I would actually argue that the cost of game development for big publishers has in fact decreased over time. With digital distribution cutting physical and logistical costs, with AAA publishers using the same engine over and over, in some cases not even bothering to update / fix it - Bethesda - And with incredibly lazy implementation of game mechanics - every Ubisoft Open world is a re-skin of every Ubisoft open world game with the exception of some basic tweaks to mechanics - the reality is that AAA publishers are spending more on Marketing games than actually making them. Yes there are some devs that take time to release a full product and not a pay-to-pay interface, but they are usually indie devs or recently, Sony. (I cant believe i'm sticking up for Sony here, but at the moment they're the good guys!) When you see their shareholder meetings, when you see the ridiculous profit margins they are achieving and still always trying to squeeze out more money from the "payer" for a product that is always more mediocre than the previous one - this crash was inevitable.