation consoles. EA hopes to offset that cost with "larger revenue streams... because of the excitement around some of those big titles".

As for Kojima, he reckons development of next-generation games will include a social aspect, that is, a back and forth between creators and customers.

"You'll get user feedback, and I think there'll be this back-and-forth between users and creators."

Kojima is beavering away on Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes and, possibly, Metal Gear Solid 5.