The Most Expensive Game Budget Ever

Shenmue, that was a pricey game! For the past 18 years or so, Yu Suzuki's Shenmue has been the most expensive game ever developed at US $70 million, making the game the current Guinnes World Record holder. According to Rockstar producer Leslie Benzies, Grand Theft Auto IV just might supplant Shenmue. Over a thousand people worked on the game, and Benzies guestimates GTA IV cost roughly $100 million. Just imagine if Tom Cruise had done voice acting work! So, any takers on what Metal Gear Solid 4 cost? I'm betting slightly north of $120 million.

Kotaku:  http://kotaku.com/385519/the-most-expensive-game-budget-ever

I don't think MGS4 will be more expensive than GTA4. The staff doesn't seem to be as big (200 something people was what I last heard), and there's not as much copyrighted music to license. MGS4 is also PS3-only (or not? :P), which will further decrease costs (although only slightly).

However, Killzone 2 may be a contender if it keeps getting delayed, especially as its staff is getting paid in Euros ;)

I didn't know T2 even had that much money to spend on one game... It's no wonder they're not doing so well; they're throwing money down drain.

Well they got $50 million (loaned?) from Microsoft.

With the weak dollar most games seems expensive these days.

Damn that's a lot of money. SMG had a 14M budget, didn't it?

How many copies do they need to earn money? After all taxes, and everything else, I guess they won't earn more than 6-8 dollars a game, so they will need at least 8M of sales.

Also, over 1000 people? Brawl was huge and had a little over 150, if I'm not wrong.

 Still, there's no way the game should have cost that much money to make. That's just poor management on their part. How do you expect to make money when you're blowing 100m on one game? That's 5-10 high-budget HD game's all spent on developing one game. 

whoa ! 100 million ! ... a 100 million to make GTA4 ...

I bet Take-2 / Rockstar are going to be re-using ALOT of the work in GTA4 when they make GTA4-2 (GTA4 Vice City ?!?). Because assuming they make $10 per copy of the game sold its still 10 million copies to turn a profit... and even for a game the size of GTA4 thats excessivly high ...

Ofocurse if the next GTA game costs say $60 million due to the technology created in GTA4 then i guess its money well spent ...

Having sales blowing everything else out of the water? Getting a bigger cut, because neither MS nor Sony will get fees (pretty likley?). 

 Now lets be fair, Brawl in comparison to GTAIV is tiny. 1000 people is a hell of a lot however, but thats most likely everyone from development to marketing. Still, I do agree, a hell of a lot of people.