Break-even Point for "Mid Tier Games"

[johnsobas]

mrstickball said:
I would say they're probably mid-high end titles.

But really, it just all depends on who's making it and with what engine.

I'll go back to the great Gears of War vs. Red Steel battle.

Red Steel cost Ubisoft $12 million dollars, using UE 2.5 and PhysX engine.
Gears of War cost Epic $10 million dollars using their own in-house UE3 engine.

Which game was more profitable? In the end, it all comes down to how familiar the dev's are with the gaming engines, and what all they want to add. In this case, the vastly more graphical (and review wise) Gear's was actually cheaper - only due to the fact Epic was already ultra-familiar with their own in-house engine versus Ubisoft using an engine that they were familiar with, but not to the levels of Epic. This meant more dev time = more dev money.

So it really comes down to the Engines, and what they do with it. In the case of many major studios such as Nintendo, Capcom, and Namco, they end up paying more due to making their own engines for their own games. This is in comparison to Western devs that use more in-line engines like Steam, Havok, UE, and such. Even Fallout 3 is using Oblivion's engine to save time and money (think about it, Fallout 3 is being made in 2 years versus Oblivion's 4 years).

costs way more money to create your own engine than to use an existing one, and obviously familiarity with the engine helps too.  The thing is that once the engine is created, the other games you use that engine in will be cheaper.  It's really quite amazing that Gear of War could be made with only $10 million.