Top ten most expensive games ever made.

The site or the article doesn't exactly make me accept everything there at face value. Seems like someone has spent some effort to add up quesses from various sources instead of using hard facts.
 
Why is it so difficult to know games budgets? For movies it's usually quite straight-forward. The studios pretty much tell you (apart from some exceptions) and you can easily get budgets online from wikipedia or whatever other source. They should do the same for games! So we can b1tch about it on here!
 
london-boy said:
Why is it so difficult to know games budgets? For movies it's usually quite straight-forward. The studios pretty much tell you (apart from some exceptions) and you can easily get budgets online from wikipedia or whatever other source. They should do the same for games! So we can b1tch about it on here!
Click to expand...

I'm guessing because, no game studio wants to tell you how much a game cost, ever. Unless it's Epic bragging about how low it was to sell UE3.

Not sure why it's so different in movies. Likewise in movies, box office grosses are public in great detail, while in games, sales figures are hard to come by and a NPD subscription is very expensive.

But yeah this list looks like total baloney. Except I would assume GTA4 is the most expensive game ever made to date, that isn't hard to guess.
 
Interesting that there's no Final Fantasy title on that list, and not a single Nintendo title either...

Too Human blowing $60M? Well, it was supposed to come out for the PS originally after all. Wonder what the final tally was on Duke Nukem 4... :p Guess we'll never know! Heh.

One game that's definitely missing from that list: World of Warcraft. 200ish people working for 10+ years = shitload of money spent.
 
Grall said:
Interesting that there's no Final Fantasy title on that list, and not a single Nintendo title either...
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Final Fantasy 12 is there. The latest FF probably doesn't have good budget questimates around yet. I'd say Nintendo does its titles efficiently, meaning little money goes in, lot's of money comes out.
 
Ah, right. I missed it down at the bottom there... :p

Nintendo may do some games efficiently as you say, but they also devote large devteams on their Marios and Zeldas, and the Metroids Retro did for them probably had some decent staff too...
 
If they have such a old game as Shenmue on there, you'd think other FF's would be too.

And that Shenmue figure is laughable, Sega spent 70 million, which after inflation is probably the equivalent of twice that today, on a niche game for the Sega Dreamcast and it's low install base?? Riiiight. Compare Shenmue to GTA4, and tell me that inflation adjusted, they cost the same to make with a straight face.

Edit: I'm guessing they got their entire figures straight from Wikipedia only, as sure enough the 70m Shenmue figure is mentioned there.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
In the other thread where this list was shown, it was pointed out that there's really very little evidence to back the numbers. It's essentially noise.
 
NRP said:
:oops: @ Too Human!
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I played the demo of Too Human, it wasn't too bad really I thought. Framerates sagged fairly often but it wasn't really a problem. The biggest flaw I thought was the rather shoddy menu and infentory system, it was ugly, unpolished and quirky, if they'd made that more intuitive and more uniform in function and visual appearance then the game would have benefitted greatly.

Anyone know what's happening with the SK/Epic lawsuit? :LOL:
 
Rangers said:
And that Shenmue figure is laughable, Sega spent 70 million, which after inflation is probably the equivalent of twice that today, on a niche game for the Sega Dreamcast and it's low install base?? Riiiight.
Click to expand...
Yeah, seriously. If they had been that bad at managing money, they probably would have canceled the Dreamcast just a couple years after its launch and nearly gone bankrupt shortly afterward. If it had been that much of a financial disaster, they probably would have restricted Yu Suzuki to making Virtual Fighter updates for the remainder of his career instead of letting him complete Shenmue 3.
 
I remember reading several times that Halo 3's final production cost was less than 30 million. I also remember reading an official looking document that said Rockstar spent 55 million on GTA4. The numbers on that list seem way too high if you think about it. I mean, wasn't Halo 3's team about 100 people? Even if you go disneyland with salaries, equipment, software and other production costs it doesn't seem like you would approach 55 million in the 2 1/2 - 3 year development time.

Maybe I am missing something though.
 
Rangers said:
Edit: I'm guessing they got their entire figures straight from Wikipedia only, as sure enough the 70m Shenmue figure is mentioned there.
Click to expand...
usually with wikipedia, they cite there sources
now with the $70m Shenmue figure it comes from IGN
 
Rangers said:
And that Shenmue figure is laughable, Sega spent 70 million, which after inflation is probably the equivalent of twice that today, on a niche game for the Sega Dreamcast and it's low install base?? Riiiight. Compare Shenmue to GTA4, and tell me that inflation adjusted, they cost the same to make with a straight face.
Click to expand...

I believe the costs for Shenmue are deceptive. The game was originally in development for the Saturn, seemingly getting a decent way in development, and the remade for then Dreamcast. Given the way the game was originally going to be presented the costs probably include most of the work on Shenmue 2 and some of what would have been Shenmue 3, a lot appeared to have been done that never made it into the released games. Also they probably include the work done prior to Shenmue proper starting development, it started life as a Virtua Fighter RPG remember.

It's easy to forget now just how grandiose the scope of the Shenmue project was at the time as well.
 
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