Gears of War 2 had a $12 million development budget

[WereKitten]

Slimebeast said:

140 people x 2 = 280 man years (extended over 3 years of development, 3 times 90 guys on average if you like)

Each man years costs $150,000.

Total dev cost KZ2: 280 x $150k= $42 million. That's a minimum/conservative estimation in my opinion. And marketing costs excluded of course.

Including marketing, total game creation costs: ~$60 million, so KZ2 will need to sell roughly $60 million/$30 = 2 million copies to break even.
(excluding bundled copies since they don't contribute even one dime in revenue, although bundles help selll consoles and other games of course)

You're also forgetting the DLC packs. Between the three of them it's probably been at least 1M downloads. That's at least $6M revenue minus the cost of creation of those 6 maps. That would put KZ2 right about the break even point right now, though we don't really know the actual numbers.

Back to OT: it shows the convenience of using middleware, even though it means not pushing the hardware as much. That's probably going to count more and more as the software tools for this generation mature.