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$10m Development Costs for Gears of War

896 Views 9 Replies 10 Participants Last post by  Automatonjohn, 
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Epic Games VP Mark Rein has slammed suggestions that huge budgets are required to create next-gen games, revealing that forthcoming Xbox 360 title Gears of War has cost "around $10 million" to produce.


Speaking at the London Games Summit, Rein said that it's taken a team of 20 - 30 people around two years to complete work on GOW - arguing that despite claims by some industry figures, it's still possible to create next-gen titles using medium sized teams and without gigantic budgets.

GOW, he continued, "wasn't cheap but didn't cost the crazy figures you hear other companies quoting of $20, $30 million". Rein made similar comments in an interview with GI.biz last year, where he accused "big companies like EA" of "going around trying to scare people".


When asked by an audience member how much GOW had cost to produce, Rein replied, "So far, around $10 million, maybe a little less.

http://www.news4gamers.com/xbox360/News-11465.aspx





This is a suprise compared to what the claims are of how much it cost to develop games. But then I wonder what what some things that go into this cost? I wonder what the games cost for development for the ones that came out for the last year.
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S
Mark Rein is just trying to sell the U3 engine.


"We made a triple A title for only $10 million with the U3 engine. You can too!!!"


I take what this guy says with a grain of salt. Over the past several months he's been saying all kinds of stupid stuff. In one article he's quoted as saying the PS3 is a better development platform, in another he says the 360 is better.
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T
well, that is what he's getting paid to do...
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H
little off topic but anyone know the the production budget of halo3?
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Interesting, so if it was $10 million for 30 people over 2 years.... then that's an average salary of $166K/year for the crew. Pretty good pay I would say. (I'm sure the interns and playtesters make less :))


They would need to sell about 340,000 copies of the game at $30 each just to break even for the development costs. (Remember, THEY don't get the $60/game...) I think a good game sells in the millions of copies right? So, they should do OK with it.


Hope the multiplayer is good!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark_Likes_Games
Hope the multiplayer is good!
On the plus side, CliffyB has said they are shipping with 10 MP maps, not just the previously announced 8.
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They'll make this up easily........
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark_Likes_Games
Interesting, so if it was $10 million for 30 people over 2 years.... then that's an average salary of $166K/year for the crew. Pretty good pay I would say.


They would need to sell about 340,000 copies of the game at $30 each just to break even for the development costs. (Remember, THEY don't get the $60/game...) I think a good game sells in the millions of copies right? So, they should do OK with it.


Hope the multiplayer is good!


Well, they should be counting a lot more than just salaries. Such as office space, computers, dev kits, software, etc. And in addition to salaries, the company has to pay benefits (health, 401K) and employee taxes (half of social security and medicare) for each person.


On the sales side, non-publishing developers usually get about $5 - $15 per game.

Retail will take about $20 - $25, MS will take about $10 for licensing. Publishers take about $15 - $20. Packaging and distribution takes about $5 I think. So self-publishing developers probably get around $25 per game.
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Is this why it's going to cost $60 instead of $40? I remember Cliffy B saying that no console game should be priced above $40 and that all Epic next-gen games would be $40.
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I'd like to see what hours of prerendered cutscenes would've done to the budget... :D
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