What do USA numbers show me when Japanese production costs are in question ? 200 people what are the jobs ? is the cleaning lady coffee boy and parking attendant included in that?

I get it people on here want to make crazy estimates believable to support their delusional believes that MGS4 will be so expensive it will have to appprear on 360.  Yet reality that  theres is a exclusive contract which means sony in some way is paying lots of $ to konami is not even acknowleded.  

if konami take $25 from each copy of MGS4 sold and it sells 4M (possible/probable) the game could cost 100,000,000$ and konami would still break even.

Except one. Jonathan Mak, the single creator of Everyday Shooter, got the game running on the PS3 in three days.

Give up fighting Mars guys ...

He will never accept that people who live in some of the most expensive cities in the world would actually demand a reasonable wage; he won't accept that there are costs beyond wages for these employees either; and he certainly won't accept that marketing costs are massive aswell being that most major television shows are demanding nearly $1 Million for a 30 second spot (with few national brodcasts asking less than $100,000).

In his mind a PS3 game costs $25.95 to produce and if he buys a single copy it will be worth the developers' efforts.

So what you (Mars) are saying is that I'm making all this up just to make MGS4 look bad, to argue that there must be a port? Holy shit that is hillarious!

The numbers range I mentioned goes for european and american developers. Given that the cost of living in Japan is well within the range of europe and america it's not far fetched to think that salaries will be similiar.

When someone mentions 200 developers, I assume they mean 200 developers. The cleaning lady, coffee boy and parking guy aren't developers. If those were included they would've said employees.

 Well that depends on the components he was using. The RSX is based on established nVidia designs, so at least that is familiar architecture, and offers plenty of power if you don't feel you have to push the system.

@happysqurriel

you are still using USA money and prices and wages and costs instead of Japanese costs, give me some evidence of what a Japanese developer costs a company a year and I will believe you. Until then I will not believe your 40M-80M $ production cost for MGS4.

 I just wanted to confirm this figure, yes it is conservative escpecially for an American city, I am a payroll manager for a construction company, and I can tell you a carpenter costs a company in New York City about 135,000 a year, without a single hour of over time. Don't forget I'm not saying he makes that much you have to remember benefits are expensive, the company has to match what the employee pays in Social Security and Medicare, plus there is Workman's comp and such. Then you perhaps have other expenses associated to a worker.(Of course construction unions are pricey, and construction insurance isn't cheap) But I come up with total employer cost reports all the time and you'd be amazed at how expensive workers are to a company. 

I also imagine these 200+ people don't include any overhead staff associated with the project, which is obviously expensive being that there is 200 people involved. 

Wow, this somehow turned into "How much does MGS4 cost?!"

Hint: Doesn't matter. This game will be sold when the user base is 10m+, and is one of the most anticipated titles for 2008. Not to mention the conclusion to one of the most popular franchises in gaming.

Add that to the fact that there will probably be a "Special Edition", a long with some kind of bundle, and both Konami and Sony will make an easy profit of this title.

Just a few questions ...

Why do you believe that a developer in Japan (one of the most advanced and expensive places in the world) would make drastically less than a developer in North America or Europe? Does being Japaneese suddenly mean that you're willing to live on Kraft Dinner (or whatever) in order to develop videogames?

If you read my initial post you'll see that I included marketing costs into the equation ... Do you think marketing on an international scale is inexpensive? Does Konami have a special deal with Fox to get TV spots at 10% the cost for every other company?

$80 Million (all things considered) is not unrealistic why can't Sony fans accept this?

Certainly, Konami will probably not be holding all of the costs and may gain a larger portion of the revenues than most developers (in order to gain exclusivity) but it is still a large sum of money to gamble on such a small userbase.