How much it cost to make a video game in 2009

[Zombie]

I found this article the other day an interesting read.

 

For previous console generations, [Wanda Meloni] says, the cost of development has been between $3 - 5 million per platform. Nowadays, however, she estimates that the average cost of making one game for one platform is $10 million while multiplatform releases clock in at $18 - $28 million.

No wonder games cost so much these days.

 

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

No wonder games cost so much these days.

 

- Zombie

Oh yeah?! Movies cost A LOT more and you get to see them for a LOT less.

[Slaughter]

Long live indie games in that regard. I bet World of Goo or Machinarium cost more like $100k (if that much), and they're way more fun than most modern high budget games. If they didn't focus so much on graphics costs would be WAAAAAAAAAY down.

[FullAuto]

Oh yeah?! Movies cost A LOT more and you get to see them for a LOT less.

 

True, but games tend to last for a lot longer. Even the shortest are 6-8 hours worth, and the longest offer hundreds of hours of play. Not to mention that the possible audience for films is larger than that for games.

 

However, the rising cost of games is really something that doesn't have to happen, it just seems like the industry has convinced itself it must. Fewer and fewer devs will be able to afford the cost of operating at the dizzy heights, so you'll see more devs operating under the aegis of a publisher, some will turn to outsourcing, and a lot of others will go bust, and turn to other things or become indies.

 

There's obviously a market for indies on PC, and room has been hastily made for them on consoles too (I understand World of Goo has done very well on WiiWare). A few of the games I've been playing have ostensibly been made by giant companies, but really have been put together by small dev teams making art house, retro, or otherwise niche titles. I note that the digital medium offers the little man a chance to sell as much as he can cope with, and as speeds get faster and faster and t'internet gets more ubiquitous, I hope they become more successful. Games like World of Goo, where the dev presents you with your game and you can play it whenever you like, will become the norm, I hope, rather than Steam.

[Bomb Bloke]

I wonder how much inflation has to do with the figures. I doubt it could account for a ~5x increase on it's own.

 

Aside from the obvious "more detail" craze, some developers are also taking the realism line. GTAIV, for example, is supposed to model some famous city or other (New York?). I'm sure a lot of work went into that, but the effect is bound to be lost on anyone who doesn't live there.