Serious question:

When was the last time you've heard of a businessman turning down millions of dollars that he wouldn't have to pay back?

Whatever didn't actually go to development/distribution/advertising was undoubtedly spent on hookers and blow. "Community outreach" they'll call it.

One possibility is that Naughty Dog's being heavily subsidized by Sony, which dramatically decreases their costs. Being single-platform chops off a few million as well.

My guess is it's a combination of those factors, a few more I can't think of right now, and IW simply getting bloated and lazy post-MW.

Edit: I forgot about their newest way of screwing PC gamers over! IWNet (or whatever the hell it's called) probably cost a ton to create as well. Fortunately, it'll stick around for future Activision games, so as to drag down other PC games to HD console levels!

Not bitter at all.

Why is it reasonable that MW2 cost a heck of a lot more than UC2?

Some points I think are important here!

1. The game probably has quite a large group of gameplay testers to religeously test the multiplayer aspect. They would have been testing and prototyping from day one.  That's their choice though, Squil - they could just as readily have used a Beta like Uncharted 2.  Plenty of people are willing to playtest for free, and even if they conducted it all internally playtesters are at the cheap end of the cost equation so far as I know

2. The game is programmed for 2 seperate console platforms and ported to the PC platform.  That should only add around 10% max according to most big developers.  Given CoD4 was already multi-platform I'd argue it should have been even less than 10% for MW2.  Even assuming a worst case it should only have added 15% or so.  But it is an additional cost so the point is fair, I just don't see evidence it should be that high.

3. IW staff probably get paid more than other companies as they are a proved commodity. Activision doesn't want the whole group of them to up and leave to go work for EA do they?  Again, that's their choice.  I guess its possible, although I'd expect any bigger rewards to be driven through bonuses, etc. rather than direct salary.  It's a good point though, and I wonder how much the high cost was down to staff costs.

4. They use a lot of set pieces. I wonder how much work it took to make it and how much they had to throw away in the end? They probably had no compunction leaving whole segments of the game on the cutting room floor.  I don't but this one, as Uncharted 2 and other games have had more set pieces than MW2, and arguably bigger ones too.  TBH the SP campaign is too short for me to buy they spent a lot more adding set pieces, or threw that much away.  Even if they threw away half they'd still only have developed a 10 hour game, shorter than many similar games.

In the end the figure just seems high.  Uncharted cost $30 Million I believe, and obviously required a new engine, etc. from scratch.  Uncharted 2 cost around $30 million too, but its clear that with the engine already there the cost of the SP must have gone down a lot and the effort to add MP/Coop took the cost back up to $30 million.

With MW2 nothing that big has been added, the engine was there, etc. so the cost just seems high.  I mean, it's lower than say Killzone 2, which I'd argue cost too much but I guess did deliver an amazing engine built from scratch, and even if MW2 cost $100 million it would still be very profitable.

In fact, I think you're on the right track with point 3.  Everyone at IW and Activision knew this was going to be massive, and I think that resulted (as it often does in any business) in a losser control of costs and effort.  For the game $40 million is too high if it was developed with very tight budget and cost control - but loosen the reins a little, and I can then see costs creeping to around $40 million.

I think people do take these publically revealed budget figures too literally. It's no use to over-analyze it like they do.

If they say $40 mill for MW2 it could as well be $30 mill or $50 mill. If they say $30 mill Uncharted it could be $40 mill, Gears of War $12 mill could be $20 mill and GT5 $60 mill could be $90 mill.

Naughty is not subsidized by Sony, they are a first party in house development house that get their entire funding from Sony. They do not worry about publishing and a large part of media advertising is out of their hand.

That is business.  You can't just do a game, and make it real good, and just release it without marketing. The game gets lost in the shuffle if you do that.