Naz, while I agree with your general sentiment, including SEGA in your argument is a bad idea. Last year, SEGA blamed virtually all their losses on the death of the arcade division. Which, in turn, they blamed on the Wii, their largest profit area... Kinda comical, really.

What about Namco? Are they still running an arcade division?

As for Midway, they need to stop making shitty games. That would probably help their profit statements a fair bit.

Where are you getting that from? Naz is using direct quotes from developers.

Its extremely naive to think that either game game, with their extremely expensive FMVs and composer, would less than $15-20 million. LO is obvious pushing the graphical power of the 360, or otherwise why would there be so many technical issues, such as at the start of every battle it lags three times. Every time.

@outlawauron

Occam's Razor would tell us that this title was developed on an average budget, because the overwhelming majority of titles are produced on an average budget compared to the few that have fantastically high budgets. That should be your first assumption. You want to use a logical argument then apply logic. Assume the game is ordinary rather then extraordinary.

To assume that the title had an extraordinarily high budget is beyond rational. Nor is it rational to assume all titles or most titles have astronomical budgets. Were that the case we will lose over half the development studios this year to bankruptcy. Only so many titles can sell so many units to cover those costs and be profitable.

Have no illusion most decent games on your platform will be made for ten million dollars or less. They make up the bulk of titles by far. The only figures your going to read about the excessive ones which are basically bragging. I provided the relevant information in the article I provided. Further more I explained why these games were not as expensive as high end games like Killzone 2 of Metal Gear Solid. The design philosophy has relatively benign financial repercussions. When you can get by with generating half of a world, have it be flat, and have few complex game engines at play. You are going to save a lot of money that others will not have the luxury of in other genres. Outsource the work, and your costs go down even further.

Further more lets be realistic about the cinematic work. While it is good in Lost Odyssey. We are basically seeing the application of time tested cheap animation methodology, only 45 minutes of it, and we are not looking at a Spirits within level of quality even though it is seven years later. We are not looking at a animation budget that dwarfs the game design budget. You have to be realistic about these things.

Basically it really is your responsibility to prove that this game had a massive budget. I have provided information as to average budget. I have provided an explanation as to how this genre permits lower overhead then other genres. I have even told you of the games production methodology. You owe it to yourself to do better.

I am pretty sure HD gaming development costs are way overblown. I am pretty sure both these games have at least broken even. It similar to when people were trying to claim that Uncharted didn't make a profit, when it has sold 1.35M...

I'm not suggesting they top the dev cost list. I've said many times I figure that they are in between reported high end costs ($30-$40 million) and official reported low end costs ($10-15 million). I think that puts the games at around $20-25 million each (not necessarily equal costs per game). That IS average cost this gen for a good game. The only link you have suggesting games are even possible under $15 million is 3 years old, and full of other completely false information.

That said, if Legend's link is correct then they aren't far from breaking even anyway. And of course like I said in the first place, Microsoft paid for all this development. Mistwalker is a Microsoft funded company, and they might as well be first party like Rare. Their losses will be felt by Microsoft, not by them.

I just think it's ridiculous that you're still arguing 2 40 hour plus games full of FMV and with tons of big names like Uematsu hired on for fully orchestrated soundtracks cost less to make than Uncharted. A 12 hour game that used no FMV, was made in half the time, and had no orchestral soundtrack...

Balrog's blog is not an official report of development costs. Plus, even if true, I thought his comment was about big budget games, not the average cost of 6th gen games, which I remember being just around $7-8 million. So if you double that, you get $15 million, which is the reported average cost of PS3 games.

Plus comparing Uncharated to these games can't just compare content. Games don't cost per hour of gameplay. They cost for development time, man hours, and resources. Plus pushing the graphics takes money, and Uncharted had a custom engine, that is designed to push the PS3, while neither Mistwalker game really pushes the 360.

Too bad FFXIII will OUTSELL ALL Mistwalker games COMBINED in its 1st WEEK!....lol!

@soriku

we know the reason, but the person was harping on about how Mistwalker has reached such a "huge" milestone. so just telling him that if S-E haven't released THEIR BIG games yet (DQ9, FF13) then there is no point comparing...

Sakaguchi he must be feeling ashamed of his Game Sales right now,I mean from the FF's..regularly over 5 million (FF7 10 million) to only 500K per game now..

Congtratz! (lol)

How many copies did Final Fantasy #1 sell again?