I don't believe that teams of this size have become the standard, but I do think that the size of this development team in relation to their expected sales is probably fairly standard for PS3/XBox 360 developement. This causes a lot of potential problems because if your game gets too large of a delay, or underperforms (in terms of sales), you could end up eating a very massive loss as a (reasonably) small company.

This just seems like a huge waste of money. I've got all the PS1/2 Metal Gear games and love them in their own way. I can't help but think they would have been much better off releasing another Metal Gear on the PS2 and then a bunch of other games that took risks on the PSP, DS and Wii. If they make 300 million off the game and it costs them 80 million to make it's not as impressive as making a game that cost 5-10 Million and bringing in 240 million. The risk factor on this game is insane.

those are impressive numbers... but they're based on consoles with an extremely huge install base (100Million+ for both ps2 and ps1).

there are currently only 5M PS3s in people's homes... even if you double it (and that's being generous) and say that there will be 10M by the time the game comes out, do you really think MGS4 will even approach MGS3 numbers?

I'm not saying the game will flop... I'm sure it will do very well... but it will be difficult to match MGS3 in sales if there are only 10M PS3s out there in people's homes.  That's less then 10% of the install based that MGS3 had to work with.

MGS2 did not have the benefit of a 100 million PS2 install base on day 1. There were about 10 million PS2s in people's hands when MGS2 came out in Nov. '01, just one year after the launch of the PS2. By the time MGS4 comes out, there will be about 8-10 million PS3s in people's hands. You can also argue that the PS2's library was far better than the PS3's at the launch point of MGS2 and MGS4 respectively. By the time MGS2 came out, huge titles like Twisted Metal Black and Gran Turismo 3 were already out and FFX was but 2 months from being released. So, is it really that outrageous for MGS4, the final MGS, to sell similarly to MGS2?

Sony shipped 19.5 Million consoles as of September 31st 2001 and had only shipped 8.24 Million units in North America ... That means that when Metal Gear Solid 2 was shipped the North American userbase of the PS2 was similar in size to the total userbase of the XBox 360 (currently).

Thanks for that info, Happy. I just remember Sony touting at the time that they had shipped 10 million units before the GC or Xbox even launched, but I guess that was shipped to America only. I still don't think it's outrageous for MGS4 to hit numbers like the previous titles simply because MGS4 defines the PS3 more than MGS2 defined the PS2. Like I said, there were already a host of huge titles released for the PS2 by the time MGS2 came out, which is just not true for MGS4 and the PS3. Therefore, a very large percentage of PS3 owners are gonna buy the finale of the series.

Namco Bandai's Takasu Says PS3 Game Titles Must Sell 500,000

By Masaki Kondo

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Namco Bandai Holdings Inc., Japan's second-biggest maker of video-game software, must sell at least half a million copies of a game for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 console to make money on the title, said President Takeo Takasu.

Graphics for the high-definition games cost about 1 billion yen ($8.6 million) to create, more than double that for Nintendo Co.'s Wii titles, Takasu said in a Tokyo interview Nov. 28.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=az3neI1eJui8&refer=japan

Story is about a year old. It talks about the cost originally to make PS3 games, according to namco prez. Obviously this figure is just relating to graphics. So I see it as reasonable to see a company like Konami spending around 40 million to complete Metal Gear solid 4. From Concept to completion, voice acting, score department etc. Anyone else find any good info?

I think that article title is a bit deceiving simply because budgets can vary so much between any two games. While costs are definitely a lot higher now than in the last generation, I think there are ways to keep them from spiraling out of control like some people fear. The biggest thing developers will have to do be diligent about is recycling game engines. These days I don't think you can just build a single full game from the ground up and plan on keeping a tight budget. You have to either pick an engine off the shelf like the Unreal Engine, or when you're building a game, you have to have plans for sequels and build your engine so that it is versatile enough for use in other unrelated potential titles. Also, the more and more familiar devs become with the hardware the less manpower they'll need to pull off a game. So I don't think we have to worry too much.