hmmm, their using their own UE3 engine which of course was made by a separate team whom solely work on engine tech so the cost of those programmers is no factored into the budget of Gears, and since it's their own engine, there is no licensing of this engine so again their is no cost, also it's Microsoft who is covering their marketing so again this is some thing not aacounted for in the actual Gears game.

So 12 million is reasonable for the small team doing the art and gameplay aspects of the game, pretty cool, but I wonder how much they spent on actually making the UE3.

Also, I've seen people throw how Killzone 2 cost about 60Million, but one must consider that these guys built their own graphics engine from the ground up which is factored into the games budget but Gears doesn't factor in the creation of the U3 engine since the engine was created by another team for the purpose of being middleware, so it's natural for them to use their own engine but not include the cost of it in the Gears budget.

I reckon that if a portion of the engine creation, as well as the cost of marketing was added to gether along with the 12 Million, we could roughly get something abour 20 - 30 million if not something close to 60 millioif the whole cost of the engine is uncluded since this was technically the 1st showcase of what UE3 could do.

Of course marketing isn't in that figure, that's the responsibility of the publisher, not the developer.

I think $150k is too high, Squilliam has once suggested $100k per dev, which I think it varies between those 2, and I would say KZ 2 is more likely to be about $120k

Just look at ND. Uncharted 1 cost $20m which was 2 years of about 90 people, but that included creating the engine and learning how to code on the PS3. Uncharted 2 is another 2 years with 100+ people, and that is also costing $20m

What we can agree, was that KZ 2 is very expensive, and at 1.8m is probably about even, maybe a little under with some copies going cheap.

Also remember that that Gears figure does not include engine costs, and the large marketing, so I don't think you could get 3 GeoWs for the price of 1, but certainly 1.5-1.75.

There is too much guesswork to put a more solid figure

Squilliam lives in a poor country used to low wages. I showed him the proof of $125-150,000 and he accepted it already.

http://vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=2465197

Even the people in the industry itself sometimes suggest the $100k average man year cost, but there's several reasons why it is like that. It's an easy number to play around with, it comes probably from an old calculation game dev cost example from a speech at GDC and it's in developers interest to underestimate all costs. Also, all of them don't have super business sense and dont have the whole picture of running a software house.

$100k cost per man year is simply impossible in the West. I know from a first hand source that the gross salary alone is $75-80k here in Sweden, and we're a big and very representative game making nation.

 But okay, let's try $125. That would give total cost at $35 million for KZ2 (sounds quite low tbh). If marketing included it would become rufly $50 million, which needs at least 1.7 million non-bundled copies of KZ2 to be shipped to retail, to break even.

Why should a game add in engine costs, if it doesn't need a new engine?

That's why some studios are saving tons of money, while others are majorly in the hole (hello EA).

If your making a new, one-off engine for a specific game, it can and should cost more, and be a 'bad' comparason to a game with similar features that uses a native engine to your company.

This is why many studios are going bankrupt, and why so many studios are shying away from developing on certain platforms without significant incentives. This is why major 3rd party titles aren't getting sequels, and/or the costs are so insane: studios are pumping too much cash into their title to create something that could be done on another toolset.

For example, Capcom uses their MT Framework - a native engine for many of their current-gen titles. Games as old as Dead Rising use it, as well as Devil May Cry 4, Resident Evil 5, Dead Rising 2, and Lost Planet 2. They have saved millions of dollars by doing this, as they are no longer being forced to spend $5-10 million per game to create a new engine.

Having your own engine, and not citing costs for it is absolutely fair game. Why? Epic has made money from the engine. Period. They have sold so many licenses, why should they add in costs to Gears, when any costs have been absorbed by a thousand other titles? Go ahead and throw marketing in if you like, but it still doesn't change the fact that the actual pay to the devs to make the entire Gears trilogy may equate to one Killzone product (KZ2). We weren't talking about cost to bring to market, because we know that would be higher for both titles - just the core of development costs.

I work for a developer that makes and uses their own engine. I know how efficient and 'unfair' it is for a studio to have one in-house, but the fact is, it's why many studios have gone bankrupt. Many are using methods of one-off engines that worked 5-20 years ago, and doesn't work now, because the solutions are just too complex. To me, this is like arguing that a factory using an assembly line with robots (and their associated costs) is 'unfair' opposed to the pre-assembly line practices of factories 120 years ago, assuming similar wages- there's huge cost-cutting methods involved. That's how technology progresses.

Cost cutting is available, and some stupid studios like Guerilla Games don't use it. That's not a Sony, or PS3 problem. That's a developer problem. That's why some Japanese studios are raking in the cash while Western ones are dying, and forcing mergers. It's why Nintendo does great - they know their product, their engines, and what's needed to bring a title to market, thus why they can pump out so many quality games and make money from them. Unfair advantage? No. Smart business practice.

This is why Naughty Dog made, and is making Uncharted on the cheap for a fraction of Killzone - just like what Epic does with Unreal. That's the way smart developers go. Also note that the initial image states that Gears used 20 middleware libraries - more proof that when half your assets are already built, you can save money

@ mrstickball, as I stated earlier, GeoW 2 or any EPIC made console game is effectively an advert to devs saying use me! So there is some cost to making the game engine, as they will have some added costs to that $12m

I certainly think that Sony should have their own engine. I know there is the ICE team, but while you can give Insomniac their own engine, why not just use the Naughty Dog engine for every game, or the KZ 2 engine, but they all seem to have their own engines. It does not make sense, but GG are an inexperienced developer, and it is their first game of the generation

The unreal engine isn't ridiculously expensive to purchase, and engine building is probably where most of the development time and money is normally spent :/ Not a big surprise here.

That's good I guess.  I'd heard that top tier games cost like 20 million.

This makes me think of Brutal Legend.  They say that Activision put forward 15 million and then Schafer came back saying he'd need another 7 million and an extra year.  I can see why they'd drop it if a Gears of War level game that sells like 5 million copies only cost 12 million but some art project that might not even crack a million is gonna cost you 22 million.

@ mr sickvisionz, but that is a Tim Schafer game! It will still make a profit, just 1.5m copies across PS360 will give you enough to cover dev and marketing costs. There are better investments, but its all about the quality of games

nice sig