I really wish people would stop saying epic is hiding the cost of unreal development. Why should they include the costs of developing the unreal engine, when the licenses they have had over the last 10 years pay for the development of the tools/tech. This tech existed 'before" they were involved with xbox 360. I'm sure the 10 million included a fee to license the engine to themselves internally.
WarDevil is now a PS3 exclusive
- Thread starter mckmas8808
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I really wish people would stop saying epic is hiding the cost of unreal development. Why should they include the costs of developing the unreal engine, when the licenses they have had over the last 10 years pay for the development of the tools/tech. This tech existed 'before" they were involved with xbox 360. I'm sure the 10 million included a fee to license the engine to themselves internally.
Angelcurio
Regular
20 million? 
Thats around the Killzone ps3 budget. Who is the publisher of that game?
Thats around the Killzone ps3 budget. Who is the publisher of that game?
mckmas8808
Legend
Because it's true. If you honestly believe that Gears costed less to make on a HD console with the best graphics ever made by man, than Red Steel then all I can do is
.Angelcurio said:
Word on the street is that it's Sony.
I think 'hiding' is just a poor choice of words. What's meant is the GEoW price doesn't include Engine Development, which does factor into other games where engines are being written. However, is it even possible to spend $millions creating a game engine? Aren't you talking a dozen developers salaries for a couple of years? I can't imagine that costs a great deal. Expenses is mostly content AFAIK.
Not that it really matters. Who cares whether a game costs $20 million or $2 million? It's not like that's any guarentee of being good or bad, same as films. Plenty of turkeys have cost big bucks. Comparing one game to another on grounds of expenses isn't going to provide any insight at all.
It's clear: it's like the movie industry. The bigger the budget, the better the movie! Waterworld was one of the best movie in the history of... everything...
I was thinking of that very same movie as I wrote. And AFAIK X3 cost more than XMen, but was one of the worst movies ever. And the least said about SW Episodes 1-3 versus 4-6, the better.
In fact, one could even say 'beware of expensive artistic endevours.' The fact WarDevil costs twice as much as GeOW probably points to it being half as good...
BTW - Has anyone yet mentioned the news from the WarDevil site? It says the Enigma pics showcase the RTE1080 engine at 1080p, 60 fps.
In fact, one could even say 'beware of expensive artistic endevours.' The fact WarDevil costs twice as much as GeOW probably points to it being half as good...
BTW - Has anyone yet mentioned the news from the WarDevil site? It says the Enigma pics showcase the RTE1080 engine at 1080p, 60 fps.
mckmas8808
Legend
But alot of movies are expensive to make and are still great movies too. So who knows what's going to happen.
I was thinking of that very same movie as I wrote. And AFAIK X3 cost more than XMen, but was one of the worst movies ever. And the least said about SW Episodes 1-3 versus 4-6, the better.
In fact, one could even say 'beware of expensive artistic endevours.' The fact WarDevil costs twice as much as GeOW probably points to it being half as good...
BTW - Has anyone yet mentioned the news from the WarDevil site? It says the Enigma pics showcase the RTE1080 engine at 1080p, 60 fps.
X3 wasn't THAT bad!! It was disappointing, but definitely not "one of the worst movies ever"!!
There was plenty wrong with it from a movie point of view, though in that respect it wasn't the worst movie ever. However, what they did with the franchise, after the two successes of the previous films, and with all the potential they had provided themselves with, and with Rogue as a character, was diabolical and unforgivable. It should have been fantastically great. It was at best at the lower end of Hollywood mediocrity, which by the standards set by X1 and X2 makes it a bad film. And in terms of an ultra sissy Rogue who I was expecting to become bad-ass in X3, it's one of the worst films of all time!
Of course WarDevil doesn't have any such standards of a precursor, unlike X3 and SW which were hung as much by their own prior successes as by later failings. Perhaps there is a correlation between investment and quality, where an expensive product will never be worse than mediocre? And the cases where expensive products are perceived as terrible is in light of similar offerings from elsewhere (or earlier)? In which case, a budget of $20 million might be a guarentee of at least a 70%er, whereas if they only spent $10 million, they could be down around 60%. That extra investment would mean more assets which would mean either a larger game, or a prettier game than the cheaper option, which in turn would add to the value of the game.
Regardless, I still don't see any reason to take note of the price of a project. I only care about the end result. I'll leave the cost concerns to the accountants!
I think you should watch some movies that will correct your perspective a bit! Examples:
Plan 9 From Outer Space - the main character dies in the making of the movie? Doesn't matter, just replace him in the middle of the movie with someone that looks completely different and give no explanation at all.
Hobgoblins - compared to this, Uwe Boll has Spielberg-like qualities.
Or, for a real challenge, try Daniel der Zauberer and be thankfull if you don't understand german!
Because it's true. If you honestly believe that Gears costed less to make on a HD console with the best graphics ever made by man, than Red Steel then all I can do is
Well if the factored cost of the unreal engine for gears is a significant part of that reported 10 million then that would make it the largest engine licence of all time by some way.
I would have to say that the greatest strength of the unreal engine is it's productivity gains for artists and designers (am sure it's also far better for programmers on console than 2.x was because that was pretty bad).
Unreal tools are by far the best I have seen in the industry and probably by close to an order of magnitude from other licensed tech.
Because it's true. If you honestly believe that Gears costed less to make on a HD console with the best graphics ever made by man, than Red Steel then all I can do is
COST!! COST!!!! Past tense of cost is cost!!!
Anyway. Remember that GOW is quite a small game, so the fact that "it has the best graphics ever" doesn't make it necessarily more expensive than games with worse graphics. Don't know anything about Red Steel.
I have seen that. X3 is worse. Sure, Plan9 is a bad, bad film, but it's also funny because of it, was made on a shoe-string budget, was made by a rank amateur and not a highly professional and well-paid set of experts, and no-one had any expectations of it being a good film (Glen or Glenda is a worse film BTW
).An analogy with...American Football. If a 7 year old fumbles the ball that costs the game, he's a kid and it's not a big flop. If a top-end pro on a huge salary fumbles the ball and so costs the game, he should know better so it's a far worse failing. X3 should have been so much better. Much of the badness in X3 comes from the expectation. My ill-feeling towards that film is amplified by a good hunk of disappointment. It's rare for me to look forwards to something like a movie or game, and X3 was one of those situations.
This is why I shrug off hype for games. I'm used to devs promising the Earth and rarely delivering. Whatever amazing AI, smooth animation, yadayada they claim to be providing, I'll only go by the end product and reviews of the final released article. Likewise tooting the pricetag of a project. right up until it's released (like consoles too) all with have are aspirations. We know what they're aiming for. It has to be proven that they succeeded before those aspirations are worth anything.
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
I don't see how there's any 'hiding' of costs in Gears. As Qroach stated, they most certainly paid licensing costs for the UE3. Who they paid them to shouldn't be an issue.
Saying that Gears is 'hiding' costs because they didn't include development costs for the engine, is as ridiculous as saying that any other game that licensed the UE3 is 'hiding' costs because they simply purchased the engine rather than building their own.
Saying that Gears is 'hiding' costs because they didn't include development costs for the engine, is as ridiculous as saying that any other game that licensed the UE3 is 'hiding' costs because they simply purchased the engine rather than building their own.
mckmas8808
Legend
COST!! COST!!!! Past tense of cost is cost!!!
Anyway. Remember that GOW is quite a small game, so the fact that "it has the best graphics ever" doesn't make it necessarily more expensive than games with worse graphics. Don't know anything about Red Steel.
Yeah but I still don't think the game "cost" 10 million overall (not including marketing).
mckmas8808
Legend
But most companies when they buy the UE 3.0 engine build upon it. They use the engine as a base and work from there outwards.
I don't Epic included all of those 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.
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.
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.
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