SaviorX said:
LordTheNightKnight said:
jarrod said:
I agree, tech is probably a good chunk of it. This is why engine reuse and licensing is so lucrative this generation.
For example Red Steel's R&D budget was evidently $12m, but a lot of that was spent on just initial R&D work on Wiimote implementation and converting UE2.5 to Wii spec. On the other hand, Gears of War's R&D budget was just $10m, but that doesn't include any technology costs since it was build alongside UE3 "for free". It's $10m for just assets, design, audio, script, etc.
Of course, if you dig around that Develop link, you find some scary high budget figures thrown around. GT5 is $60m (and still going) for just R&D. GTA4 was $100m for just R&D. MW2 was $50m for R&D and a whopping $200m for advertising! Budgets really have spiraled out of control this gen (and AAA HD games regularly balloon over $40m just for R&D), which is precisely why you so many many studios laying off, being bought out or just shutting down completely. Not just studios either, but even semi-major publishers like Eidos and Midway.
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And last gen, any game possibly costing that much was either an already established hit franchise, or had an out of control budget.
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Final Fantasy X cost $32 million, but that was the first FF on 'new' PS2 hardware. The last FF on the PS2 (FF12) was $42 million. I could just imagine how much FF13 ran Square Enix....(definitely $100m+)
That is probably the most expensive example I could find; GTA:San Andreas was probably in between FFX and FF12, but that did sell 18 million+
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I think FFXII got ballooned more by the delays than anything. I'm shocked FFX was that much (no wonder they wanted to do X-2 right away), though with FF games I guess they probably used to spend quite a bit proportionately on the CG. That's one aspect that HD consoles helps somewhat, in that more parts can just be done in realtime or at least with realtime assets.
