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

gurglesletch on 21 February 2010
Chairman-Mao said:
zexen_lowe said:
Chairman-Mao said:
LA Noire is very expensive. Didn't realize it was such a big project.

I wonder if GT5 Prologue sales covered the $80 million.

It shipped 4.65 million, let's assume 1 million was in bundles, and a revenue of $25 per copy (given it costs $40)

3.65*25 = $91.25 million.

If you vary the revenue slice, it changes a bit, but let's just say that if it didn't cover it fully, it covered the budget for the most part

Wow that's a great deal for Sony/Polyphony. Sucks everyone who bought this game for $40 and will then have to spend $70 on the full game though.

Where does the 70$ come from? Games only cost 60$? 




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megaman79 on 22 February 2010
Chris Hu said:
psrock said:
disolitude said:

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.

Implying Halo 3 is an average movie equivalent to MS and the 360. ITS NOT


Its pretty much everything the 360 has thats exclusive. At the time, it was everything the 360 had.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

sieanr on 22 February 2010
megaman79 said:
Chris Hu said:
psrock said:
disolitude said:

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.

Implying Halo 3 is an average movie equivalent to MS and the 360. ITS NOT


Its pretty much everything the 360 has thats exclusive. At the time, it was everything the 360 had.

Read his post. He was reffering to advertising costs.



Leo-j said: If a dvd for a pc game holds what? Crysis at 3000p or something, why in the world cant a blu-ray disc do the same?

ssj12 said: Player specific decoders are nothing more than specialized GPUs. Gran Turismo is the trust driving simulator of them all. 

"Why do they call it the xbox 360? Because when you see it, you'll turn 360 degrees and walk away" 

megaman79 on 22 February 2010
sieanr said:
megaman79 said:

Implying Halo 3 is an average movie equivalent to MS and the 360. ITS NOT


Its pretty much everything the 360 has thats exclusive. At the time, it was everything the 360 had.

Read his post. He was reffering to advertising costs.

So was i.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

Chris Hu on 22 February 2010
megaman79 said:
Chris Hu said:
psrock said:
disolitude said:

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.

Implying Halo 3 is an average movie equivalent to MS and the 360. ITS NOT


Its pretty much everything the 360 has thats exclusive. At the time, it was everything the 360 had.

Anyway whoever wrote this article was very misinformed because their is no way MS and Bungie spend 200 million advertising Halo 3.  The author probably had Halo 3 confused with MW2 which is the only game where their is some evidence that they actually spend 200 million dollars advertising it.  Also with all the merchandising for Halo 3 and Halo in general it pretty much was paid off before they even sold one single copy.  Gear of War would also like to disagree with your last sentence since it was released almost a full year before Halo 3 came out I could name other titles but you are very ill informed if you don't even know about Gears.



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SaviorX on 25 February 2010

GT5 was at $60 million last November; will probably be $80m by release with advertising included.
MGS4 was rumored at $40m. FF13 is definitely $100m+. Red Dead Redemption needs 5 million copies sold at full price to make profit ($300 million ?!??!)......well I don't know about that game, but it needs a shit-ton to make money.

Halo was ~$30m Wii Fit got $40m worth of advertising, but it has made $2 billion so.....drop in the bucket.
I'm not sure any single Ninty game cost more than $30m, only because not even a peep has been mentioned about them.



Leatherhat on July 6th, 2012 3pm. Vita sales:"3 mil for COD 2 mil for AC. Maybe more. "  thehusbo on July 6th, 2012 5pm. Vita sales:"5 mil for COD 2.2 mil for AC."

Kai Master on 26 February 2010

MGS4 dev just denied the $60M cost.



Chris Hu on 28 February 2010
pitzy272 said:

Shouldn't Alan Wake be on that list?? That game will have been in production for like 6 years by the time it releases in May. It was announced E3 2005 (June), which would mean they had already started working on it for at least several months I'd say. Anyways, anyone know how much this game has cost?

Long development time doesn't automatically mean big budget if that where true then Heavy Rain would be on the list also.  But the reason both Heavy Rain and Alan Wake been in production for a long time is because both titles have a relatively small production team.