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Hi folks,

I’m putting together a report on the rising costs of videogame development. Can you guys help me out with some answers? Here’s what I need to know:

1) What is the “average” cost range for the development of a console videogame? Obviously this will range greatly, but it would be great to know both the range for a big-budget EA/KCEJ title, a medium-budget title (along the lines of Bloodrayne 2, Hitman 3, etc), and an "indy" title (katamari damacy, et al).

2) How does that cost breakdown between actual development, manufacturing, and marketing?

3) What would be the difference in cost to create an Xbox 2/PS3/Revolution game vs. the equivalent game for today’s current consoles?

4) Where are there more online/offline resources for these questions?

Thanks for your help guys, much appreciated.

Ty

 

[Cold Milk]

Hmm, most cost figures you will find focus specifically on Development costs and don't add in the costs of manufacturing and marketing. But, I'll take a stab at it.

Most "big budget" console titles run close to the same amount of money in development costs as the "medium budget" titles. Development costs on those games will run between 2 and 4 million for a 2 year schedule. For an "indy" game you could likely get away with a budget of 1 - 2 million dollars.

When you start adding in marketing the amount goes up for higher profile games. A small game will probably get their publisher to take out an ad on IGN or something which will run a couple thousand dollars. But, a big game like Grand Theft Auto will have a marketing campaign of over a million dollars. To put into perspective how much you can spend on marketing alone, currently Nintendo's DS campaign in North Amrica is running about 40 million dollars.

Manufacturing of the game will be about the same across the board and is picked up by the publisher so most developers don't worry much about the costs involved as almost any sales will cover the cost.

The money differences between creating a current generation game and a next generation console game will likely be higher in the beginning of the lifecycle because companies will have to put more money into creating the initial engine and figuring out how to utilize the hardware. But, I believe that overall the costs will remain closely the same. Likely between 2 to 6 million dollars. One aspect that will bring this amount up will be that given better capabilities and larger media, companies might attempt to create the largest game possible and this will take a bigger team and more time.

As for online resources I would recommend checking out game industry sites like igda.com or gamasutra.com.