I agree. The industry needs to get on the ball and make their games worth their increasing price tags.

A good example of this is the Xenosaga series for the PS2. Xenosaga I took me over 60 hours to complete, just focusing really on the main quest and not so much on the side-quests. A couple of months ago I bought Xenosaga II, which I'd been waiting for with great anticipation. I am 11-hours into the game and according to the strategy guide I bought with it (plus the various FAQs online), I'm 90% through.  I have only one more area to hit before I reach the end of the game.

Needless to say, as a consumer who shelled out $55, I am not a happy customer. In fact, I feel ripped off by the entire experience. From 60+ hours in the original down to perhaps 15 hours. As the Hollywood Reporter article points out, had I known, I would have just rented Xenosaga II. I still would have been ticked off, but at least I'd be $49 richer.

Indeed.  I hear stories about small games needing a dozen people to be made. That just amazes me.  The first GalCiv for Windows (2003) only required a few people to make. Even the new one only has 5 full-time people on it.

What are those other 30 people doing on these other game projects?

Good question. Perhaps art assets / content creation? That seems to be the big money sinkhole people are talking about nowadays. If developers are finding that it's costing them so much to create games, it's time they take a hard look at how to streamline the process. That doesn't necessarily mean layoffs either, just how to more efficiently use the people you've got (something I feel Stardock does pretty well at).

Games are often compared to the movie industry (rightly or wrongly) so... currently we have a situation in game manufacturing where the devs not only have to write the scripts, prepare the sets, audition the actors they also have to build the cameras from scratch to film it all. John Carmack has said that, if he ever gets round to writing it, the 3d engine after next should be the last he needs to write. The theory being it'll be possible to portray reality near as damn it (or portray fantasy realistically - you know what I mean)(and this is assuming we're not jacking in to play our games by then). Right now a lot of people are using existing game engines but they're still having to do a lot of work extending them. Or to put it simply the biggest inefficiency in game production is programming. Bang on at me all you like but it's where the wheel gets re-invented time after time.

Then there was Will Wright's recent talk about data vs algorithms in game design and Spore in particular. The higher the poly counts go the more time it takes more people to produce the same amount of content you had in an older generation game. So WW is aiming to let the players do most of the design for him. Worth a look.

I agree with you on the game engines, that's been the way of things in the gaming industry...well, that's how it's always been.

Draginol posted a thread about Spore here that's worth reading. He pretty much expands on the point you're making.