View Full Version : Cost of game development
One of the things that keeps coming up in debates about sales, installed base, and so on, is the question of how much it really costs to develop console games.
Anyone interested in talking about how development costs go?
A bit of a background: Development costs include actual code development, but they also include art development (unless you're making Limbo of the Lost). 3D models, textures, plot and script, all of these things are beyond the scope of just writing code, and they all cost money.
In general, game development costs have gone consistently up over the last thirty years, much as movie filming costs have gone up.
SonyJunkie
07-06-2008, 08:00
I was reading on another website, that game developement is high now, but there has been games that were as much as they are now, for example, games like FF7 cost like 30 million to make, FF12 cost like 55 million, and supposedly Killzone 2 is only 40 million. And that game has had so much development time. Ill try to find a source in a minute. So game development is said to go up, or is it just developers being lazy and just saying that. They spent that much money when FF7 came out. That was for the PS1, correct??
Edit:
http://www.diggingtheweb.com/wiki/DevelopmentCost
Dont know how to put the source thing there instead of the URl
Well, look at the prices there; FF7, 26M, FF12, 53M. That's a pretty large gap.
The vast majority of games are much cheaper to develop -- Square's particularly unusual in the amount of money they spend on some of their flagship titles. (I'm also not at all convinced by that estimate for MGS4, just because Konami had suggested strongly that it was way higher than that even a year ago.)
The question, though, is what it costs to make a basically playable game that people won't utterly pan for having crappy graphics or whatever... And that's changed hugely. PS1 games usually cost only a couple million dollars to develop; 360 and PS3 games are probably ten million and up. That's a noticable shift.
The days when some guy could bang out a complete game in six weeks are pretty much gone.
SonyJunkie
07-06-2008, 10:02
Well, look at the prices there; FF7, 26M, FF12, 53M. That's a pretty large gap.
The vast majority of games are much cheaper to develop -- Square's particularly unusual in the amount of money they spend on some of their flagship titles. (I'm also not at all convinced by that estimate for MGS4, just because Konami had suggested strongly that it was way higher than that even a year ago.)
The question, though, is what it costs to make a basically playable game that people won't utterly pan for having crappy graphics or whatever... And that's changed hugely. PS1 games usually cost only a couple million dollars to develop; 360 and PS3 games are probably ten million and up. That's a noticable shift.
The days when some guy could bang out a complete game in six weeks are pretty much gone.
It is a pretty large gap, but supposedly Killzone 2 is only 40 million, and that game is suppose to be the best game ever, and cost alot of money and things like that. And FF12 cost more, Development cost are weird, they go up, but games from years ago, are almost the same as games that are out now. Its really confusing, i'll just let the developers deal with that, until I go to college and try to be one myself.
There's a huge difference between genres. A game with a whole lot of rendered cut scenes, for instance, might cost more than one which doesn't use many cut scenes. FF7 had a huge amount of budget go into rendering their CGI movies -- which cost a ton of money, but looked absolutely amazing for the time. It's also much longer and more detailed. Compare FF7's world to, say, a modern game like Heavenly Sword which takes about six hours.
Well if you're interested I can list out the costs for a typical IBM software project that are borne directly by the project and those which are 'shared' (otherwise known as expenses).
Direct Costs
Development
Requirements Capture
High-level design
Detailed design
Code development
Unit testing
Component Verification Testing
Scenario Verification Testing
Integration Verification Testing
Globalisation Verification Testing (ensuring the software can support storing, retrieval, sorting, displaying of other language types - e.g. cryllic languages, bi-directional, date formats, sentence structures, etc)
Translation Verification Testing (don't want to inadvertently insult someone :))
Product Documentation and Tech Notes
Announcement and Marketing Material
Pricing and finance structures
Enablement (getting the software somewhere where it can be purchased/downloaded/etc)
Bill of Materials and Physical Media (working out what goes on what disks and how many)
Royalty Tracking
Legal approvals (for IP and General)
Patents (logging, reviews, submissions, filings)
Expenses
Third-party legal agreements (rights to distribute/use licenses for included third-party software - think Unreal Engine for example)
Development tools and licenses
Software Development Kits
Memberships to any third-party organisations required as part of using SDK's
Copyright Registration and Archival
Transportation and Shipping
Packaging
Export licenses
There are others but these are the main ones. Virtually any software produced has to address these key areas. Producing software for the mass market is an expensive business and the development of the game/software itself is only a very small part of it (albeit probably the most critical and interesting part).
One of my guys will run a project which will have around 50-100 people directly involved and many more behind the scenes (creating the DVD media, art work, submitting a request to the US government for export license etc). The money has to be stretched quite a long way :)
All the above is purely for interest and to show the kind of costs each project will have.
Don't forget advertising and promotional event costs. They run up a huge percentage of an overall cost to get a game out the door. Microsoft probably spent almost as much on advertising Gears of War as it cost to make the game. Same with Halo 3.
rbrtchng
07-07-2008, 16:32
Well if you're making PSN or XBL games, the dev cost could be as low as the dev kits. Otherwise, the word is: a LOT.
Redman_DK
07-07-2008, 17:00
Isn't time the only thing costing money to develop a game, if you don't count in the programs you need and voice actors. Or am I completely missing something?