ZombiU Was "Not Even Close" to Profitable, No Plans for a Sequel

[Barozi]

osed125 said:

Barozi said:

Read that source again. It says with promotion over $100m.
Marketing costs aren't included in the development budgets.

So what else is there ? Licensing costs for the engine/music and perhaps the voice actors and motion capture actors. That's a tiny bit of the budget.

I personally believe that marketing should be included in the total cost, because after all they have to recover that money as well. As for what is in the cost of games: http://www.notenoughshaders.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2.jpg

This is just an example for Gears of Wars back in 2006, the most important ones are Art/Design and Programming and Engineering.

Sure but the problem is that we have close to 0 official numbers on marketing budgets and on top of that it's called development budget for a reason. Marketing doesn't belong in there just as the rent for the office rooms.
Btw. movie budgets don't include advertising either.

That means that nearly everything is purely guessed and therefore incredibly unreliable.

Especially the image you posted earlier is completely off, since it lists games with the total budget and games with only the development budget.