That's crazy.

You have to keep in mind though that alot of time was spent developing the "Crystal Tools" which will be their main engine for games going forward. Things like the Unreal engine and Cryengine save tons of money for developers using them (and make a pretty penny for those leasing them). Square has no doubt spent an astronomical amount of money, but not just on FFXIII but a set of tools that they will be using to make HD high tech rpgs for years and years to come.

So even if they don't make a huge profit on FFXIII they may very well on whatever they do after XIII because the cost of making it will be so low using their new engine and tools. And if they ever decide to let other companies use their Crystal Tools then they will be have definitely made up the costs and then some.

Beaten to the punch! The man speaks sense.

While I doubt Crystal Tools will be licensed the way Unreal Engine is, the engine does save tremendous cost on all future titles. Although I'm pretty sure Square is still pretty bruised by the massive development cost. This game really needs to break10 million sales just to see a reasonable return of investment.

Well, FFXIII have astronomic development costs. I wonder how much S-E will put in marketing. The development costs are so high that a massive marketing campaing is necessary, something halo-like with massive ads everywhere is necessary to make this game brake even... But again, MS really paid S-E to make it for 360 or not? They could have offered make the marketing of the game, MS does know how to make marketing.

FFXII was made on a $20 million budget (No source, there is a link out there somewhere but I lost it :( ).

I'd say around $40 - $60 million is more reasonable, but in all honesty I don't think anyone here is qualified to guess. Alot of the costs for the PS2 FF's, like CGI, Voice Acting, story writing won't have gone up just because it's in HD (CGI now uses in game engine?). I've always understood JRPG's as a genre to be more cheap to develope, although maybe FFXIII's production values are wayyyyyy too high.

The developement schedule is seemigly alot longer and a bigger team but $100 million seems over the top, supposedly thats what GTAIV reached so who knows.

Also I think it should be noted that Square-Enix don't see FFXIII as one game, but as another franchise they can keep adding to even after FFXIV is out. We already know about Versus and Agito, but Square-Enix claim there'll be more. If FFXIII costs pioneer it to the popularity of say FFVII, even if it doesn't make much of a profit, there'll be alot of money to be harvested from Fabula Nova Chronicles.

So in conclusion, I haven't got a clue :P.

No more like $50-$60 million. I think that FF XIII Versus will go Xbox 360 in the end. Like that will also happen to another million seller like KH3.

You know, I will argue to my last breath about KZ2's budget reaching 60mil, but this is definatly a game I can see reaching upwards of 100mil. But that only means Versus will be much cheaper.

I see FF actually costing 60-70M they'll make it back and make some profit.

SE won't put the cost of the crystal tools engine on the FF XIII budget. All their future consoel titles will use the engine, probably even DQ X.

And 10 million? No FF game has ever sold that much.

Nope. FF12 costed $40 million.

And FF13 isn't going to be that expensive. The engine is also being used on Versus and likely on other future titles. The costs of developing the engine (and the vast amount of time) will be split among the two games. There isn't a way that this game costs $100 million.