Triple-A games are "crushing innovation"

The business of making multi-million pound, triple-A, blockbuster video games is "not healthy" and are "crushing innovation", reckons Ninja Theory (DMC, Enslaved, Heavenly Sword).

"The model we're under, the big retail model, is creaking," studio co-founder Tameem Antoniades told GamesIndustry.biz.

"There's this stranglehold that the triple-A retail model has which I think is just crushing innovation and access to creative content.

"If you're paying that much for a game, you don't want to take chances. You want everything to be there, all the feature sets. You want it to be a known experience, guaranteed fun.

"That's not healthy," he said.

Mega publishers like EA and Activision tend now to reserve their innovation and investment for established brands. Poor sales of Ninja Theory's own Enslaved showed what a risk new IP can be.

Today's innovation, said Antoniades, comes from areas like the iPhone.

"The whole digital revolution is happening now and it can't come soon enough," he said.

For Ninja Theory, "there's always an opportunity between projects to explore things". Antoniades said "a lot" of his team are hobbyists that create their own iPhone games already. "I can see us kind of taking a punt with that," he added.

Ninja Theory's current punt is on a risky reboot of Devil May Cry. Eurogamer got a look at DMC Devil May Cry last month.