The witcher 3 development costs

[JEMC]

SvennoJ said:

JEMC said:

SvennoJ said:

This is an interesting article about TW3 development budget
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/how-much-did-the-witcher-3-cost

Estimated at about $32 million production cost, a bit cheaper than most AAA titles yet
we have the annual Game Developer Salary Survey over at Gamasutra. For the U.S. in 2013, game developers made an average of $83,060, while Canadian devs made $71,445. Develop ran its own UK salary survey, coming up with an average salary of £29,358 ($46,591 at the time). Polski GameDev offered up its own infographic showing local salaries broken down job type. The average salary overall? 4,458 zł per month ($1,446 per month at the time). Total annual average salary? $17,352.

A lot easier to make a profit in Poland if the wages are only 25% of that of a NA studio.

Btw comparing it with the most expensive video game to data GTA5 is not the best way to go. Apparently TW3 cost a bit more than Crisis 3 and Watch dogs according to the above article.

Thanks for the extra info.

But to compare its budget to Crysis (more than $60 million) and Watch Dogs (more than 50 million euros)... we don't even know if those budgets include the marketing costs.

True, checking the link that $50 million is all development budget, 6 studios and over 600 people worked on Watch Dogs.
http://gamers.blogs.challenges.fr/archive/2013/06/18/watch-dogs-le-tres-gros-budget-d-ubisoft.html
Yet the living costs are also a lot lower in Poland, Watch Dogs was made in Canada with an average dev salary of 71k vs 17k in Poland.

I wonder if the big studios are taking note and have started thinking of moving development to lower wage countries. Every other industry does it...

I checked the link but, unlike you, I don't speak French so I can't quite understand it. But this part

"A l’E3, Stéphane Decroix, le producteur exécutif de Watch Dogs, a bien voulu évoquer le sujet avec un "au-delà de 50 millions d’euros". Voilà un chiffre qui donne une idée assez approximative: est-on plus proche de 50 ou bien de 100 ?"

Just means that it cost "beyond 50 millions d’euros", which could be anything between 50 and 100.

And to your other question, no, they won't (unless you count India). Other industries move to other countries for its cheap and non prepared workforce. To develop games you need people with studies, which won't move from US/UK/Canada/whatever. to those other countries.