Top ten most expensive games ever made.

[assen]

Loads of BS. It's "Ten very expensive games", not "THE MOSTEST BESTEST EVAR". Where are the Assassin Creed's? Where are the MMOs?

And, for the record, Too Human is not a turd. Or maybe not entirely turd. I recently played through it once, and intend to do so with other characters. The fantastic setting/premise and one of the awesomest environment art this generation should have been confiscated from Dennis Dyack for the greater good of humanity, and given to somebody else to make a better game out of them.

 

[function]

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.

The DC version (and some of the content for the second games) was also developed early on (1997/1998) alongside the DC development tools, and complex (for the time) content tools such as phonetics-to-lip-sync software. The game was supposed to span many chapters and several game releases.

In the interests of promoting "the most expensive game ever" it would be easy to lump all kind of costs together.

Still, whatever they spent was worth it from my perspective as a gamer - even if it didn't pay off for the company. It was the last game to ever truly astound me from a concept and technology POV. No-one would be bold enough (or stupid enough) to take such a huge risk on an untested type of game these days.

 

[ERP]

I'd take any of these lists with a pinch of salt.

For most games, you can't even get a straight answer on costs if your inside the company, and it has little to do with them trying to keep it secret.

I worked on one product where I've heard numbers between 20 and 50 million thrown around by people who really ought to know. I suspect the disparity has more to do with what people are counting, than any attempt to mislead.

 

[nintenho]

GT5 will probably be the most expensive as marketing money probably hasn't been spent yet.

Too Human, iirc, cost $60 million upfront for all three games in the trilogy. I'm pretty sure at least.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

As Obonicus pointed out in the other thread where this list was discussed extensively...

The general consensus was that this list should be taken with a large grain of salt, it's just a collection of guesses, with a title here and there actually having some source with which to back up the numbers...

Regards,
SB

 

[specwarGP2]

$100 million for GTA4 seems highly unrealistic to me. It costs $100m to make a blockbuster movie.

 

[Mr. Domino]

How is it possible that a game like Shenmue costed $70 million? It was made on pre-ps2 hardware.

 

[Rangers]

A Kojima productions employee has tweeted about this list, denying the 60 million MGS4 figure

"Recently in the news, it's been written that MGS4's development costs crossed 5 billion [yen], or 7 billion. It didn't cost that much. If it did cost that much, it would have been multiplatform. But, of course, the data can't fit."

 

[nintenho]

How is it possible that a game like Shenmue costed $70 million? It was made on pre-ps2 hardware.

actually it was originally being made for saturn but was then switched to dreamcast, and that $70 million figure supposedly includes the money for the sequels. Maybe even more impressive was that this was the first game to have orchestrated music and voice-acting for every NPC.

 

[London Geezer]

I'd take any of these lists with a pinch of salt.

For most games, you can't even get a straight answer on costs if your inside the company, and it has little to do with them trying to keep it secret.

I worked on one product where I've heard numbers between 20 and 50 million thrown around by people who really ought to know. I suspect the disparity has more to do with what people are counting, than any attempt to mislead.

Well i would certainly hope that within a company someone - anyone - would know what the bottom line is.
Rules of accountancy are a b1tch, but also quite black or white... You have your assets, your liabilities, and boom you have a final figure. If any element of your balance sheet is an unknown quantity then i'm sorry but there is something seriously wrong going on there, and no one would invest their money on your company. By the way i'm not saying 'your company' as in... 'your company', i mean generally... you know what i mean.

 

[London Geezer]

How is it possible that a game like Shenmue costed $70 million? It was made on pre-ps2 hardware.

I am assuming that the vast majority of a game's development cost is people.
So i would also assume that the platform of choice is not necessarily a good indication of how much a game would cost.
A much better indication would be how many people were involved in the project, for how many years, and how much they were paid.
Then you have tech costs but i have to assume that next to the cost of salaries it is almost negligible.
Marketing would also take a big chunk out of the total figure.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

But the more complex your hardware gets the more people you need right? (or the longer you need fewer people to work) So isnt there a link between hardware and people/cost?

 

[London Geezer]

But the more complex your hardware gets the more people you need right? (or the longer you need fewer people to work) So isnt there a link between hardware and people/cost?

Probably.
But we'd have to look at how much a designer, and artist, a programmer was getting in, say, 2000, and compare it to today. Account for inflation, hours worked, a whole load of variables.

 

[ERP]

Well i would certainly hope that within a company someone - anyone - would know what the bottom line is.
Rules of accountancy are a b1tch, but also quite black or white... You have your assets, your liabilities, and boom you have a final figure. If any element of your balance sheet is an unknown quantity then i'm sorry but there is something seriously wrong going on there, and no one would invest their money on your company. By the way i'm not saying 'your company' as in... 'your company', i mean generally... you know what i mean.

Oh I think it's more about what's included by various individuals, licensing costs, marketing etc etc.
Sometimes costs look higher than they should because people include one off costs like office moves.

The general rule of count the peoples salaries and double it wil get you pretty close on most projects, but licensing and marketing costs can skew the total dramatically.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Why post this list in two threads?

Its not like this is super credible stuff.

 

[Saga_Studios]

So the first Shenmue was on DC, it cost sega $70 million. You say it predates PS2, well yes, the DC wasn't as powerfull as PS3, and not nearly as powerfull as Xbox was. I for get the poyogn power of the last gen systems, but look at it this way, there are still better looking games on DC then there are on PS2. There are better looking games on Gamecube, case in point RE4, Code Veronica, look better on the cube. Reason being? AA. Shenmue was a good game, if you have the time, Shenmue 2 was much better. GTA4 costing $100 million? Maybe. That list seems about right. Too Human, was a joke, waited for it on the 64, dc,ps2, gc, Xbox, and finnaly comes out on 360, and it has issues. Waste of $60 million, almost as much time put into it as Duke Nukem Foever.

 

[eastmen]

I recal back in the day sega saying shenmue was around 40m to make. But it did start back on the saturn and alot of work on the second one was done while maing the first.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Content creation tools weren't as streamlined back in 1998-2000 either, a lot of things we do in a day took weeks and so on. And Shenmue, form what I've seen, had insane amounts of art assets, large levels and lots of characters and animation...

 

[specwarGP2]

the original toy story cost ~$33 million, and it had far more animation, assets voice acting, etc. So $70m for shenmue is total bs.

 

[Sonic]

the original toy story cost ~$33 million, and it had far more animation, assets voice acting, etc. So $70m for shenmue is total bs.

It is not BS. The amount of content put into Shenmue was staggering at the time, for a console. Much more so than a feature film like Toy Story. You have hours and hours of content and need to pay for people to come up with the engine, the textures, the modeling, the voice acting, but you need to make it look spectacular on the Dreamcast. The content might not have been as high quality, but it was being rendered in real time versus a movie. It also isn't the budget for a single game like Toy Story's was. It was money spent that was meant for multiple chapters of a story spanning a few games. It was ballsy of SEGA to spend much on a game like that back in the day but they were always one to take a big risk like that. The risk ended up being on the losing side, but I still respect them for taking it.

The SEGA of old is a lot better than the SEGA today... That's a different thread entirely.


These big ass games require a lot of money in terms of investment, but often time they will make excellent on the returns.