Take-Two doesn't expect its budgets to grow significantly with next-gen

Here's another good thing about this current console generation lasting as long as it has: it appears to have reduced fears over next-gen budgets, at least among some parts of the industry. Current-gen budgets have had quoted with ranges between $15 million for BioShock and $44 million for God of War 3, but Take-Two isn't planning for the next-gen of consoles – expected later this year – to be wildly different from current costs.

"We don't have any reason to believe our development budget will change significantly," said Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick on a financial call today. "If anything, we've become, group wide, much tighter in how we spend our money. It has been the challenge and we've been very focused on it. We can't say specifically, but, no, we don't expect to see a meaningful change in what it costs us to release these top quality products."

Then again, it's hard to put next-gen budgets into perspective when you're the publisher of Grand Theft Auto 5. If the game's launch on September 17 incurs anything like Grand Theft Auto 4 or Red Dead Redemption's marketing, you'll have to take a trip to the Andes to avoid it.