Game animation ≠ animation films People were complaining about gameplay animation, which is more of an issue of needing to be dynamic, responsive, and look good. It's more of a tech problem than a budget problem. Those challenges do not really relate to film animation in any way.
Ive always wondered how animations are done in sports games like NHL and Fifa, they seem so dynamic, its impossible to manually animate every possible encounter with another player. I don't get it at all, but its incredible.
I made a thread on this subject but most peolpe disagree and thinks animations are just fine... I think they're way too quirky, unpolished, not smooth...
Isn't animation one of the most expensive and time consuming process in entertainment? Look at the budget for Disney movies and they're well past $200 million. Video games trying to catch up with that is pure suicide.
Animation really needs to go next gen already. Christ, catching Witcher and the EA conference it's no different from last gen. Intersecting meshes, obvious transitions between cycles and generally still poorly executed on the whole. Fifa looked a so unimpressive.
You might have to sacrifice a little responsiveness to get better animation, but really the secret lies in proper contextual animation blending. I've seen games that pull it off in strides. But we need more of it.
In regards to animations, I think it depends on the studios. Love the Witcher, but after seeing some of the MS stuff then seeing the Witcher, it's obvious that if CDProjket could improve something it would be animation. Still don't care, thought it looked GREAT.