I have large doubts about these numbers. Did they, say, include GeoW 1 and 2's reported budgets in the accounting? They alone would skew things down for single-platform games, especially considering how few single-platform games there have been over the last couple of years. Hell, most of them come from MS or Sony -- are we to believe that these companies actually revealed the budgets for their games?
Study: Average dev costs as high as $28m
- Thread starter JPT
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I have large doubts about these numbers. Did they, say, include GeoW 1 and 2's reported budgets in the accounting? They alone would skew things down for single-platform games, especially considering how few single-platform games there have been over the last couple of years. Hell, most of them come from MS or Sony -- are we to believe that these companies actually revealed the budgets for their games?
Don't forget that in that time we went from carts which cost upwards of $35 per cart to optical media that at some points costs as much as afew bucks and other points as little as a quarter if not less.
Really easy to keep the price the same when a transition like that happens. Lets also not forget that in the ps2 gen games were $50 and now they are $60.
I wouldn't be surprised if next gen they go up to $70 in the states
Sigfried1977
Legend
Well, we need to eat, we need to wear clothes (most of us do at least) and we need a place to live. Not much we can do when they charge us triple. We don't really need games, though (or movies, or big ass tvs, or expensive gaming PCs ... all luxury items and none of them have gotten significantly more expensive since basically forever)
I guess I'd pay more if I had to (albeit begrudgingly) , but I'm not a part of the more casual gaming demographic that probably accounts for the vast majority of the gaming populace. I'm a helpless geek who owns 2 PS3s (and a standalone BD player), a 360, 2PSPs, a DS and about a dozend older systems and who just bought shutter glasses and a 120Hz monitor because he's seen 1! 3d movie in the cinema and quite enjoyed it.
I still think that Epic is seriously underreporting Gears budgets. No way they can make all that art and other content from less then COD2. A single Gears character is almost as detailed as all the COD2 models combined...
They might not include the engine costs. They might have employees on a 'skeleton' salary and pay huge bonuses after the project's done... they expect 60 hour work weeks, thats 50% more then normal so it should cost 50% more then normal.
In that recent Onlive video the guy shows some list on how he convinced people like EA to join them and it showed EA only making like $12 per game
Thats probably gross profit per game. Net profit per game is probably a negative figure since EA has been losing money for the last two years.
http://www.m2research.com/the-brief-2009-ups-and-downs.htm
Information on lay-offs, trends, etc.
Information on lay-offs, trends, etc.
Well actually wii games could explain these numbers. The majority of them are exclusive but relatively cheap to make, but those that are multiplatform would basically require the publisher to make a separate game. That would make the average budget for single-platform games decrease while and the increasing the average for multiplatform games.
I still think that Epic is seriously underreporting Gears budgets. No way they can make all that art and other content from less then COD2. A single Gears character is almost as detailed as all the COD2 models combined...
They might not include the engine costs. They might have employees on a 'skeleton' salary and pay huge bonuses after the project's done... they expect 60 hour work weeks, thats 50% more then normal so it should cost 50% more then normal.
I think gears costed so little because they never included engine costs and they probably wrote off some of the art content as promotional costs. I remember Epic pimping UE3 well before Gears was announced with a bunch of art content found in gears.
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/interviews/17/2
This is B3D article from Jun 2004 with art that was inevitably used by Gears
They've redone pretty much everything at least once after the initial UE3 demos. The designs are similar but if you compare the actual models and textures you can see the differences.
Heck, even Marcus was redone at least once during the development of Gears, I remember the slightly bluish original armor and less realistic face textures.
Heck, even Marcus was redone at least once during the development of Gears, I remember the slightly bluish original armor and less realistic face textures.
Im sure tweaking a model is much cheaper and less time consuming than building one from scratch. Seems like to me Epic saved cost by producing promotional material that they knew were going to turn into a game.
Isn't content creation one of the more expensive components of developing along with engine coding? If you are able to minimize the cost of the two, wouldn't that drastically reduce the cost of development?
Isn't content creation one of the more expensive components of developing along with engine coding? If you are able to minimize the cost of the two, wouldn't that drastically reduce the cost of development?
Those assets still had to be made by people who had to be paid. How Epic puts in in their books is their business but if they don't include it in the dev costs for Gears then they're trying to paint a false picture for possible clients of their engine.
I still think that Epic is seriously underreporting Gears budgets. No way they can make all that art and other content from less then COD2. A single Gears character is almost as detailed as all the COD2 models combined...
That's my point -- if we're going just with HD games, there are very very few exclusives, particularly from western studios. Just taking GeoW1+2's (IMHO undervalued) budget would skew the numbers. If they're considering Japan, well, then we have a whole slew of fairly low-tech exclusives for PS3 and 360 that probably further under-represent budgets. And if nintenho is right, and they're using Wii titles, that just makes it more meaningless.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
That's part of publishing anything, be it games, movies, music, comic books, regular books, etc.
You expect the majority (in the case o games 70%) of your product isn't going to make a single dime, and that they'll probably end up costing you money.
You do that expecting to have a hit every now and then that makes enough profit that you can continue to release enough products to cover the spread and thus attain an overall profit.
EVERYTHING, is a bit of a gamble, there is no way to predict before something is released whether it will make a profit or not. There's metrics you can use, useage patterns, consumer preferences, trends, past performances, etc. There are some things that are have a greater chance of success. A George Lucas or Steven Spielberg film for example. A Halo, Metal Gear Solid, or Final Fantasy stand a good chance.
But then, you already hear people complaining of no originality and noone pushing new "innovative" games. Well those same innovative games also almost invariably fail to turn a profit. So should publishers stop greenlighting money for them?
For example, given a game concept of Big rolling ball controlled by player collects objects it runs over and addes them to its mass. Would you greenlight something like that? Yet Katamari games have done relatively well.
So publishers keep greenlighting games that will probably not have financial success in the hopes that they'll find the next profitable franchise or even just have something resonate with the consumer enough to make a onetime profit.
Meanwhile they use the profits from the blockbusters like COD - MW2 in order to greenlight those games you'd like to see publishers try to make but don't often see get made. Because those profits allow them to take those chances.
So yes, the entertainment industry continues to work on the premise that while 70% of product may lose money, the 30% of product that breakeven or make a profit will allow them to keep releasing product and make a profit.
As much as everyone loves to hate Britney Spears, she's done more to bring you the music you actually like, than anything anyone else has done. All because she brought enough money in to the publisher that they could afford to take a chance on unknown artists that might (but probably won't be) profitable.
It's been the way of things for well over a hundred years, and I doubt it's going to change anytime soon.
Regards,
SB
Epic doesn't try to push Gear's development cost as a unique savings possible to anyone who licenses the UE3 engine.
Gears seemly cheap development cost is just the product of Epic's business model. The cost for you to build a race car from ground up is way more expensive than Ford building one using regular parts straight from their commercial lineups. If Epic built UE3 and the promotional content strictly for use in Gears then the figure would be alot higher but since they aren't just a developer, development is much cheaper because their operation isn't totally dependent on just making a game.
A company that strictly develop games whole infrastructure is built strictly around that facet. That means if it costs you 10 million dollars a year on average to maintain your company and you work on 1 project for 2.5 years, it costs you 25 million dollars to develop a game. But if you are a company who also licenses development tools that generate millions of dollars a year then that 10 million dollars a year doesn't just go down as a cost of game development as your operational costs support other revenue streams.
How much you think a AAA game would cost for a developer where Epic showed and gave them a engine, a bunch of art content and onsite technical support (who not only troubleshoot but correct bugs themselves) all for free? Thats what the development team inside Epic gets, free tools and free man hours from a department who is paid for by UE3 license sales. Gears cost is not deceiving just atypical because most development houses don't act as major third party development tool providers.
Game development costs are highly variable because there is so much variablity in the size, structure, talent, efficiency and mission of these companies that develop games.
Would you say the same about Madden, FIFA, NCAA Football or Tiger Woods where the development cost is much cheaper for EA because the reuse of assets and code allows for substantial savings versus building the same game from ground up?
@ Silent_Buddha - you are absolutly right. In fact, that was what I wanted to say - the publishers have this "business model" were they like people to believe that there are no profits, that any gain is offset by 70% of failures. My belief is that there are more profits than they claim, only they are very good in hiding them. As a business man, you simply cannot afort 70% rate of failure for your investments. Most probably the rate is lower, but with a little book-cooking you can make it look like this. As you said, it's a model that has been perfected over the last 100 years or so.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Actually if the business is publicly traded, they will do everything they can to try to exaggerate how much money they make (if they are corrupt) or report accurately how much they made (if they are not).
Look at Enron for example.
A business will never try to claim less profit than what they made especially if it results in a loss. Doing so will will undermine shareholder confidence, crash share prices, and open up your company to a hostile take over. And then, of course, there's always the SEC waiting to take you down if you mis-report your earnings.
It's just not done, no matter how much people like to think corporations are somehow inherently evil.
Now, that isn't to say that companies won't take advantage of tax loopholes to try to save money, but they never under-report earnings. Well I suppose if a company is making multi-billions in profits every year it may not matter if they underreport, but that doesn't exactly apply to the gaming industry where many companies are losing money and the ones making money, certainly aren't making billions.
Regards,
SB
Re-use of assets is obviously a big plus, but the biggest plus may simply be the in-built consumer base; obviously the most attractive part of any sequel-driven franchise.
Post #49 of 2008's thread on the topic speaks to the Madden's: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49421&page=2
