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HappySqurriel on 22 February 2008
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makingmusic476 said:
HappySqurriel said:

$20 Million for a game which lasts less than 10 hours (with no multiplayer) is far from what I would call an inexpensive game. To maintain this level of content for a game that would last the more reasonable (and expected at one point in time) 20 to 40 hours would be somewhere between $40 and $80 Million.

Remember, this also isn't the total cost being that a game with this large of a development budget probably had a similar marketing budget; with how often Uncharted advertisements were on the air (including some spots on very popular shows) the marketing budget may even be larger than the development budget.

What this all means is that a PS3 game like Uncharted probably needs sales that are (at least) 1 Million to truely break even, and probably needs sales that are 1.5 to 2 Million to justify the development of the game (to cover the opportunity loss).


But how much of that development cost went into creating a ps3-specific game engine?

It's obvious that the cost of entry for developing on the ps3/360 is very expensive, but we don't really know how much it will actually cost to create games once the engines, etc. have been basically completed.  Sure it will still be expensive, but just how much we don't know.  Uncharted 2 probably won't come close to a $20 mil. budget.


As I mentioned in my previous post, most work on game development today is in content creation not programming; the combination of third party 3D engines, middleware and tools greatly reduced the workload of the average programmer (to create a similar project) while the increase in quantity and quality of artwork in game greatly increased the workload of the artists.

Some developers are able to reuse a lot of content (3D models, textures, music, sound, etc.) like EA and Ninendo with how they approach development; yearly re-releases of sports games and WWII shooters for EA probably keeps content costs down, while Nintendo's reuse of Mario assets in multiple games per year would keep content costs down. I'm not too sure that most games can take advantage of content reuse though ...

If you're making Uncharted 2 you're probably going to want your game to take place in a (seemingly) different environment (possibly an African or South East Asian destination rather than a South American) which means that there are huge quantities of content which need to be added.