Modern Warfare 2 cost revealed

[Reasonable]

Squilliam said:

Reasonable said:
I think many commenting are simply to seeing the global scale of the marketing for MW2 - it was huge, probably bigger than Halo 3 (which was also huge).

Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, Gears of War, etc. all had much smaller marketing campaigns. MW2 was given the level of a huge blockbuster film, just as Kotick notes (little scumbag). Posters everywhere in cities all around the world, adverts, big billboards, etc. I can easily believe they blew that amount of money pushing this.

What I struggle with is the $40 to $50 million for development - to be blunt, that's too high for the game as delivered, and leaves me scratching my head in puzzlement. Uncharted 2 cost much less, delivered a superior engine that showed a bigger leap from it's original release, added coop and MP and had more locations/textures that most modern SP campaigns, plus extensive motion capture and more extensive voice overs. What the hell were IW doing with the money? The engine in MW2 is clearly only a minor bump up from MW, the SP campaign is short and features a fraction of the detail level of Uncharted 2, the MP is good but again doesn't seem to have that much content.

And for those implying the PS3 added a lot that seems very unlikely. IW already had the engine working comfortably on PS3/360 and have already indicated that they can share assets, etc. so in line with other development houses being multi-platform vs exclusive should only have added around 10% to the development cost.

Mind you, Ubi apparently had 100 or more staff on AC2, which I bet has a much bigger development cost than Uncharted 2, so perhaps it's more a case of ND being relatively frugal with costs vs content vs developers like IW and Ubisoft.

Either way though, I can't help but figure the game should have cost less to develop than that.

Why is it reasonable that MW2 cost a heck of a lot more than UC2?

Some points I think are important here!

1. The game probably has quite a large group of gameplay testers to religeously test the multiplayer aspect. They would have been testing and prototyping from day one.  That's their choice though, Squil - they could just as readily have used a Beta like Uncharted 2.  Plenty of people are willing to playtest for free, and even if they conducted it all internally playtesters are at the cheap end of the cost equation so far as I know

2. The game is programmed for 2 seperate console platforms and ported to the PC platform.  That should only add around 10% max according to most big developers.  Given CoD4 was already multi-platform I'd argue it should have been even less than 10% for MW2.  Even assuming a worst case it should only have added 15% or so.  But it is an additional cost so the point is fair, I just don't see evidence it should be that high.

3. IW staff probably get paid more than other companies as they are a proved commodity. Activision doesn't want the whole group of them to up and leave to go work for EA do they?  Again, that's their choice.  I guess its possible, although I'd expect any bigger rewards to be driven through bonuses, etc. rather than direct salary.  It's a good point though, and I wonder how much the high cost was down to staff costs.

4. They use a lot of set pieces. I wonder how much work it took to make it and how much they had to throw away in the end? They probably had no compunction leaving whole segments of the game on the cutting room floor.  I don't but this one, as Uncharted 2 and other games have had more set pieces than MW2, and arguably bigger ones too.  TBH the SP campaign is too short for me to buy they spent a lot more adding set pieces, or threw that much away.  Even if they threw away half they'd still only have developed a 10 hour game, shorter than many similar games.

 

In the end the figure just seems high.  Uncharted cost $30 Million I believe, and obviously required a new engine, etc. from scratch.  Uncharted 2 cost around $30 million too, but its clear that with the engine already there the cost of the SP must have gone down a lot and the effort to add MP/Coop took the cost back up to $30 million.

With MW2 nothing that big has been added, the engine was there, etc. so the cost just seems high.  I mean, it's lower than say Killzone 2, which I'd argue cost too much but I guess did deliver an amazing engine built from scratch, and even if MW2 cost $100 million it would still be very profitable.

In fact, I think you're on the right track with point 3.  Everyone at IW and Activision knew this was going to be massive, and I think that resulted (as it often does in any business) in a losser control of costs and effort.  For the game $40 million is too high if it was developed with very tight budget and cost control - but loosen the reins a little, and I can then see costs creeping to around $40 million.