ChAIR Entertainment Creative Director on Infinity Blade III's Budget and Apple Gaming
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Right now, says Mustard, there's a slight lag with Air Play, but he expects Apple to eliminate that in the near future. And when combined with future advances in iDevice hardware, it could be a significant threat to not just handhelds, but traditional consoles.
"When that 700 million strong install base [of Apple products] becomes 1 billion or 1.2 billion - and combine that with the millions of Android devices out here - if only a small slice of that audience has a controller, that's still going to be more controllers in hands than any console has ever had," he says.
The advanced capabilities of the iPhone (and, presumably, the next iPad) are taking a toll on development time. While the first Infinity Blade was made in four months, says Mustard, and the second in six months, Infinity Blade III has been in development for roughly a year.
"We wanted to increase the scope substantially and see how far we could push not only the devices, but find out how much game you could create in a mobile device," he says.
Costs have increased also, though not as greatly as you might expect. The first Infinity Blade cost about $2 million to create. While Mustard declined to discuss the development costs of Infinity Blade III, he noted the expenses were "a little more ... but not that much."
"We enjoy very high margins," he adds. "We're doing just fine. Yeah, making an Infinity Blade game isn't as expensive as making a console game, but it isn't cheap."
