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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Top 10 most expensive video games budgets ever

Funtime on 21 February 2010

Me thinks World of Warcraft would be #1 if you count all the dollars spent continuing to develope content 5 years after release and providing servers to support 11 million players.



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llewdebkram on 21 February 2010

# World of Goo - $96,000 for development[22]

They counted 'living expenses' in this figure but only spent $20,000 on the actual development.
I mean you have to 'live' and spend mney whether you're making a game or not.

But I'm pleased with their figures that 55-60% of sales were on Wiiware.

Really great game.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22866



ChrisIsNotSexy on 21 February 2010

WoW should be like the most expensive of all,if you include marketing and all the expansions.
But its also the most profitable game.



NJ5 on 21 February 2010
Funtime said:

Me thinks World of Warcraft would be #1 if you count all the dollars spent continuing to develope content 5 years after release and providing servers to support 11 million players.

The great thing about server costs on a game like WoW is that you only need to spend as much as your revenue justifies it. If WoW was less popular they would spend very little on servers.

Unlike the case with many other games, which have server costs long after they generate any revenue.

I agree that it would be great to have data about all those things though.

 



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

NJ5 on 21 February 2010
llewdebkram said:

# World of Goo - $96,000 for development[22]

They counted 'living expenses' in this figure but only spent $20,000 on the actual development.
I mean you have to 'live' and spend mney whether you're making a game or not.

But I'm pleased with their figures that 55-60% of sales were on Wiiware.

Really great game.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22866

The living expenses would be somewhat equivalent to the salary paid while making a game for a publisher (which is of course used to cover living expenses too). So I think it's justified to include them. Assuming they're commiting a big portion of their day towards the development of the game, of course.

 



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

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makingmusic476 on 21 February 2010
megaman79 said:
And GTA4 is also, coincidently, the best reviewed game ever.

What a surprise.

Uh, you seem to be forgetting a very important game.  =/



vic_viper on 21 February 2010

@ Makingmusic476: I was waiting for someone to correct that.



AngelosL on 21 February 2010

Ocarina of Time...Can't get over this game and I think I'm not the only one...



Chris Hu on 21 February 2010
psrock said:
disolitude said:
psrock said:
disolitude said:
psrock said:
disolitude said:
This guy pulls budget numebrs out of his ass.

Halo 3's budget was estimated around 30 million and advertising budget was 40 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_3_marketing

People will write anything for page hits...

How ironic you use wikpedia to prove him wrong.

Trust me, MS spent more than 40 million dollars to advertise Halo 3.

No...trust me they didnt. I work in online advertising industry and am an active member on Bungie boards. Their advertising budget was 30 mil...but they spent around 10 more.

Have a read here if you'd like...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2007/sep/24/halo3amoviebeaterinprofit

Microsoft profited for the first time in their gaming division when halo 3 came out (165 million or so), and it doesn't make sense that they spent 200 mil on advertising and 50 mil on the game if the game made them 175 million firts week and probably around 250 million during the first month. They barely would have recovered the money invested in the game for that quarter.

 

Edit - I think you are confusing advertising budget with launch budget. Call of duty MW2 has "launch budget" of 200 million. They shipped 10 million copies of the game...lets say that averga cost of making and shipping the case, disc, manual is 10-15 dollars X 10 million...thats  100-150 million right there. And they had a more intense ad campaign than halo...so ~100-50 million advertising. 

Nothing had more intense campaign than Halo 3. It was everywhere.

 

Yeah ok...I respect your "hunch" but lets be serious. So microsoft spent 200 on marketing, 60 on the game and about 100 mil to distribute it. So halo needed to sell over 7 million copies at full price to break even. Right... MS is smart. Game cost 30, and thats a fact...check bungie boards. Advertising was set to 30 as well but was bumped to 40 . The 40 million for advertising is more than an average movie would spend...hence why it was such a big deal.

I never said MS spent 200 million dollars on advertisement, I am saying they spent more than 40 million.

Your forgetting that a lot of the advertising for Halo 3 was the free kind Slupee, Mountain Dew game fuel, action figures etc.  MS didn't pay for that the companies paid Bungie and MS to use Halo 3 to advertise their products.



makingmusic476 on 21 February 2010
Chris Hu said:
psrock said:
disolitude said:
psrock said:
disolitude said:
psrock said:
disolitude said:
This guy pulls budget numebrs out of his ass.

Halo 3's budget was estimated around 30 million and advertising budget was 40 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_3_marketing

People will write anything for page hits...

How ironic you use wikpedia to prove him wrong.

Trust me, MS spent more than 40 million dollars to advertise Halo 3.

No...trust me they didnt. I work in online advertising industry and am an active member on Bungie boards. Their advertising budget was 30 mil...but they spent around 10 more.

Have a read here if you'd like...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2007/sep/24/halo3amoviebeaterinprofit

Microsoft profited for the first time in their gaming division when halo 3 came out (165 million or so), and it doesn't make sense that they spent 200 mil on advertising and 50 mil on the game if the game made them 175 million firts week and probably around 250 million during the first month. They barely would have recovered the money invested in the game for that quarter.

 

Edit - I think you are confusing advertising budget with launch budget. Call of duty MW2 has "launch budget" of 200 million. They shipped 10 million copies of the game...lets say that averga cost of making and shipping the case, disc, manual is 10-15 dollars X 10 million...thats  100-150 million right there. And they had a more intense ad campaign than halo...so ~100-50 million advertising. 

Nothing had more intense campaign than Halo 3. It was everywhere.

 

Yeah ok...I respect your "hunch" but lets be serious. So microsoft spent 200 on marketing, 60 on the game and about 100 mil to distribute it. So halo needed to sell over 7 million copies at full price to break even. Right... MS is smart. Game cost 30, and thats a fact...check bungie boards. Advertising was set to 30 as well but was bumped to 40 . The 40 million for advertising is more than an average movie would spend...hence why it was such a big deal.

I never said MS spent 200 million dollars on advertisement, I am saying they spent more than 40 million.

Your forgetting that a lot of the advertising for Halo 3 was the free kind Slupee, Mountain Dew game fuel, action figures etc.  MS didn't pay for that the companies paid Bungie and MS to use Halo 3 to advertise their products.

The action figures are more of a joint venture between the two, but the slurpees and whatnot are definitely paid for by MS.  Slurpees and Mountain Dew sell regardless, and to a large number of people. Having your game plastered all over something drunk by millions will definitely help grow your brand awareness

Sony did some similar with Pepsi for uncharted 2 and 7-eleven for God of War III.  I highly doubt 7-eleven called up Sony oging "Hm, God of War looks like it'll be a pretty big game, can we plaster Kratos all over our cups?"  Especially when there are so many other alternatives they could use, like music artists, the latest movies, or even other games.

The slurpees help the game far more than the game helps the slurpees.