So the profit margin on this is insane.

$12 million budget.

5.11 million sales.

Lets say an average of $40 per sale. This would be minus the retailer profit.

$204,400,000 in sales.

Minus MS's publishing percentage EPIC definitely made a very nice profit on this game. Probably enough to allow MS to purchase the exclusive rights to the next one.

I am just taking a stab at these numbers.  Anyone know the actual percentages and sold to retail costs?

Not too surprising. Thats why sequels have little to no improvement in the graphics department, but add in extra costs for other things like Munkeh111 started for Uncharted 2. HD Games are expensive if you build a engine ground up, for if you use the same engine over and over you'll save a lot of money.

Thanks, guess my memory's going when I remembered $30 Million for Uncharted!

As the article states the cost is the same as savings in core engine development are being used to deliver more content, SP, MP and Coop vs SP only, more levels, expanded production values on motion capture, etc.

The UE3 engine is great, and EPIC certainly did not include development costs for the engine in it. Why would you think gears would cost much more? It isn't anything special development wise or tech wise. It's just a slightly improved UE3 engine (and it's beautiful!) But it's still just the UE3 engine. In terms of content the single player campaign is very short and the multi player is basically an exact copy of gears 1 with some minor changes. Were there even any new weapons in gears 2?

Don't get me wrong, the game just isn't that much more than gears of war 1, which is fine, because gears of war 1 brought a truck load of awesome :)

Yep you are right, it was bigger, better, and more badass enough to get 5.11 million copies sold and a metacritic rating of 93.  So it made an ass load of profit, pleased the critics, and pleased the fans(4th most played game on Live last week).

Actually Gears of War 2 did a very good job of making it feel fresh, especially so as I only finished GeoW 1 a month before GeoW 2. My main complaint was act 3's environment felt like it had been directly lifted from the first one, and that was a level I hated, but on the whole they did a good job adding more colours to the palette, but still making it feel like it is consistent and I like the architectural style, but not the rip-off DLC (nearly all DLC is a rip-off) which would have got them even more money. However, those profits you calculated are off. If you take the money that Epic get, it is probably $25-30, but with it being sold at cut price (certainly in the UK), it is easiest to calculate it as $20, and then you have to factor is the large amount of marketing, but still it was a massive success, as will Gears of War 3.

The thing to remember is that Gears of War is kind of being used as a poster boy of the UE 3, as UT 3 was for the PS3 at a time when devs were struggling on it, so there is probably a lot of money spent on it, though that money is spent on their engine teams, but it is still massively profitable

WereKitten said: Squilliam said: Wow, interestingly that would put the Gears 1 + 2 budget squarely under the lowest possible cost for Killzone 2! And that comparison of yours is meaningful because externalizing engine costs comes as a new trick to you, right? :) Come on, we want more effort!

Bam!

I always assumed Gears 2 must have been relatively cheap since it wasn't a huge innovation on the first one, but wow, Epic and Microsoft really maximised profit here; very impressive.

Not really all that surprised that GoW2 is cheaper to make. Really it's just GoW1 with new levels, new story, tweaks and improve on the art. They were probably able to cut out lot's of stuff that they had to do with GoW1.

I would like to see the GoW1 costs.

wow thit isnt that much when u compare killzone 2...