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[Authority]

Star Citizen DFM Reveal Highlights (Pissing Myself Edition)

If you're in a hurry, we can point to the game's $43 million crowdfunding warchest and close the book on this discussion. It's a ridiculous number, and it keeps getting more ridiculous on a daily basis. Plenty of triple-A games -- in fact, the majority of triple-A games -- have been made for less, and Star Citizen is hovering somewhere around most-expensive-games-of-all-time territory.

For those that are interested here is the following list,

Estimated Total Cost

1 Grand Theft Auto V - 265,000,000
2 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 200,000,000
3 Star Wars: The Old Republic - 200,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
4 Final Fantasy VII - 145,000,000
5 Destiny - 140,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
6 Max Payne 3 - 105,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
7 Disney Infinity - 100,000,000
8 Grand Theft Auto IV - 100,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
9 Red Dead Redemption - 100,000,000
10 Tomb Raider - 100,000,000
11 Too Human - 100,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
12 Halo MMO cancelled [WTF] - 90,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
13 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 70,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
14 Rift - 70,000,000
15 Shenmue - 70,000,000
16 Watch Dogs - 68,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
17 Crysis 3 - 66,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
18 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier - 65,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
19 Gran Turismo 5 - 60,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
20 Halo 3 - 60,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
21 World of Warcraft 2004 - 60,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
22 Heavy Rain - 55,600,000
23 Halo: Reach - 55,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
24 APB: All Points Bulletin - 50,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
25 Call of Duty: Elite cancelled [WTF] - 50,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
26 DC Universe Online - 50,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
27 Homefront - 50,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
28 L.A. Noire - 50,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
29 This Is Vegas cancelled - 50,000,000+ (without estimated marketing cost)
30 The Secret World - 50,000,000+

Credits to Stick and Rudder: How Star Citizen is turning the game industry on its ear & List of most expensive video games to develop

*Edit: Estimated Total Cost includes marketing cost + development cost.

Regarding the Halo MMO,

“Ensemble has been wanting to make an MMO for a long time. That was in production for a long time. The Halo IP was a great IP to launch an MMO with. Microsoft... hasn't had the best track record with those.
And we worked on it for a long time--we had staffed up an almost-40 person team. And then there was some reorganization at Microsoft, and the new bosses thought it wasn't the best idea anymore. It had actually been green-lit, and then it got cancelled after that", by Dave Pottinger

For more images

Credits to Untitled Halo MMO and Halo cancelled MMO!

 

[EightBitNate]

Why was MW2 so expensive?

 

[Skelter]

Space sims are dead publishers.

 

[DocSeuss]

That's how much money they've raised, not how much money they've spent.

 

[Oggmeiler]

Halo MMO? What?!

 

[darkness_s]

How much of the 43 million have they actually used so far, though?

 

[blastprocessor]

2 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 200,000,000

You have got to be kidding me?

 

[benny_a]

That's how much money they've raised, not how much money they've spent.

And that's how you destroy a thread premise.

 

[kuYuri]

Why was MW2 so expensive?

Mostly marketing.

 

[everyday math]

Wow that Halo MMO.

 

[bobito]

How did ffvii cost that much?

 

[Bloodrage]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 200,000,000

How the fuck did this steaming pile of pure shit cost 200,000,000 to make? I'm guessing it was all marketing?

 

[SolidSnakex]

Why was MW2 so expensive?

Call of Duty cost $40 million to $50 million to produce, people close to the project said, about as much as a mid-size film. Including marketing expenses and the cost of producing and distributing discs, the launch budget was $200 million, on par with a summer popcorn movie -- and extremely high for a video game.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/mon...ern-warfare-2-gets-hollywoodscale-launch.html

 

[JayEH]

Damn, didn't know MGS4 was 70 million. The Phantom Pain's budget must be HUGE.

How the fuck did this steaming pile of pure shit cost 200,000,000 to make?

That was one of the best CoDs.

 

[AlexMeloche]

100M$ for Disney Infinity, really?

 

[Cabal]

Why was Too Human so expensive? Lawyer fees?

 

[Weltall Zero]

Mindblowing as this might be, I find it even more so to realize that World of Warcraft isn't even between the 20 most expensive games of all time. The return of investment on that thing must be completely ridiculous.

 

[Solid Samus]

2 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 200,000,000

aaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa~

you'd think with that sort of budget they could have hired some decent map designers and maybe just maybe someone to balance the game mechanics

 

[LuchaShaq]

How the fuck did this steaming pile of pure shit cost 200,000,000 to make?

Marketing

It's half the budget or more on a large section of that incomplete list

 

[FeiRR]

How did ffvii cost that much?

They destroyed the whole Solar System!

 

[Dusky]

Woah at that Halo MMO.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Damn, didn't know MGS4 was 70 million. The Phantom Pain's budget must be HUGE.

It didn't cost that much. I'm not sure why the 70m budget is continually thrown around when Konami outright denied it. Ken Imaizumi said that if it cost that much then it would've been multiplatform to make sure that they covered development costs.

 

[Majine]

SW:TOR could not have paid off.

 

[TUSR]

Wonder what WoW is at over its lifetime.

 

[velociraptor]

Wow at the list. Some games really DO NOT belong there. e.g. Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Crysis 3, Max Payne 3, Too Human, Tomb Raider.

Destiny.. 140 million. Wow, this game needs to sell 10 million or else Bungie are fucked.

 

[Woorloog]

Halo MMO? What?!

Cancelled game. Ensemble was prototyping and pre-producing one before they switched to making Halo Wars.
The game was a WoW-clone that butchered Haloverse pretty bad, with psi-powers and really odd vehicles and aliens.

http://www.halopedia.org/Halo_MMO

 

[Grief.exe]

Why was MW2 so expensive?

2 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 200,000,000

You have got to be kidding me?

Marketing

*Edit: Estimated Total Cost includes marketing cost + development cost.

5 Destiny - 140,000,000+[

Destiny skipping PC day one will continue to baffle me.

Bungie is obviously far from resource constrained. The platform will certainly go along way to recouping the investment.

Just baffling.

 

[velociraptor]

Damn, didn't know MGS4 was 70 million. The Phantom Pain's budget must be HUGE.



That was one of the best CoDs.

I doubt TPP budget is THAT big. Besides, they must have recouped a lot of the money by selling Ground Zeroes - kind of similar to how GT5 Prologue paid for GT5.

 

[Jarmel]

Yea I think that list is full of shit.

 

[Noirulus]

Too Human cost 100M. Wow.

 

[Kraftwerk]

So Elder Scrolls Online is the most expensive of all time?

 

[SadamBober]

Destiny.. 140 million. Wow, this game needs to sell 10 million or else Bungie are fucked.

Destiny is a long time investment though, I'm sure they'll be fine

 

[Kusagari]

Where the fuck did they get that estimate for FFVII?

 

[Kyoufu]

Destiny.. 140 million. Wow, this game needs to sell 10 million or else Bungie are fucked.

I want to know how you arrived at 10 million.

 

[liquidtmd]

That's why those initial Square-Enix comments post Tomb Raider launch were fucking hilarious

'The game isn't performing to expectations' *gives game $100,000,000 development / marketing budget*

Despite having no evidence and purely based on my own personal experience with business, I would sincerely wager that with titles like MW2 if the company was to be indepently audited I guarantee that 200,000,000 would not be all accounted for (for around 10% of it)

 

[gundamkyoukai]

That list makes no sense what so ever .
Biggest problem is some games are just budget while other have budget and marketing together .
If add marketing to good amount of games they would be on that list .

 

[GameAddict411]

Is that heavy rain figure even accurate? How the hell did it break even with just over 2 mil sold?

 

[Camp Lo]

I envision Halo MMO being like Defiance but with a much better story.

 

[Authority]

That list makes no sense what so ever .
Biggest problem is some games are just budget while other have budget and marketing together .
If add marketing to good amount of games they would be on that list .

Thanks for reminding me. I will re-edit.

 

[Woorloog]

I envision Halo MMO being like Defiance but with a much better story.

It was cancelled 2007.

 

[Biker19]

Why was MW2 so expensive?

Marketing, I guess.

It didn't cost that much. I'm not sure why the 70m budget is continually thrown around when Konami outright denied it. Ken Imaizumi said that if it cost that much then it would've been multiplatform to make sure that they covered development costs.

Yeah, the budget of that was either $50 million or $60 million, I believe.

 

[Net_Wrecker]

That list lol. So many of those are mediocre games. Then again, you can look at the most expensive films list and say the same thing so *shrug*. i guess throwing money at something doesn't always help.

This Star Citizen story is pretty incredible though. I hope for their sake the game delivers because I can't imagine the backlash if it doesn't.

 

[vazel]

That FFVII budget can't be right even when including marketing. I thought someone on GAF said the budget attributed to FFVII was actually that year's entire PlayStation marketing budget which makes sense but when I asked him for a source he didn't provide any.

 

[velociraptor]

I want to know how you arrived at 10 million.

Considering Square Enix have spoken about how Tomb Raider's '5-6 million' sales were a failure, I'm assuming that is the ballpark Activision are aiming for.

 

[injurai]

Don't forget, much of the budget for those top 30 expensive games is the marketing.

 

[Kyoufu]

Is that heavy rain figure even accurate? How the hell did it break even with just over 2 mil sold?

It didn't just break even, it made $130 million.

 

[Somnid]

Wikipedia list is exceedingly dubious. But as for Start Citizen, I'm expecting it to become a massive disaster.

 

[Canis lupus]

Is that heavy rain figure even accurate? How the hell did it break even with just over 2 mil sold?

Heavy Rain is actually one of the most successful games of last generation.

 

[Cipherr]

14 Rift - 70,000,000

Damn, I hope this is one of the ones that includes Marketing. RIFT isnt a bad MMO, it just has some pretty critical deficiencies. Dungeon design and endgame are hilariously uninteresting. But the class design and whatnot is nice, and its F2P now without being the super awful kind of F2P.

 

[GameAddict411]

Damn, didn't know MGS4 was 70 million. The Phantom Pain's budget must be HUGE.



That was one of the best CoDs.

MGS4 didn't even do half the sale figures of MGS2, it really underperformed. So i really doubt that TPP will have that much bigger budget.