The Tomb Raider reboot, for example, was initially deemed a failure for selling 3.4 million copies in the first month of its launch, only achieving the “5-6 million” necessary to break into the green at the end of 2013, nine months after its release. Combined with the enormous costs of game marketing in an oversaturated market, even games that sell millions of copies can be deemed unprofitable. But the gaming audience’s hunger for open world games, co-op shooters, MOBAs, and other genres demanding ever-expanding resources somehow always seem to just outpace the ability to make the process less expensive. Innovations like cloud computing and procedural generation, meant to address the growing technical demands of the medium, have offered some reprieve. It’s no secret that videogames are the most expensive form of entertainment to produce.
