It's all about Halo 2 and HalfLife 2 these days, two very highly-anticipated titles these days. Of course, with the financial rewards of heavily-hyped games, goes risk as well, as development costs continue to soar.
Wall Street is preparing to cash in on the release of Halo 2, as predictors expect its sales dollars to exceed the average Hollywood movie release (and for stocks to reflect this success). As gaming has become the postmodern national pastime, the investment in developing, marketing, and launching a new game has become an enormous fiscal undertaking. Gone are the days of six guys crafting and releasing a game from their home office, and Halo 2 is going bring the profitable promise of big-budget, glitz-and-glamour game publishing to even greater heights. Of course, just like movies, sometimes those big-budget games can flop, which means along with the rise in potential profit and rewards comes the dread of catastrophic failure.
Somehow, I don't expect either of those two titles to be catastrophic failures. In this week's edition, Game.Ars also looks at Warren Spector's departure from Ion Storm, news from the horror gaming genre, and much more. Put down your joystick and read along.

http://arstechnica.com/columns/game/...s-20041112.ars