Game Development Time + Costs

[Procrastinato]

Slimebeast said:

Procrastinato said:

AnarchyWest said:
Resistance FOM and Ratchet&Clank had 2 years of development time...?
does that make sense?

 

Like I said in the OP, some devs are going to consider production and pre-production to not be the same thing.  I'll bet, for these two games, 2 years was the production time, and they probably both spent about a year in pre-production (i.e. initial design, concept art, game engine layout).

 

 So 1 year pre-production and 1 year full production development for Resistance and R&C?

I believe that too.

I was thinking 1 year pre- and 2 years full.  2 years total, for games which probably required a major engine rewrite, for a platform which didn't exist until late in the dev cycle, seems unreasonable to me.

I'd put most HD games in the 3-ish year range, for overall time, unless they are somehow exceptional (like Killzone 2, with its fancy rendering tec hniques), or they are a same-platform sequel, which require less time (like 18-24 months).