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Forums - Sony - Uncharted's budget was...

weezy on 22 February 2008
phil said:
Bodhesatva said:
phil said:
Bodhesatva said:

This is a classic debating tactic.

First, you insist that your "opponent" has claimed some ridiculously high (or low) statistic.

Then, you show that the actual value of that statistic is lower than the ridiculous claim.

"Some people claim that over a million people die each year due to gun related violence in the US. In reality, it's less than two hundred thousand!"

 

 

This makes it look your figure is actually low, when it's only low in comparison to some ridiculously high figure.

I don't think any reasonable person here thought that games were averaging 40 million, just that some of the higher end games did cost that much (such as Killzone2 and MGS4). I honestly don't know of anyone who thought this was the norm.

20 Million is very high, and puts the given estimates for copies needed to break even right where we've heard they are for higher end games: 700-1000k units. Sounds about right to me, and only further cements my perception that the PS3 is, indeed, very expensive to develop for.


Here's the problem: you aren't actually quoting any real statistics EITHER. All you're doing is saying "well, it's 2x the cost of development of a last generation game." Well no friggin crap. And it cost more to develop on PS2 than it did for PS1. Was it double the cost, I dunno, but logically, it's more.

So, if you're terribly interested in intellectual honesty, how about, instead of saying that you think it simply must be expensive, give us some statistics to back your point up, such as budgets for games of comparable quality for the PS3/360.


You seem to have missed my point.

Another classic debate tactic... someone calls you on something and you go back on it and say that isn't what you meant.  I suspect a strained parsing of your own words is to come.

If your point is that developing a game on the PS3 is expensive for mere mortals, than your point is moot, because everyone already knew that. The same probably applies to every video game system on the planet. If your point is that the PS3 is expensive to develop for, even relative to it's competition, then your point may not be moot, but you've failed to give evidence for your claim.

If those aren't your points, please enlighten me.


talk about missing the whole point..

 

 



I am WEEzY. You can suck my Nintendo loving BALLS!

 

MynameisGARY

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phil on 22 February 2008
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).


You're assuming a linear relationship between game length and development cost.  Assuming you're even the teensiest bit familiar with programming anything beyond "Hello, World", this is idea is laughable at best.



psrock on 22 February 2008

i simply dont understand why you guys care about how much profit they make, i dont hear them complaining about it . From what we know, the game is a moderate success.



 Next Gen 

11/20/09 04:25 makingmusic476 Warning Other (Your avatar is borderline NSFW. Please keep it for as long as possible.)
phil on 22 February 2008
weezy said:
phil said:
Bodhesatva said:
phil said:
Bodhesatva said:

This is a classic debating tactic.

First, you insist that your "opponent" has claimed some ridiculously high (or low) statistic.

Then, you show that the actual value of that statistic is lower than the ridiculous claim.

"Some people claim that over a million people die each year due to gun related violence in the US. In reality, it's less than two hundred thousand!"

 

 

This makes it look your figure is actually low, when it's only low in comparison to some ridiculously high figure.

I don't think any reasonable person here thought that games were averaging 40 million, just that some of the higher end games did cost that much (such as Killzone2 and MGS4). I honestly don't know of anyone who thought this was the norm.

20 Million is very high, and puts the given estimates for copies needed to break even right where we've heard they are for higher end games: 700-1000k units. Sounds about right to me, and only further cements my perception that the PS3 is, indeed, very expensive to develop for.


Here's the problem: you aren't actually quoting any real statistics EITHER. All you're doing is saying "well, it's 2x the cost of development of a last generation game." Well no friggin crap. And it cost more to develop on PS2 than it did for PS1. Was it double the cost, I dunno, but logically, it's more.

So, if you're terribly interested in intellectual honesty, how about, instead of saying that you think it simply must be expensive, give us some statistics to back your point up, such as budgets for games of comparable quality for the PS3/360.


You seem to have missed my point.

Another classic debate tactic... someone calls you on something and you go back on it and say that isn't what you meant. I suspect a strained parsing of your own words is to come.

If your point is that developing a game on the PS3 is expensive for mere mortals, than your point is moot, because everyone already knew that. The same probably applies to every video game system on the planet. If your point is that the PS3 is expensive to develop for, even relative to it's competition, then your point may not be moot, but you've failed to give evidence for your claim.

If those aren't your points, please enlighten me.


talk about missing the whole point..

 

 

I'm prepared to accept the idea that I've missed the point.  Unlike most of you here, I don't mind the idea that I'm wrong sometimes.  However, just saying "Well, you've missed the point" is exactly the kind of bullshit debating tactic that Bod was decrying in his original post.  If you want an actual discussion, then you need to do a better job of making your point ABSOLUTELY CLEAR.  None of this moving target crap where, as soon as someone trys to take a shot, you say that that wasn't the point either.



makingmusic476 on 22 February 2008
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.



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weezy on 22 February 2008

its ok phil im wrong sometimes too.



I am WEEzY. You can suck my Nintendo loving BALLS!

 

MynameisGARY

HappySqurriel on 22 February 2008
phil 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).


You're assuming a linear relationship between game length and development cost.  Assuming you're even the teensiest bit familiar with programming anything beyond "Hello, World", this is idea is laughable at best.


Modern development teams for 3D games like Uncharted are made up of 80% to 90% of artists; the other 10% to 20% is managers and programmers. If you want a game that is as populated with unique content the artists will have a (roughly) linear increase in work in comparison to the amount of content.



misterd on 22 February 2008
krik said:
Dolla Dolla said:
fkusumot said:

What's the source for the number?

krik is the source. He was at GDC.

 

 Actually I'm still at GDC, it just ended but I'm not the source, the source is Richard Lemarchand (Lead Designer for Naughty Dog). some guy asked him about the budget for Uncharted and he said, that I can answer, it was $20M. He was pretty clear and confident about it.

 

Then can you ask the other half of the equation: How much money does Sony typically make off each $60 game sold.

 



HappySqurriel on 22 February 2008
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.



krik on 22 February 2008
HappySqurriel said:
phil 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).


You're assuming a linear relationship between game length and development cost.  Assuming you're even the teensiest bit familiar with programming anything beyond "Hello, World", this is idea is laughable at best.


Modern development teams for 3D games like Uncharted are made up of 80% to 90% of artists; the other 10% to 20% is managers and programmers. If you want a game that is as populated with unique content the artists will have a (roughly) linear increase in work in comparison to the amount of content.


 Uncharted's team was: 6 designers, 18 programmers, ~50 artists/animators, 0 producers (love this last one)



PSN ID: krik

Optimistic predictions for 2008 (Feb 5 2008): Wii = 20M, PS3 = 14M, X360 = 9.5M