Aparantly game engines cost $400,000 - does this make sense to you?

[Squilliam]

Ail said:

Squilliam said:

Ail said:
There's most likely a fixed cost and % on royalties.

400k look like the fixed cost.
The % on royalties is probably low though..

Thats what I was thinking...

But it does lend credence to the statement that Lost Odyssey made its money back and then some if the engines are so cheap. In fact perhaps we need to revise the generally accepted costs of HD game development.

Im curious did Blue Dragon use the Unreal engine or something cheapish from last gen? It doesn't seem that graphically demanding, it looks like it could have been ported straight from the Wii - Im not complaining, im just interested thats all.

 

It's typical business practice.

The company I work for sells modelling engines ( maths engines for the noobs :P) to CAD software companies and that's the way our business is set up...

In that way Epic shares the risks with the developers using its engine. The more copies they sell the more money Epic gets back... ( which makes development costs raise slightly as a game sells more but it's such a small percentage the impact on the company bottomline is small). If a game developed on Unreal engine flops, Epic really doesn't get back that much money....

 

I wonder what the costs for development are then... Since a lot of the game design/art elements/engines can be reused, for example if Halo 3 cost $25 million to develop what would Halo 4 cost?