games that are in developmentt for 3 years usually cost around 10 mil total... wich is like 3mil a year i dont see gg using 3times the amount.

$10 million / 3 years = $3.3 million per year. With that money you can have a team with around 30 people which is not a big team from what I've read.

$10 million is what Gears of War cost and it wasn't under development for 3 years AFAIK (and this cost doesn't even include the engine as it's owned by Epic).

In other words, I doubt that most games made in 3 years cost only $10 million. Do you have some examples?

ok do you see anyone going through 10 million in a year. i find 7 million more reasonable and even if we use the 10 mil a year its only at most35mil.

Yes, a big team (as in 75-100+ people) can easily spend $10 million a year depending on which country they work at. There's all kinds of costs in there: not just salaries but hardware (each team member needs at least one modern PC), software licensing (those 3D modelling and image editing programs aren't cheap), taxes, office space rental / maintenance etc.

There's some guesswork involved, but I think it's safe to say that a 100 people team working at a developed country will easily cost around $10 million a year.

taxes , space rental and maintence would have to be paid even if the game is'nt in production. those shouldnt count towards dev cost.(their fixed cost that is hand in hand with running a business) the computers would also be a long term investment and wouldnt count towards the game. also it wouldnt be a yearly cost just a one time deal at the begining (along with the software)so maybe the first year would be 10million but the next years wouldnt have those costs.

If the game isn't in production what do they need the office for? It's not like game companies take 1-year long vacations, they're always working on something. Those are part of the cost of running the business. You're right that some of the costs I mentioned are fixed (although I can see them upgrading hardware quite often).

According to this thread, Uncharted cost $20 million. How big was the team and how long were they working for?

These things may not go towards building the game in direct development costs, but just have a look at Guerrilla's list of releases. They have one game out every couple of years so they clearly work on one project at a time. Something has to pay those bills you know.

In the end they had 70 people working on the game I dont know how long they worked on the title.

Wikipedia says this (they have references although I didn't check them):

So 2-3 years in development, a team which was likely under 100 people most of the time, and they spent $20 million. Seems the numbers I was saying aren't too far off.

You really shouldn't average the cost of game development, cost of development could vary significantly on a year to year basis. Disregarding annual expenditures, just the fluctuating number of staffs (they always increase as a game gets closer to completion) will ensure that the cost of development could increase by millions annually.

edit:

With regards to cost, here is a source citing an average HD game cost between 12-20 million:

According to THQ Chief Executive Brian Farrell, while an investment in an Xbox 360 or PS3 game might be in the range of $12 million to $20 million on average

There has been rumour that Uncharted cost $20 million to make, given the significantly longer development time and the larger staff counts (averaged for the 4-5years the game is in developement), this game could concievably double the cost @ $40mil but going higher would be stretching it imo.