Estimated Game Development Costs in Japan

[Deepak]

http://www.the-magicbox.com/gaming.htm

- CESA released the estimated development costs for each of the major console platform in Japan in its annual report CESA White Paper 2005:

PlayStation 2 - 139 million yen (US$1.19 million)
PSP - 63.1 million yen (US$541,000)
GameCube - 60.8 million yen (US$522,000)
GameBoy Advance - 40.4 million yen (US$347,000)
Nintendo DS - 39.8 million yen (US$341,000)
Xbox - 22.5 million yen (US$193,000)

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Don't these figures look low? Development costs for entire game?

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Well, I do think there are a lot more low-production-value titles made in Japan at a given time, and they tend to be made in large numbers. It is, after all, a gaming culture, so a lot of more traditional "game" games tend to work out there. In the US, the big sellers are those derived from some type of simulation. The big major titles are probably all the more expensive to make, but they're outnumbered, I'd assume.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Anyone know how they derive these figures? They seem to imply that complexity of writing for the hardware is the major expense, and creating 4 GB of XB content is far cheaper than creating 32MB of content for GBA. I find that implausible.

 

[archie4oz]

They don't even imply that... The DS is a significanly more sophisticated system than the AGB, yet they list the AGB having higher average costs? The numbers seem awfully erratic (the only ones that seem accurate are the PS2 and PSP ones)...

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

I think it's just plain skewed by populations of various types of titles. I mean, you look at the Xbox figures, but think about how many major Xbox titles came out of Japanese developers (and I'm also assuming that a lot of ports were not done locally). This is as opposed to the sheer number of PS2 titles including AAA titles. You could probably make the same comparison for GBA vs. DS. There's just that many more titles in production.

I'd wonder how longitudinal those studies are. It does raise an eyebrow if that's just for the year 2005.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I guess if they go by averages, a few massively expensive PS2 titles would up the average considerably. But still, how much of an XB game can you make for $200k? Are there any examples? I can't see how that can be cheaper than GBA unless it's all Mahjong!

 

[cthellis42]

Who needs more than Mahjongg?

 

[mckmas8808]

I guess if they go by averages, a few massively expensive PS2 titles would up the average considerably. But still, how much of an XB game can you make for $200k? Are there any examples? I can't see how that can be cheaper than GBA unless it's all Mahjong!

Have you seen the Japanese made titles for Xbox? Why do you think they had no chance over there? It all makes sense.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Have you seen the Japanese made titles for Xbox?

No. That's why I ask. What sort of games are being produced?

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Who needs more than Mahjongg?

Go is certainly a valuable addition. Unfortunately, only the GBA got some recent Go games, and they're pretty weak (to the extent that even I can beat them while playing rather impulsively).