The amount of time this title has taken to create, along with the team size of around 100 people, leaves no doubt in my mind that the game's costs are near astronomical.

FFX cost $30m, starting development in 1999.

FFXIII will be attempting near CGI-quality imagery in real-time with the Crystal Tools Engine, along with a host of other things. Costs were probably increased by the 360 port (multiple discs), the creation of the demo (focus taken away from completion), and the overall rising costs of "HD" development. I don't think it is too far out there to claim work began on the title early-2005, or at least several months before that years E3.

Most likely, it will pay off in the end, but Square Enix is embarking on an expensive endeavor.........

I don't know the financials of Square-Enix but i would be surprised if their current development costs (maybe even the last year) can be recovered by even top sales.

Yeah, the development budget of this is probably a lot larger than it should be, and I'm not envisioning them making a big profit on it.

Now, Dragon Quest, on the other hand...

According to Ubisoft (a lot of DS experience), their average cost for DS games are 500,000-1,000,000 Euros ($785,000- $1.6 million).

Even if Dragon Quest 9 cost 15 times that, it would be $25 million TOPS, and they made their money back within 24 hours of the game's release.

Dragon Quest X........who knows yet.

got something to back it up or you just pulled the numbers out of your head ??

^Well if FFX cost 30 million, and with the massive leap in dev budgets this gen, 100m starts to sound feasible...

Yea, I got a link. I assume you are talking about the DS numbers I stated.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs

This is going to kill the industry if something is not done about it.

Nah I'm talking about FFX and FF13 I just want to know how did you come up with that number ?

FFXIII is going to be more expensive than GTAIV and MGS4. Thats why SE had to go multiplats. FF Versus XIII might come for X360 if it cost the same.