WarDevil is now a PS3 exclusive

The reason you probably don't believe them is due to the quality. A part of that is the reality that not all devs are equally skilled. Another part is more money doesn't mean better. Also Epic invested in next gen YEARS before other companies even started. As a tech-oriented PC developer they were ready to jump on the new technology and hit the ground running, unlike most console devs who were still knee deep in developing games for the old consoles up until the last year or so.

Btw, if I remember right MS tossed $20-$30M at SK and Bioware for trilogies, which reinforces the idea of a $10M-ish budget.


I thought it was $30M per game for SK? I remember people asking why MS would put close to $100M for a company that can't hit a deadline.

And if the $10M figure is true for Gears of War then there shouldn't be anything to worry about with next-gen game prices and profit.

Hell God of War (the orginal GOW) cost close to $20M and that was for a PS2 game. So if great looking, playing, and quality games this gen (360 + PS3) can cost $10M to make, then the devs and publishers shouldn't have anything to worry about.
 
I thought it was $30M per game for SK? I remember people asking why MS would put close to $100M for a company that can't hit a deadline.

And if the $10M figure is true for Gears of War then there shouldn't be anything to worry about with next-gen game prices and profit.

Hell God of War (the orginal GOW) cost close to $20M and that was for a PS2 game. So if great looking, playing, and quality games this gen (360 + PS3) can cost $10M to make, then the devs and publishers shouldn't have anything to worry about.

... And Shenmue reportedly cost 40M, with even crappier graphics! So? You're comparing things that shouldn't be compared. The quality of graphics doesn't matter as much as you think in a game's budget, that's why.
 
... And Shenmue reportedly cost 40M, with even crappier graphics! So? You're comparing things that shouldn't be compared. The quality of graphics doesn't matter as much as you think in a game's budget, that's why.


So why are cost going so high (according to everybody I read)?
 
:LOL: Are you serious?? I might have to BUY that, is it on DVD??


be sure to rent this for a cool movie about the producer Ed Wood

more on Ed Wood

Wood's posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time, by popular vote. The lack of conventional filmmaking ability in his work has earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following. Following the publication of Rudolph Grey's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy, Wood's life and work have undergone minor public rehabilitation, with new light shed on his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production. Tim Burton's biopic, Ed Wood, earned an Academy Award -- an inconceivable honor for Wood himself.
/threadjack
 
So why are cost going so high (according to everybody I read)?

I don't know how the game dev budgets are divided so i can't tell. My point was that your notion that as quality of graphics goes up, cost goes up, is not necessarily true.

You also have to take into account the amount of material in a game, be it graphics or sound, the engine creation, how many people are working on the game (i'm pretty sure salaries take up the biggest chunk out of a game's budget). "Quality of graphics" is just one little thing.
 
I don't know how the game dev budgets are divided so i can't tell. My point was that your notion that as quality of graphics goes up, cost goes up, is not necessarily true.

You also have to take into account the amount of material in a game, be it graphics or sound, the engine creation, how many people are working on the game (i'm pretty sure salaries take up the biggest chunk out of a game's budget). "Quality of graphics" is just one little thing.

Well I said the quality of the graphics, gameplay, and overall feel. And yes I will be surprised for another 5 years, because we were told to make a great game like Gears you have to spead upwards of $20-$30 million.

Now Epic has just changed the whole landscape of that type of thinking within the first year of the Xbox 360's existence.
 
Well I said the quality of the graphics, gameplay, and overall feel. And yes I will be surprised for another 5 years, because we were told to make a great game like Gears you have to spead upwards of $20-$30 million.

Now Epic has just changed the whole landscape of that type of thinking within the first year of the Xbox 360's existence.

GOW cost is related to it be made by Epic, which, I think that has more to do with the free use of the engine and the expertise behind the engine. You don't have to hide development cost of the Unreal Engine since its development cost is subsidized by the license fees it collect for all other non-Epic Unreal based games.

GOW being made by someone else would cost more than 10 million with additional cost related to the Unreal licensing fees and the additional time of becoming familiar enough with the engine to produce the same level of quality currently seen now.
 
And why do you believe they did not include that?

GOW averaged between 20-50 people throughout its dev cycle. The engine and the game -- UE3 and GOW -- were effectively built together in regards to their vision of what software should be doing for game design and vice versa what game designers need from the hardware, and what Epic feels is the right balance for the current technology.

You make it sound as if Epic made UE3, and then had to go back and re-engineer the engine because it didn't match up with the game they were making. That isn't how they do it, as they have always said, they are game makers themselves and do build their software to meet those specific needs.

Actually I think Mckmass is somewhat correct. Epic has 3 teams, 1 is dedicated to solely working on the engine, and another works on Gears of War.

It obvious, that the develeopment of Gears was directly influencing the development of the UE3 engine and SDK, due to Rein's comments about the the UE3 SDK for 360 being far ahead of the PS3 SDK. Epic has even gone so far as to say that Developers shouldn't really use UE3 until Epic themselves have shipped their first full game.

So obviously, alot of the costs of tweaking, optimizing and rewriting the engine was being written off as UE3 engine development, a developer who licensed the engine would not have that luxury, all modifications and updates to the engine would increase the budget for the game.

I don't think it's unfair to say Epic is hiding some of the costs for GOW, alot of the engine development/modifcation costs that most other devs would have to pay, are being covered by the UE3 development team.
 
Actually I think Mckmass is somewhat correct. Epic has 3 teams, 1 is dedicated to solely working on the engine, and another works on Gears of War.

It obvious, that the develeopment of Gears was directly influencing the development of the UE3 engine and SDK, due to Rein's comments about the the UE3 SDK for 360 being far ahead of the PS3 SDK. Epic has even gone so far as to say that Developers shouldn't really use UE3 until Epic themselves have shipped their first full game.

So obviously, alot of the costs of tweaking, optimizing and rewriting the engine was being written off as UE3 engine development, a developer who licensed the engine would not have that luxury, all modifications and updates to the engine would increase the budget for the game.

I don't think it's unfair to say Epic is hiding some of the costs for GOW, alot of the engine development/modifcation costs that most other devs would have to pay, are being covered by the UE3 development team.

For the first time in months I can say "thank you Scooby". :smile: That's exactly what I meant to the T. Now depending on how big Epic wants to make Gears 2, I believe that particular game could cost $10M.

Obviously reusing an engine usually equals lower cost.
 
Correct.

If UE3 was for UT2007 and GOW only, then it would be necessary to include the engine development costs into the game. But seeing as UE3 has over 20 games using the engine it is hard to push UE3 development costs onto GOW seeing as dozens of other titles are footing the bill. It is part of Epic's market strategy, kind of like how assembly lines can crank up more work, cheaper, than individual built assemblies. Likewise, larger companies share resources as well internally. If EA at some point begins pushing Criterion's engine and a dozen titles use variations thereof, does that mean EVERY title cost EA $20M for the engine + game development costs? Of course not. Likewise the $20-$40M (guess) Epic has put into UE3 is being spread out among dozens of titles.

Smart business strategy. Other companies foot the bill for all your R&D and you get cutting edge software that you know inside and out. A LOT better strategy than licensing someone else's software.
That's all fine and good, but for the purposes of determining *just* what Gears costs, at least licensing fees should be added. People want to know how much *Gears* costs, whether the payment of that cost was spread out over multiple divisions or whether it's recouped from licensing.


And I can't believe some people have not heard of Plan 9 From Outer Space. Classic terrible movie right there. If you find yourself wanting more wretched 50's sci-fi, try Invaders From Mars. If it doesn't make you groan and howl, you're dead.
 
Actually I think Mckmass is somewhat correct. Epic has 3 teams, 1 is dedicated to solely working on the engine, and another works on Gears of War.

It obvious, that the develeopment of Gears was directly influencing the development of the UE3 engine and SDK, due to Rein's comments about the the UE3 SDK for 360 being far ahead of the PS3 SDK. Epic has even gone so far as to say that Developers shouldn't really use UE3 until Epic themselves have shipped their first full game.

So obviously, alot of the costs of tweaking, optimizing and rewriting the engine was being written off as UE3 engine development, a developer who licensed the engine would not have that luxury, all modifications and updates to the engine would increase the budget for the game.

I am not sure where you are disagreeing with:

Acert93 said:
The engine and the game -- UE3 and GOW -- were effectively built together

Epic is a game developer.
Epic is a game tools developer.

They mutually serve eachother, and is one of their key synergies in bringing a product to market that is effective. It is designed, tested, and published as a real world product that *Epic* themselves uses.

So while you can knock them for "tweaking" UE3, that is a key selling point of the platform: It is not theoretical, but a "live" product.

I don't think it's unfair to say Epic is hiding some of the costs for GOW, alot of the engine development/modifcation costs that most other devs would have to pay, are being covered by the UE3 development team.

That is assuming Epic's 20-50 person team had no one on the budget actually programming for the game and writing code. Just because their "Engine & Tools Development" team is separate from their "Game Dev Alpha" team doesn't mean the former has no programmers. And as noted above, many of those "tweaks" are realworld refining of the platform and testing the middleware to bring it to market as a real product. If Epic cannot demonstrate an excellent, realworld example of their engine in a timely manner that demonstrates AAA quality, then others will be hesitant to license the product. Risk/Reward of their market strategy.

Anyhow, I think your position assumes that their game dev team lacks programmers. We obviously don't know what they are including in their dev budget. But we do know that their team size, which frequently has a major impact on development budget, was not massive (20-50 people the entire time). Further, knocking them for tailoring the engine for UE3 overlooks the reality that UE3 and GOW are mutual projects. Put another way

• What is the best software technology targets for 2006? => UE3
• What is the best use of UE3 => GOW

Obviously, and I don't think anyone would disagree, UE3 was Epic's best guess on what hardware would be like in the 2005-2006 timeframe. Likewise, GOW was designed to be their best artistic use of said technology.

So "tweaks" to UE3 for GOW is kind of stating the obvious. When you license UE3 you are buying an engine that was not only targetting 2005/2006 hardware, but as well being co-developed and "dry ran" on GOW.

Just too many "what ifs" -- especially assuming their game dev team has no dedicated programmers.

Where we CAN say Epic can / could cut corners is timely support, first access (and the ups and downs of such), but probably most importantly as you note: They own/created the software and it was designed for their game. Not only do they KNOW it well, but it was designed for what they envisions would be problems developers would have based on their own vision of a game using the technology.

Of course as a 3rd party you weight that: Do I license the software for $1M+ and add in a solid 6-12 weeks of time to get up to speed or do we do R&D and engine development for 12 months and use our own tools?

That's all fine and good, but for the purposes of determining *just* what Gears costs, at least licensing fees should be added.

Fair enough, so make it $12M :smile:

I wouldn't say that Epic is above fudging the numbers some. e.g. 10M seems aweful round and even. 14M rounds down to 10M you know :LOL:

People want to know how much *Gears* costs, whether the payment of that cost was spread out over multiple divisions or whether it's recouped from licensing.

I think we can answer those questions with a high degree of certainty.

1. We are just pontificating... but for publishers I think they would look at the people they have, look at a demo of the software and compare it to the stimates their engineers give them for building a custom suite of tools for the project. It would be nice to have more info on this process, but it isn't one well publicized :(

2. I think it is obivous the cost of developing UE3 was NOT included in the cost of GOW Epic mentioned. I think elsewhere they gave some big number for UE3 development costs. 10M for GOW and all the engine development -- for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 up to this point -- as well as the support they offer seems unlikely. 10M for GOW seems low enough as it is.

3. They definately are recouping engine costs through licensing. This is how, as a small independant developer, they were able to sink millions into R&D and tool development. If GOW was another Unreal-level success, UE3 development without licensing would have hurt them. Licensing is their business model, and very effective one as they timed the market nearly perfectly. With the success of GOW and the continued improvement of the tools and quality improvements -- as well as creating one of the few middleware solutions that can support PS3/PC/X360 portability -- they have set themselves up in a position to have strong licensing all generation.

As a side note, I think publishers have overstated some of the costs. Partly to defend the $10 price increase on games. Also as a way to cover the increasing risks in the market ("small" games are increasing in cost as well, so niche games carry more risk) as well covering their own mistakes (e.g. a hard launch date on a product behind schedule, so tossing 2x as many people at the problem to get increase production by 15%). We never see breakdowns and never will. A lot of loose money in advertising, development, resources (e.g. people are on a projected, jetted off to another, and yet another, never finishing a single project). All of this is under the bean counters who have to make it pretty for investors and for tax collectors. Getting firm numbers not only would be difficult, but would not be very advantageous.

What we can do though is watch their profits versus sales. More than anything that can be a good indicator of how they are doing. I don't believe a lot of publishers had planned well for next gen (never do), and that we are in that rough time when the old consoles are dieing and the next gen consoles have small install bases and few compelling apps to urge significant purchases above the impulse range. So we will hear a lot of publisher "too expensive! need to raise prices" whining. It happens ever time though.
 
http://www.psu.com/Wardevil-gets-a-new-look-First-image-inside--News--a0002643-p0.php

PSU said:
Wardevil gets a new look! First image inside
Posted on February 5th, 2008 at 12:01 EDT

Developed by the Digi-Guys, Wardevil is a new 3rd person action/sci-fi title exclusively for the PlayStation 3.

As you can see the team has revamped the graphical look of the game, recreating the character giving him a helmet rather than light grey hair. Also you can see that he carries a long spear-like weapon as well as his pistol seen from past tech demos.

site_wardevil-project-ss-60.jpg

Maybe we'll see more at GDC.
 
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