It wouldn't? Then why would it arrive any faster with a lesser budget? They showed the engine wayyyy back in 2007 in July and it still took them 21 months to make a content-lite game. That GTA figure also includes its $80 million advertising budget.

Or cheaper and slower. Or the same cost (bar the engine) and another 21 months minimum, but you'd probably have a year in pre-production in there as well.

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Lesser development time = smaller budget. I thought that would be obvious to anyone. You can't develop the sequal cheaper while doing it slower. It's either slower or cheaper unless they cut staff which i very much doubt.

I'm going to guess GG will be busy with DLC and adding co-op at least through the next year. Really, the only logical release to follow Killzone 2 in 2009 will be Killzone 2: Game of the Year Edition in 2010.

RAZ dude..you make no sense.

For one, the sequel to KZ2 would come WAY faster, because as someone else stated above, they were developing the engine for the game alongside developing the game. What's that mean? With a sequel, the engine is already there as are a lot of reusable elements of the game itself. They will have a lot less to produce to make a full-fledged sequel. Thus, it will take much less time, and since more than half the work will be done, it will cost much less as well.

Secondly, it doesn't matter when the game was showed...the game is as far as I know, already ready. It's been ready..they just postponed releasing it due to high competition during the holidays in order for the game to stand out a little better. It's not a Call of Duty or a Halo - they want this game to get a lot of attention on it's release, not get lost in the shuffle. A February release, to me, is a brilliant idea. I'm not saying it won't have any competition - but it will have far less competition than if they released it in, say November last year.

They've had a lot of time with the game basically done to just sit there and 'polish' it. It might make it cost a little more, but it's not critical work and will only make the game be received better. It won't cost a lot to polish it either. That being said, if they've been done for a few months like I'm assuming they have been, who's to say they haven't been working on a new game already? They could be 6 months into pre-production on a new game..it doesn't take their entire staff to polish a game.

I don't think the big thing here will be for KZ2 to post a profit necessarily - of course they want it to sell well. But if I'm not mistaken, people will have to pay licensing fees to use their engine, which will help a lot. On top of which, a sequel or new game built on the same engine will also be used to help recoup costs of producing the engine itself, so really whatever amount of the KZ2 budget is assumed for building the engine isn't expected to be made back on this game alone..the licensing fee's and any sequels will do that as well.

I'm going to have to ask you to start providing some sources here Raz.

A link for the 80 million you claim was spent on GTAIV's advertising budget?

Take Two Producer Leslie Benzies: "It's like making a theatre production, a few movies and an album all to fit into one package,' he says. He hasn't a clue how much GTA IV has cost to make but hazards a guess at $100m. About 1,000 people have had a hand in developing it. The perfectionism Houser and Benzies demand of their teams is astonishing. For GTA IV, time-lapse cameras were set on rooftops in New York to capture the correct intensity of the rain. Over 100,000 photographs were taken on location."

There's no mention of any advertising there. Only a guess at how much it cost to make.

A link for the claim that KZ2 cost 60 million to produce? (Besides a wild rumour.)

As far as I can acertain, both are just guesses on your part, or based on unsubstantial evidence at best.

As for your first point. The engine shown in july 07' has marked differences to the current 09' build. Guerrilla were optimizing and updating their engine all the time as they worked . Guerrilla were also still employing people late in the devlopment stage. (Which, with a larger team, would undoubtably speed up the process the next time around, don't you think?)

What exactly is 'content light' about Killzone 2? It's reported as having a 9-10 hour long campaign (longer then COD4), offline bots (COD4 doesn't have them) and an online multiplayer with an indepth class system (The same as COD4).

I sincerely doubt KZ2 cost more than about $30-40M to make. $40M is pushin it. If you consider all the money they spent on the shared engine R&D, and the very probable 6-12 months part of their studio has spent on a new project or a sequel, $40M may be way over the top of the actual cost, given those considerations, even if the studio has eaten up that much of Sony's $$ in the past 5 years (which I doubt -- GG wasn't very large until just recently).

The engine's been built. Most of the hard work for Killzone 3 has already been done in Killzone 2. So some tweaking, improving and adding extra content is all they'll need to do for number 3. Probably could take them only 2 years and with what they've said it looks like there's more room for them to spread around in the beefy ps3.

Killzone 2 is well prepared to becoming a good 5 million seller over the next 2 to 3 months as long as sony don't screw it up by not advertising it enough. Lots of european countries get left out of sony's marketing circle. They forget that europe is where they make most of their profit.

But what that matters most is that next month I will be playing Killzone 2, oblivious to any financial fame or failure that might be happening behind the scenes :D

How can you claim that killzone 2 won't make a profit? What exactly are you basing your argument on? I'm a little confused, sorry. Likewise, I don't think anyone can make a substantial assertion that it will turn in a profit. I mean seriously, how would you go about proofing that it will or will not be profitable?
As far as I know, the best we can do is estimate the cost of the game, then estimate the 'profit' or margin that Sony gets on each game and then minus the cost by the total margin from game sales - none which we would have a clue about in the first place. We're gamers... and like Theo said, all that matters is that next month we'll be playing the game oblvious to any financial success or failure of the game.

we will probably see a psp game, and a killzone 3 2 years later.