Max King of the Wild said:
how can graphics for the ps3 cost 11million dollars when the game cost a total of 8.6 million.
And I'm going off of what squilliam posted. He showed the full 60 dollar break down of the games. 12 dollars went to the artist 15 dollars went to the designers. (27 dollars to the developers) 7 dollars to the publisher and like 3 dollars to the console maker.
Uncharted cost a total of 20 million and they had to build the graphics engine from the ground up. Unlike Epic who already had the codes for the engine. The second game will surely cost a lot less. And that 20 million is seriously unheard of from 3rd parties unless you are making something like final fantasy or metal gear.
Most games cost less than 10 million and the break even point isn't 500k either.
Stop overexaggerating. WKC will be one of the highest selling RPGs even with Ps2 included and it will break even probablly in Japan alone. |
I quoted the president of Namco and I trust he has a better grasp of what things cost than either you or me. Anyway, the interview is from 2006 so no doubt things have changed since then. Interestingly, I said "with current rates", but in the same article the very same 1 billion yens is rated as 8.6 million dollars, so the cost of creating the graphics was, according to Takasu, the same amount you say was the total cost of the game. Is there some mix up somewhere?
I believe that at the moment, as developers and artists have learned more and better ways to work, the costs have come down. How much down, that I don't know, but seeing as how Takasu said that the creation of Wii graphics cost about half of what PS3 cost, and as there should be quite little changes in graphics creation for the Wii from the last gen, that is a level unattainable for HD graphics simply because there is so much more work to be done. So, working from that on with the figures you have, and assuming the graphics creation costs have come down, say, 30%, we'd get:
Graphics = 8.6 million * 0.7 ~ 6 million
Development = 6 million * 15 / 12 = 7.5 million
That's 13.5 million dollars going by those numbers, with a 30% reduction from 2006. Mind you, without the reduction the sum is about 19 million dollars. Of course this is all highly speculative, but IMO you need to present some facts to back up your claim that most HD games cost less than 10 million and are profitable. I'm not saying it can't be so, you may be right, but I haven't seen enough to convince me. Heck, with those numbers even a Namco Wii title would have cost around 10 million in 2006.
