Help - Game development costs

[suicidepirate]

Hello gents,

Where can I find some kind of reliable information about game development costs for high-profile titles such as Halo, GoW, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Splinter Cell, MGS and so on? Ideally first-hand info, but second hand is fine too as long as it is, as mentioned, reasonably reliable.

Any ideas?

Cheers!

[MonkeyWrench]

You might find some info on Gamasutra, but I'll be surprised if anyone can give you any first hand information as its confidential company information really.

[Wools]

Indeed, not only do indervidual project costs vary wildly but the only people who would know the excat costs are between the heads of the Developer & Publisher.

[suicidepirate]

Thanks, i'll check that out.

Yeah, I mean I'm not expecting an exact number, but occassionally devs are asked in interviews and do reveal the rough cost of a title.

[MattyD]

Mark Rein of Epic recently commented that Gears of War cost arund $10 million (gamesindustry.biz is another good place to look BTW).

I'd imagine it's next to impossible to put a cost on games with protracted development cyles like Halo and Half-Life 2. Imagine combining the running costs of the company for four years, the infrastructural cost of setting up Steam, all the equipment they must have invested in, licencing tools and codecs etc...

[NecronomiconUK]

Gamasutra has numerous developer post-mortems on high profile games and part of the stats sheet it often states the budget.

[Mad Gear]

Wasn't Shenmue the most expensive at the time?
$20 million US?

[NekoFever]

Mark Rein of Epic recently commented that Gears of War cost arund $10 million (gamesindustry.biz is another good place to look BTW).

With that you have to bear in mind that they're not including the cost of developing their Unreal Engine 3.0, for which this game (along with Unreal Tournament 2007) is the real showpiece. It wouldn't surprise me if the cost of that is pushing nine figures, but of course they'll make that back by licencing it out to other developers as they're doing already.

[EvilBoris]

Mark Rein of Epic recently commented that Gears of War cost arund $10 million (gamesindustry.biz is another good place to look BTW).

I'd imagine it's next to impossible to put a cost on games with protracted development cyles like Halo and Half-Life 2. Imagine combining the running costs of the company for four years, the infrastructural cost of setting up Steam, all the equipment they must have invested in, licencing tools and codecs etc...

It shouldn't be too hard should it.

Bungie Bank Account at start of Halo 3 production ?20 million, 2 years later, game goes gold they are ?10 million down, game cost ?10million to make.

[wicky]

Hello gents

hey we do have some ladies around here too ya know

[suicidepirate]

Hehe, yeah i actually thought about writng ladies and gents initially - not sure why i decided not to in the end.

Anyway thanks for the responses. Neko made a good point about the cost of the engine - i think that with that then the actual cost of development for something like Gears would be in the region of $40m.

[Byg]

It shouldn't be too hard should it.

Bungie Bank Account at start of Halo 3 production ?20 million, 2 years later, game goes gold they are ?10 million down, game cost ?10million to make.

That's presuming they don't sell anything else or make any money from elsewhere or get financing from MS etc.

[MattyD]

It shouldn't be too hard should it.

Bungie Bank Account at start of Halo 3 production ?20 million, 2 years later, game goes gold they are ?10 million down, game cost ?10million to make.

Well you get them to disclose information like that to a public source and I'll agree with you!

[eastyy]

i wonder how much much it cost to make the game darwinia


also i wondered how much money eidos sank into the development of daikatana

[gossi the dog]

When comparing figures you need to be careful. Often advertising costs will be included in the development cost. Also different accounting techniques will give you different totals.