That does seem really cheap. However, it could mean they take a larger revenue percentage to balance it out.

The way the Unreal Engine 3 works, through most leaks, is between 750,000-1,000,000. Let's go with 750,000 since Mistershine already mentioned that is how much Silicon Knights claimed they paid. Next there is an additional fee if you will use the engine on a second platform. Another equal fee if it'll be used on a third. UE2 pricing for that is $50,000 so I would assume we're talking $100,000 approx for UE3. Next they take a 3% revenue cut on the UE2 and I don't see any reason why it would need to be raised for the new engine, so let's let it stay put.

Example game: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas

Engine cost: 750,000
Cost of multiplatform x2: 200,000
3% revenue cut(360): 64,800
3% revenue cut(PS3): 12,200
3% revenue cut(PC): Unknown(I can't track the sales)

=1,027,400 + the revenue cost on the PC version

Don't take this all too seriously. I could be way off. I'm just playing with the numbers the best way I know how right now.

I know Brawl utilized the Havok physics engine. I think Nintendo mostly stays in house though.

It actually says "...at least $400.000", so I think it's a little premature to re-evaluate the average cost of an HD game.

You're probably right there, but it certainly would cost less than an inhouse engine - at least first time around. 750,000k is around 7-8 developers working full time on an engine for a year, and I doubt that would be enough to actually produce a workable engine.

It does seem to take some of the risk out of HD development by lowering the fixed costs, if the game doesn't make much money then you also obviously don't have to pay that much in royalties either.

Can't imagine how much it probably costs to make a new engine from the ground up

Haha no way.

Unreal Engine 2 $350,000. To this day...

Not to mention they charge a royalty fee for each game sold.

UE3 is "rumored" to be a 7 figure engine. Plus royalties... and the fact it costs more if you plan to use it multi-plat.

Depends on the engine and how many tools come with it, as well as if its an open source engine vs a set source (open source needed for porting). Also some engines lease per game, or via royalties. Like you might pay $10k per title or something, vs unlimited use.

To put it into perspective, my dev team wasted a long time trying to build our own engine, and we secured a solid one in closed source form (PC only) for about the same price as a PSP. When we want to port the game, we will have to drop $10k to get the open source version to bring the game to consoles. So if we sell 15 copies of our game at $10 each on the PC total, we will break even on that investment (tho we still would have to recover thousands of dollars already invested for other stuff)

The cheapest engine I know out there is Dark Basic Pro, which is more like a scripting system overlaying a core Direct X/C++ engine. DB Pro can be acquired for like $80 US and be used unlimited. Most of the code could probably port directly to XB360, as its all direct x oriented. The neat thing about engines is that the graphics have next to nothing to do with them. You can have the Unreal 3 engine and the crappiest modelers on earth, or have something super basic and some pro looking models. A talented team can make good stuff with minimal tools.

I rather use the free engines thank you

Irrlicht: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

here's a game made with the engine:

Ogre 3D: http://www.ogre3d.org/

Here's a game with that engine

All you need is a C++ IDE that you can get for free as well and there you go :)

I'm currently using Irrlicht and I'm very impressed