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jarrod on 11 April 2010
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jammy2211 said:
jarrod said:
MonstaMack said:

For once I think Pachter is right. Retailers do get a good chunk ($12 seems fair) for each game. I think with a 50 million dollar budget a game should easily break a million or more (if not It would be a flop, wouldn't it?) but it makes you wonder how much the average Wii game costs, or games like Deadly Premonition. Obviously not every game costs the same to make.

 

I work in retail and the mark up % did account to close to $12 profit per game. I think it was around $4 for a $20 game, so that means budget games have to sell a lot more or actual be budget in budget development costs (lol). So I hope Deadly Prem didn't run them much.

Does he also factor in price cuts? I mean if the game drops to $40 it has to obviously sell more to make up for the difference.

Average multiplatfom HD game R&D budget: $15-30m, AAA HD games regularly exceed $40m

Average Wii game R&D budget: $5-7m

Average budget for GC/PS2/Xbox games last gen: $3-5m

For AAA HD games, typically advertising budgets match or exceed development budgets.

And a few random R&D budgets...

  • Gears of War: $10m (no engine/tech costs, built "for free" alongside UE3)
  • Red Steel: $12m
  • Spore: $35m
  • Gran Turismo 5: $60m
  • Grand Theft Auto IV: $100m+
  • Modern Warfare 2: $40-50m ($200m advertising budget)

 I'm sure you didn't mean to but your figures are slightly misleading to how much AAA games cost last gen - for instance Final Fantasy VIII - XII all cost over $30 million, Onimusha and DMC both cost Capcom over $12 million and Mario 64 over $25 million (Albeit inflated due to not knowing the N64 specs before developmenet started). We've all heard about Shenmue too... (All figures taken from Famitsu I believe)

 The real difference now seems to be that EVERY game has to be a AAA budget epic, whereas before there was a viable market for lower investiment, lower payoff type games. We've now seen consumers group towards 4-5 megahits leaving there no room for cheaper games, I guess.

 

Sure, AAA games regularly went higher. And FFs tended to be higher still due to copious expensive CG (though XI was higher than usual due to it's infastructure and XII higher than usual due to it's massive delays and staff changeover).  

Mario 64's budget surprises me, though it was rumored to have started as a Super FX2 project originally, and a lot of the R&D work was likely engine and tool building for N64.  EAD recycled it's base engine for OOT/MM too, so some of those costs could be likely be spread to later games (many games these days spread technology expenditures over future projects, like Yakuza Kenzan/3/4).

Shenmue was a real moneypit though.  It's budget was reportedly $70 for development... in fact until GTA4, it hadn't been topped.

General rule of thumb though, development costs have about tripled this gen on consoles (outside Wii).  If a AAA game generally cost $10-15m on PS2/GC/Xbox, that's basically $30-45m on 360/PS3 today.