Wow, interestingly that would put the Gears 1 + 2 budget squarely under the lowest possible cost for Killzone 2!

How the hell did they do it so cheaply? I suppose they did have the engine pre-made, and I read they do outsource to China, but still that is cheap. Uncharted 2 is costing $20m to make, but I suppose the engine refinements are included in that cost, in Gears of War 2, I assume engine costs are incorporated at all because they must have a dedicated Unreal Engine team.

@ squilliam, but what about the marketing, I still have the MadWorld song stuck in my head

Thats a huge succes for epic and microsoft (Well, dont know but its been a good deal for MS)

Budget for Shenmue was 70M$. GTA IV 100M$ to compare.

Cheap as chips. They would have used stuff from GOW1 as well, so that would save some $$.

Squilliam said: Wow, interestingly that would put the Gears 1 + 2 budget squarely under the lowest possible cost for Killzone 2!

And that comparison of yours is meaningful because externalizing engine costs comes as a new trick to you, right? :) Come on, we want more effort!

WereKitten said: Squilliam said: Wow, interestingly that would put the Gears 1 + 2 budget squarely under the lowest possible cost for Killzone 2! And that comparison of yours is meaningful because externalizing engine costs comes as a new trick to you, right? :) Come on, we want more effort!

Hey, it was the first thing that I could think of!

That's because it used all the tools of Gears 1.

Benefit of being a sequel with minor changes, why do you think EA makes yearly sports titles.

1st version costs a lot, subsequent version probably less than 1/2 the cost.

Granted, this means they don't rewrite engines, etc. Minor overall enhancements.

according to Kotaku first game cost less than 10 mill to make:

http://kotaku.com/234504/gears-of-war-a-mere-10-million-to-make

That makes me believe that most if not all UE3 games are cheap