$18-$28 million
In June 2009 Ubisoft reiterated that major titles for PS3/X360 cost $20-$30 million to make and that games for the next-generation may exceed $60 million. EA CEO John Ricitiello said in January 2009: Development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a Wii game then it is for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 game. Wii games require about $5-10 million in the average case, including marketing costs. He asserts PS3 and X360 games need much more resources, from $20 million up to a staggering $50 million with sales of 1.3 to 1.5 million units to make money on them. New research suggests development budgets are soaring dangerously fast. The average development budget for a multiplatform next-gen game is $18-$28 million, according to new data. A study by entertainment analyst group M2 Research also puts development costs for single-platform projects at an averge of $10 million. The figures themselves may not be too surprising, with high-profile games often breaking the $40 million barrier. Scheduling Your Game with a WBS. For the purposes of this article, we will look at the basic Gantt chart (see Figure 1), a simple bar chart that will effectively let you plan and document the proposed development and communicate to your team. Start your schedule by breaking out the tasks to be done. If your programmers will be using an existing engine and set of editing tools, then that will decrease your development time and may even decrease your cost of development. ...and the final development proforma. The total development cost for a typical storage condo development project is shown in the table below. Although this is specific to the StorageShopUSA project, the numbers should be representative of most projects. Games for Xbox 360 and PS3 cost between USD 20 million and USD 30 million to make. In 2002, as game software and hardware become more elaborate and the profit potential grows, the development budgets of hit software titles are swelling as well. Costs now routinely fall between $3 million to $6 million, and $10 million is no longer unusual. Wii games require about $5-10 million in the average case, including marketing costs. He asserts PS3 and X360 games need much more resources, from $20 million up to a staggering $50 million with sales of 1.3 to 1.5 million units to make money on them. Commercial game development began in the 1970s with the advent of first generation video game consoles and home computers. Due to low costs and low capabilities of computers, a lone programmer could develop a full game. Video game development is the process of creating a video game. Development is undertaken by a game developer, which may range from one person to a large business. Traditional commercial PC and console games is normally funded by a publisher and take several years to develop. It took between $5 to $10 million to develop a PS2 game versus $800,000 to $1.7 million for the original PlayStation. Namco Bandai Holdings President Takeo Takasu said rising development costs for next-generation games mean companies need to sell at least 500,000 copies in order to make a profit. Wii games require about $5-10 million in the average case, including marketing costs. He asserts PS3 and X360 games need much more resources, from $20 million up to a staggering $50 million with sales of 1.3 to 1.5 million units to make money on them. View full size image. With the news of higher losses at every major publisher this year, many fans wondered if the cost of video games today is too prohibitive at a most often price of $60 for current gen systems. Playing a bit of devil’s advocate, here’s the breakdown. First, there’s the most obvious, and that’s production cost. Regardless, it does help to keep costs where they are, at least for the time being. For some historical perspective, the average cost of games in 1982 was $35, and SNES and Sega Genesis games sold anywhere from $40-$60 in 1991. Adjusting for inflation, those costs are $74 and $60-$90, respectively.
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs http://www.develop-online.net/news/study-average-dev-costs-as-high-as-28m/0106030 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131492/budgeting_and_scheduling_your_game.php?print=1 http://www.inside-storage-shop-condos.com/total-development-cost.html http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_development http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs http://www.newsarama.com/1478-why-are-video-games-so-expensive.html
game development cost breakdown