or it shows how much money they saved on the first one by not fully supporting it and rushing to start the development on the second one and how much they saved by such a short dev cycle.

I'd just prefer they invest more in their games than in adverisment campaign. Nonetheless, I have no idea how much are the add campaing for big games...

I'll wait a few months after its release for the 50% off on steam. Remember, they had a big sales jump that was bigger than launch ^^ .
Linky : http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57308

Wow, that amount of cash could most likely fully fund L4D 3...money well spent? Sales will tell.

Yeah it will sell massive amounts as it wll be a great game.

Finally we have a big marketing budget for a not so huge game on paper.

Maybe now people will realize what I have claimed is true, that marketing expenses are a huge portion of total game budgets.

You have no clue why the ad budget is so high Slime. Explain why the first ad budget was only 10 million. Is MS helping with the ad campiagn? Are they using the money they saved by having a fast dev cycle going towards the ad?

The first time budegt was lower cause it was a new IP. This time they adjusted the ad budget to a potential 3-4 million seller.

That's not how it works.

First, the overall marketing for the first game was probably much more than $10 mill. The $10 mill number is for the ad campaign.

Second, marketing is decided for potential sales, not so much actual sales. They're mostly decided and paid for even before the game comes out. As a new IP they maybe targeted only 1.5 mill copies for the first L4D while it actually had long legs and sold 3-5 mill in the end (between PC X360).

This time the ad and marketing campaign is already targeted at a +3 million - maybe 4-5 million - selling game.

Third, the dynamics between an original and sequel when it comes to marketing is different. Sequels usually have a shorter and more intense marketing campaign and sometimes the ads are emphasized over other forms of marketing (viral, pre-views, trailers etc).

All these factors explain why the reported ad budget is so much higher.

Valve is the only company who has the balls to compete with MW2. They could have delayed it to early 2010 like every other company did with their games if they wanted to.