A rather big Interview with Even Wells that is quite interesting.  Follow the link to read the whole interview if you want this part caught my eyes.

The budget for the first game was said to be around $20 million dollars, and that had to include that engine creation from scratch, which is a big thing. Since you are using the same engine, has this been a cheaper endeavor? Are you guys spending the same amount?

We are spending the same amount. You always want to be able to just do more. Definitely it is a leg up to start with that technological foundation, but what you try to do with it is just that much more.

Not only is the spectacle part of things that we are doing bigger, in terms of the kind of enemies and encounters that Drake is going to find himself in, but we are also trying to deliver a richer narrative experience as well. So both sides come at a cost. In order to get all those real big set pieces it requires a lot of custom scripting of events every moment of the way. You have got something happening; an explosion happening or even just a water drip. All those little effects take time and people to do.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/04/joystiq-interview-talking-uncharted-2-with-naughty-dogs-evan-w/

Never said the first budget was 20m - just said both were about the same.

Holy shit that is allot of money! Was the first game even profitable?

Well the average development costs for HD games is $15 Million needing 750,000 to break even so if the first broke 1 million sales then it probably made profit :)

one of the best $20 mil invested in a new IP this gen(along with gears).


Uncharted 2 babyyyy ;)

Money well spend, crawled to 2M and then the game was bundled so they have made more then enough money. The more important factor is that Uncharted was a very good game and it now has a substantial fanbase, the second will sell many more.

that makes the 60million budget for Killzone2 likely. Much more development-time, bigger team working on it, etc.

And with the insane amount of money spent for advertising, killzone2 needs to sell great.

According to puffys numbers (is a 15mio USD game really profitable after 750k sales?) and the 60 million budget, Killzone 2 needs to sell 3 million just to be profitable.

So we know about the 7.2 million USD campagne (5 mio GBP) just for the UK. So I say a 25 million USD budget for the global advertising campagne isn't too far of. That means Killzone2 needs to sell 4.25 million to break even with development + advertising.

^^^loool

gurrilla games have said 2.5 million is what they are hoping for .so I guess anything above 2.5 will be profitable for them.

(http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.automatiseringgids.nl%2Fmarkt-monitor%2Fnederland%2F2009%2F6%2Fguerilla%2520games%2520hoopt%2520op%2520nieuw%2520kassucces.aspx&sl=nl&tl=en&history_state0=&swap=1)

Also, wasn't U1 released as a platinum/Greatest hits title?

They have to make less from those sales than they do from the full price game, don't they?

He didn't confirm 20 milions anywhere.

If first party game generates $20 profit for Sony then they broken even with 1 milion sold at retail price which they did easily.

Even assuming that next 1 milion was sold at platinum price it would mean around 10M $ of profit.