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Dead Space 2 cost $60 million to make, sold 4 million copies, underperformed

J

Jmille99

Member
Jaguar Victory said:
Aaaaah, San Francisco. Yeah let's set up shop in the most expensive part of the country outside of Manhattan.
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Ive always wondered for an industry where people constantly complain about money they base it in such an expensive location.

I take it they get lots of tax breaks or something for being there?
 
S

Stormblessed

Member
I hope we see a breakdown of where that 60 million went eventually. The industry's insistence on being as opaque as possible with how it spends its money is quite frustrating. AAA seems really unhealthy.

SargerusBR said:
woah 60 mil. Is that essentailly the most expensive horror game ever made?
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Did we ever find out what RE6's budget was? I suspect it's at least competitive.
 
K

Kill3r7

Member
This might be a good answer to the folks questioning Bethesda’s lack of marketing for TEW2. Maybe for a change some will start to admit that maybe these publishers know more than we do. At the very least they clearly have access to more data than we do,
 
SRTtoZ

SRTtoZ

Member
You definitely feel the budget drop from DS2 -> DS3. Damn that sucks though because DS2 felt so good to play and to this day looks better than DS3. RIP Visceral.
 
S

ScientificPizza

Banned
Brotherhood93 said:
So they made less than $15 per copy sold? Even allowing for a lot of copies being sold at a discount I thought it would be higher than that. Nevertheless, if this is a justification for trying to fleece consumers rather than address the industry's own bad practices it's a pretty weak one.
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That’s not how it works. The development budget probably doesn’t include marketing and post launch support

Plus after manufacturing costs and platform holders taking their cut and retailers taking their cut I wouldn’t be surprised if they really were making less than $15 per copy
 
B

badboy78660

Member
Nirolak said:
Two years of hundreds of people at San Francisco Bay Area salaries and benefits plus all the outsourcing needed to support it.

Not many AAA studios left in the Bay Area these days you'll notice. Crystal Dynamics outsources half their game development to Montreal as one of the few remaining ones.
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This explains a lot (as far as expenses are concerned).
 
A

AmFreak

Member
Question is at what point in time.
1.43 mill. according to SteamSpy, who knows when these sold and at what price.
 
O

OrbitalBeard

Member
Jigorath said:
I have my doubts about that considering how long it was in development.
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Apparently only needed around 2 million copies sold in order to be profitable. Nintendo also tends to work with pretty small teams for the modern AAA industry (still hundreds of people).
 
Jaguar Victory

Jaguar Victory

Member
Nirolak said:
They set up back in the 90s when it was less expensive. It was part of EA's headquarters.
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That's fair. I would seriously consider relocating the studio if possible. Then you get into the issue of quality of life for your valuable employees. It's a pickle.
 
C

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
60m for something like Dead Space 2? AAA market is brutal. No wonder why you won't see more than 1-2 big games per developer for a generation.
 
P

pretty done

Member
meerak said:
what?

Please write up what the average budget for "such a basic game" should be like, broken down into any sort of departmental make-up you want.
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Hellblade is more visually impressive for the time of release and a comparable length and the dev said they only needed to sell 300k copies to break even iirc.

Dead Space 2, a pretty by the numbers sequel sold 4 million and wasn't able to break even. Something went wrong.
 
N

Nomadic Sparks

Banned
This is one of those things that make me go "Man this industry sucks"

hopefully some of the more prominent members land on their feet after this blow
 
N

Nosgotham

Junior Member
black070 said:
Dead Space 2 is honestly up there with Resident Evil 4 as two of the greatest survival horror games - a real shame it wasn't a bigger success.
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yuck. huge step back from dead space 1. good game. not great. thats just my taste. i bought and completed it but 3 i never touched.
 
T

Tapejara

Member
Brotherhood93 said:
So they made less than $15 per copy sold? Even allowing for a lot of copies being sold at a discount I thought it would be higher than that. Nevertheless, if this is a justification for trying to fleece consumers rather than address the industry's own bad practices it's a pretty weak one.
Click to expand...

dragonzdogma said:
60 U.S. dollars * 4 million =
240 million U.S. dollars


it only cost 60 mil

I don't get it .
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According to this Kotaku article from 2010, only $27 of a $60 purchase goes back to the publisher. Factor in that Wilson claims EA also spent an additional $60 million on marketing, and it's clear that even if all four million of those copies were sold at full price it wouldn't have been enough to cover costs (really rough napkin math: $27 * 4 million copies = $108 million, whereas the budget with marketing factored in would be $120 million).
 
Duxxy3

Duxxy3

Member
Oh... San Francisco. Yeah, that explains a lot. Seems like a lot of the large development cities in the 90s are impossible to live in now.
 
Audioboxer

Audioboxer

Member
dragonzdogma said:
60 U.S. dollars * 4 million =
240 million U.S. dollars


it only cost 60 mil

I don't get it .
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Uh, not everyone buys at $60. Many wait for sales.

This costing $60 million though, what the fuck EA? Definite project mismanagement. Paying to slap on MP was stupid too.

Then another $60 million to market?

Yes, AAA is expensive, but you killed this one yourselves.
 
Laplasakos

Laplasakos

Member
black070 said:
Dead Space 2 is honestly up there with Resident Evil 4 as two of the greatest survival horror games - a real shame it wasn't a bigger success.
Click to expand...

Dead Space 2 is the Resident Evil 4 of the last gen. Great story, atmosphere and pacing.

I had no idea it costed 60m to make though. 4m on sales isn't a small number but considering the budget of the game... Thing is, if they weren't happy with the sales, why they created DS3? Also does anyone remember this?

https://kotaku.com/5863657/ea-wants-to-make-a-dead-space-first-person-shooter-and-more

Supposedly, EA was considering Dead Space FPS and Dead Space Uncharted along Dead Space 3. All these after the release of Dead Space 2.
 
J

Jigorath

Banned
OrbitalBeard said:
Apparently only needed around 2 million copies sold in order to be profitable. Nintendo also tends to work with pretty small teams for the modern AAA industry (still hundreds of people).
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I mean, 2 million copies of a 1st party game sold at full price nets what, $70-80m in revenue? Certainly not cheap.

But yeah Breath of the Wild is going to be extremely profitable, no doubt about it.
 
K

KooopaKid

Banned
Something went wrong with that game's budget. It's a sequel. Didn't they reuse the same engine? How long was the development?
 
O

OrbitalBeard

Member
Jigorath said:
I mean, 2 million copies of a 1st party game sold at full price nets what, $70-80m in revenue? Certainly not cheap.

But yeah Breath of the Wild is going to be extremely profitable, no doubt about it.
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I didn't say it was cheap. I said it likely wasn't nearly as expensive as many AAA titles.
 
B

Brotherhood93

Member
ScientificPizza said:
That's not how it works. The development budget probably doesn't include marketing and post launch support

Plus after manufacturing costs and platform holders taking their cut and retailers taking their cut I wouldn't be surprised if they really were making less than $15 per copy
Click to expand...

I'm well aware that platform holders and retailers would have had to take their cut but when you say a game has a budget of $60m I would have taken that to include all costs such as manufacturing and marketing, maybe that's where my misunderstanding is but according to Wikipedia the game shipped nearly 2m in it's first week which I assume were all at full price.

EDIT: I'm dumb for misreading the OP in the first place. Disregard.
 
S

Sadist

Member
Dead Space 2 hit the bomba bin pretty quickly too; payed like € 19 for the PC version two months after launch.

They sold little at full price. I imagine it would be peanuts; but shit, sixty million? Thats nuts.
 
S

Seth Enosh

Member
Duxxy3 said:
Oh... San Francisco. Yeah, that explains a lot. Seems like a lot of the large development cities in the 90s are impossible to live in now.
Click to expand...
San Francisco has experienced the most real estate inflation of any metro area in the US over the last couple decades.

When they originally located there prices and salaries probably weren’t as bad as they have to be now. Feels like that area is eventually going to have a crash whenever the top tech firms get tired of it and pull out to Texas or somewhere else cheaper.
 
K

Kenzodielocke

Banned
Horizon Zero Dawn cost 47M, albeit for only one platform and an European studio, for comparison.


@Nirolak How about a thread that has all known game budgets in one topic so we have a better view at this?
 
F

FinalAres

Member
Some Nobody said:
$60m to make, another $60m to market? You get...what, $45 from each copy sold? 4m copies sold...$180m? And that's pushing what they might've gotten from each copy. If they got say, $30m, well. They broke even, which means that game wasn't worth making in EA's eyes.

Yikes. Jason's right.
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Jason? Nirolak....is Jason?

Kenzodielocke said:
@Nirolak How about a thread that has all known game budgets in one topic so we have a better view at this?
Click to expand...
Yepyepyep. Would be thread of the year.
 
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