News: Average Budget For Major, Multi-Platform Games Is $18-28 Million

[News Bot]

An anonymous reader passes along this excerpt from Develop: "The average development budget for a multiplatform next-gen game is $18-$28 million, according to new data. A study by entertainment analyst group M2 Research also puts development costs for single-platform projects at an average of $10 million. The figures themselves may not be too surprising, with high-profile games often breaking the $40 million barrier. Polyphony's Gran Turismo 5 budget is said to be hovering around the $60 million mark, while Modern Warfare 2's budget was said to be as high as $50 million."


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[TheOneOmega]

So much for hiring a private programming team to build games for my own enjoyment.

[Futurama]

Its mostly EA imho, some others as well perhaps. I mean they have loads of "good" games. I bet they don`t spend like less than 20mil on a game.

[MarieWoodell]

Yeah. it's probably the bigger companies that have that kind of money to throw at games. You can probably do something decent on a lower budget too.

[TheOneOmega]

I wonder, how many copies do you suppose the bigger titles end up selling?

[MarieWoodell]

Originally Posted by TheOneOmega

I wonder, how many copies do you suppose the bigger titles end up selling?

Its probably into the millions. If not more. Probably wouldn't take too long to find out. Pick one and wiki it.

[Futurama]

Originally Posted by MarieWoodell

Its probably into the millions. If not more. Probably wouldn't take too long to find out. Pick one and wiki it.

Doesn`t mean profit ofc.

[MarieWoodell]

Originally Posted by Futurama

Doesn`t mean profit ofc.

No of course not. I'd assume they do profit though on the really big titles or they wouldn't keep making them. There would probably be some huge headlines if a company like Blizzard or Turbine was making a loss on their games as well.

[TheOneOmega]

Hypothetically speaking, say an individual had a boatload of money and wanted to have a game created for their own enjoyment. With no need for advertising, a reduced need to test for obscure bugs, and if said individual did most of the high level design work themselves, how much do you think it would cost to produce a single copy of the game (or maybe 50 copies to cover the possibility of one breaking) if for a 3-D action or RPG game.

[MarieWoodell]

Originally Posted by TheOneOmega

Hypothetically speaking, say an individual had a boatload of money and wanted to have a game created for their own enjoyment. With no need for advertising, a reduced need to test for obscure bugs, and if said individual did most of the high level design work themselves, how much do you think it would cost to produce a single copy of the game (or maybe 50 copies to cover the possibility of one breaking) if for a 3-D action or RPG game.

You could easily get it for less than half what games normally cost. you would be surprised how much goes into the advertising. If you were considering writing the storyline for the rpg yourself as well then even cheaper. You would need some pretty hefty programmers to back up your design though and probably want to license an already made quest designer type program to save even more money. Possibly a graphics engine too. You might find the right companies would let you have those pretty cheaply if the game was non profit for you. If it turned into a profit game though and you decided to sell after it was made you might find they get funny.

I'd say therefore it depends how much you want to just pay someone to do it for you and how much you want to organise a team yourself and risk producing something not quite to the standard. I looked into doing something similar two or three years ago as I wanted to come up with the storyline side of things but I couldn't afford to pay someone to make it and I didn't know a programmer capable of doing game play. My graphics person has since moved on as well now so I've shelved the idea until I'm richer.

EDIT: sorry forgot to answer the 50 copies of the game part. It would only cost say $2-3 per disc to make the dvd's once finished at a quantity of about fifty if you got them professionally done. Of course it would be much cheaper if you made them yourself.