High Voltage CEO mocks notion of selling less than a million is a flop.

[Viper1]

darkknightkryta said:

Viper1 said:

Simple math formula can show you.   Game X has 100 people working on it.  The average salary of those 100 people is $75,000 (this was as of 2010) and they work on the game for 4 years.   100 x $75,000 = $7.5 million.  $7.5 million x 4 years = $30 million.

Now that is incredibly broad and doesn't even touch in minor factors that can increase or decrease this cost but it should give you a better idea how one game can cost so much more to develop than another game.  

I had actually forgotten God of War's dev time was longer and accounts for the extra mony, but as your math showed, there's no reason for God of War 3 to have cost more than 40 million with its 4 year dev time (I'm guessing that that 4 years).  Yet it's bloated to 55 million, and they were under budget.

My example was just that...an example.  Unless you know the total years of development and average number of people that worked on it annually, you can't make any assumptions.  And as I said, it doesn't take into account things like fees for major script doctors, engine license fees, music licenses, studio overhead costs, etc....  And finally, many production 'budgets' also include the marketing budget.