rf40928 said:
Scoobes said:
rf40928 said:
Ok heres some links .. I said Gears 1 was 10 million to develop, and Gears 2 was 12 million ..
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/96188/cheap-epic-says-gears-of-war-cost-less-than-10-million/ ( Gears 1 )
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/27008924 ( Gear 2 ) and http://neogaf.net/forum/showthread.php?t=371971
And Gears 3 was on a Gears 3 video, I'll try to find a link, but the evidence thus far is pretty clear- which is : Gears has been very CHEAP to produce.. AND factually speaking most successes like this had much higher cost... I know more effort was put into Resistance 3 as hopes this would break the game open and this always equates to more money - not just more data.. afterall people do get paid to make games - they arent made by illegal aliens that are smart enough make games - and somehow dumb enough to accept paid low wages huh? Didnt think so..
And yes.. you're right... more data doesnt always mean more cost..but usually it does.. The most recent GTA had a huge budget - but part of that reason is it was multiple platform game .. In multi-plat titles the risk is relatively low compared to exclusives which might not make the money back.. The sales history of Resistance 1 and 2 has been less then Gears 1 & 2..... If Resistance 3 sells less then R2 did ( and its looking that way - As R2 also sold less then R1 ).. you'll probably see no R4
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I believe Epic actually have a Chinese subsidary. If they had a hand in the development of Gears then I can imagine they'd be a lot cheaper than their Western equivalents.
I also think the dev costs are low because Epic aren't including the original engine development costs for creating UE3 (which is fair considerring they license it out and it's basically its own product). However, Insomniac have effectively done the same thing by creating an engine and using it to release a new game every year (alternating between Ratchet and Resistance). I really don't see how Resistance can cost that much more than Gears.
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I beleive you're right about the engine cost..but there's no way to know about the Chinese subsidary, but I doubt it because while Epic is the parent company of Chair Entertainment, Titan, and People Can Fly, the studios it has ( that you refer to ) in Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo would've done minor ( if any ) work at all... EPIC, which is based in Cary, North Carolina is credited with all the devlopment work and has been very open about the development of Gears.. stating to the public that no more then 10- 20 people were working on any Gears game at any given time ( which is why these games havent been cranking out fast ) - and also why cost was lower then big time games like COD - ( which COD has TWO Large Studios working on COD year round )
The development cost of Resistance seems to have been guarded very closely .. its hard to find much on it.. which would lead some to beleive they dont want anyone to know what they spent ( what they lost -or- didnt make ).. Companies dont brag about bad numbers the way Epic talks about their 'good' numbers because it makes shareholders nervous.. So while you might be right and Resistance may have not cost alot more to make ( possibly )..... they dont seem to want to talk about it..
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Most developers don't give out their budget costs and even when they do they usually give either a range or rounded figure. With Epic, it's in their best interests to give the impression that UE 3.0 costs keep development budgets down so they'll do whatever they can do to publicly claim a game budget is as low as possible. All companies do this to sell their products and you always have to take such marketing talk with a pinch of salt, especially as UE 3.0 licenses are probably quite a nice earner for them (the gamepro link especially looks like a marketing presentation). I don't doubt that there was a core of 10-20 people working on the games at any one time, but they're probably ignoring a large chunk of personnel that would do important but minor jobs and the programmers that are constantly tweaking the engine (as they'd probably fall under a seperate Engine development cost).
Insomniac on the other hand have no such product/Engine to sell and have no need to give out budget costs leaving us guessing. However, considerring they've used the same engine over the entire gen and the fact that it's the third game (lots learnt from previous 2), I don't see how the budget can differ much from Gears. It's all guesswork though.
