Just wondering what the development cost is for the average high profile title nowadays (Metal Gear, Blue Dragon, Halo3, Heavenly Sword etc). Im sure these vary quite a bit, but what are the low and high ranges of todays game producing budgets?

Also, at an assumed $59 USD cost per game, typically how many need to be sold in order just to break even? (and cover not just development, but also marketing etc)  

I tried to google around but I guess Im not googling good enough

From an old thread I've seen, the costs were something like this:

3-4 million for a last generation console or the Wii

13-14 million for the Xbox 360 and PS3

Of course, many PS3 games have had ridiculous budgets, with Killzone 2 said to have a budget of 41 million dollars.

Although I could be wrong on a lot of these statistics, as they're from memory.

Woah, 40 million?? I didnt think they could get that high. I was thinking 20 million tops.

I did google Killzone and yah, 135 developers and 40 million (so far)...

The chief designer of Ninja Theory said that Heavenly Sword cost around $20 million in development.

You can search Forbes, they did a cost breakdown on Gears of War.

TBH, it seems 13m is about the lower end of decent 360/PS3 games from what I have heard. With the high end probably being that 41m for KZ2.

The lower end for Wii is probably 2-4m with a high end of around 10-12m, which is about where I suspect galaxy will wind up considering the sheer amount of time the game has been in development. They had a playable demo at E3 06 so its been in development probably around 2 to 2.5 years.

so whats that mean for breaking even? in another thread there was a breakdown and i think it said usually about 20 bucks per game goes to the developer. so would a typical 360/ps3 game need to sell 1 million copies to break even. that seems insane. that also means pretty much every developer making ps3 games is asking to lose tons of money.

As a rule of thumb, the publisher/developer will see $25-30 from a $60 game, and 20-25 for a $50 game. So if you had a high-end budget of 20m and you're selling your game on 360 or PS3 at $60, you'd need to sell about a million copies, yes. Maybe a little less, around 800K. 

That's a pretty high barrier, but 20m is pretty big budget. Most games (not just non-budget, but most) don't come in that high.

Another thing to consider is that big franchises are expected to do much more than break even. The big names are expected to pay for all the money losing games and various expenses that a company generates. Halo, GTA, MGS, FF, Pokemon, etc need to generate enormous amounts of profit otherwise they are considered failures.

Just did some more googling, and Gears of War cost about $10 million to produce (maybe a little less).

Some (really) rough math here, If about 50% of a games cost goes back to the developer, a 10 mil game needs to sell about 333K or so copies @ $60 to break even.

Seems like alot of current games will take a long time to show any profit.

Something else to consider. A lot of multiplatform developers are making Wii games as a means to cover losses from game son PS3/X360. Some have admitted to this amortizing already.