For decades, conventional wisdom about game development has stated that the launch of a new hardware generation would bring with it a step change in costs.
New platforms brought with them higher fidelity assets, the need for new solutions to technical problems, and consumer expectations of larger, more detailed, and more interactive game worlds – all of which meant that starting to work on a new console generation was expensive, and didn’t get much less expensive as time went on.
In fact, hardware transitions frequently served to thin the herd, with the cost increase being the final blow that saw many struggling publishers and developers shut their doors; the first couple of years of a new console generation could be generally expected to see such a cull.
source https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-transition-to-live-services-continues-opinion
