4 games or one game

200>70

Yeah... that's not counting any work to the unreal engine.  Including the improvements they made to the unreal engine while doing so.

It's a pitch for them to say "Hey use Unreal Engine".

"Rein acknowledged that $10 million is by no means cheap, "but didn't cost the crazy figures you hear other companies quoting of $20, $30 million." The budget does not include development costs of Epic's Unreal Engine 3, but this was not designed solely for Gears of War, plus the developer has saved money by outsourcing work to Epic Games China."

So yeah... if your willing to not count any work at all put forth to your product AND willing to outsource to people who will work for nothing.

So yeah... considering how expensive engine development is....  (That extra 10-20)  There ya go.

Of course if you liscense from them you have to pay their liscensing fees per game plus like a 7-8 figure payout on top.

There we go, kasz!

However, if you count UE3 to Gears, then we must count the money they got from licensing the developers. Which is much larger than the cost of the engine.

Why?  That's a very specific situation that isn't going to apply to just about every developer that isn't Epic.

Which makes it kinda silly to do that.

Why would you count the development of UT3 engine to Gears of war dev costs? You surely know that UT3 engine is used on many other games too.

Do you know how much they outsourced? Since people in China work for free according to you, why there aren't more devs outsourcing there? Do you have some figures for salaries of those chinese coders?

Oh, so you are saying that an engine costs 10-20 million to make. Since engine has nothing to do with hd-graphics, isn't that the same price for wii game engines?

That's actually what Rein said.  You know.  The UT guy. 

Also... yeah the Engine does deal with graphics... as well as other things that are much more expensive and take more time to deal with on HD systems then the Wii.  Like physics and particle effects.

Also why would you count it?  Because a lot more people make their own engines then don't.

There are many reasons why development costs are cheaper when developing for Wii.

Here are some:

Visual assets are less "sophisticated", meaning they take less time to develop and can be developed by less people (each person on the payroll has a base cost regardless of the length of their employment or productivity level).

Because the graphics aren't being pushed to the limits, existing engines can be used with out a significant visual or physics overhaul.

The novelty of the gameplay is what sells games on Wii (just look at the Wii's top sellers). Meaning a game can sell just from its core gameplay mechanic without the need for "depth" of hours of single player missions, story, etc. This means even less visual and design work, because the hours of gameplay come from mastering or having fun with a simple gameplay mechanic.

In a "traditional" (read: FPS, Action, etc.) game where there are lots of levels and single player areas, they are cheaper to produce per hour of gameplay. Some math, If you have five levels where the design (1 employee @ 40/hr) and the artwork (9 employees * 25/hr) takes 100 hours each per level (100 * 5 * (9*25) + (100 * 5 * 40)) would cost $132,500.
The same game on Wii would take less hours (lets say 80 per employee) and less artists (lets go with 3), (80 * 5 * (3*25) + (80 * 5 * 40)) would cost $46,000.

Shorter development time also means there's a competitive advantage against HD versions. Meaning less marketing cost.

Larger install base means that the advertising dollar goes further since each dollar will be viewed by more Wii owners.

Development Kits are significantly cheaper and less of them are needed because less people are needed.

Do I need to keep going?

So even by your (op) idea that a game could be worked on more by the company is irrelevant, it doesn't need to be to make a consumable product.

Ok, could you give me a link where he said that chinese coders work for free? How about where he said that UT3 dev costs should have been added to gears dev costs.

I actually meant that the engine costs are the same for wii/hd games. I don't think that models/artwork is done by the game engine. If I am wrong about that then my bad. :P

Chinese workers work for free?  The outsourced work to the chinese counted in the 10 million.

The Engine costs aren't the same for Wii/HD games.  HD engines are more expensive because the tools need to be more complicated.

Look at what the Unreal Engine does.

The whole "10 million development cost" was a marketing pitch.

In otherwords.  Liscense our game and after that it will cost you like 10 million to make a gears type game instead of the crazy 20-30 million other people are throwing out.

Read the first article in your google link.

http://www.videogamer.com/news/gears_of_war_has_cost_10_million_to_produce.html

Look around more and you'll see where he says "It doesn't have to cost that much if you liscense the engine from us."

You said that "willing to outsource to people who will work for nothing. " which would be free. Do you know the salaries of those chinese coders? I guess you have to, since you claim that kind of stuff. Go ahead and compare those salaries to what US/EU coders make and count how much they saved. Untill then, they could have saved anywhere starting from 10$.

Graphics aside, how could a game engine which does the same cost more on HD consoles than on wii? Assuming that you are not comparing wii sports engine to UE3. I really don't see where else you can save on developing on wii than textures/models.

So are you trying to say that they lied about the development costs or what is your point?