Programmers make a lot.
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Dead Space 2 cost $60 million to make, sold 4 million copies, underperformed
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Programmers make a lot.
Obliterator
Member
This echos what I've been talking about recently in regards to the importance of digital revenue from both game sales as well as (maybe more importantly) Microtransactions and things like loot boxes.
You can read major publishers financial reports and subtract digital revenue. And what you see is a very clear picture. Either these companies aren't profitable without them or the amount they come ahead is extremely slim.
Full priced packaged games at $60 is not enough money to cover modern development costs. It's why you see them so heavily implemented. It's increasingly difficult for a non "Live" game to be profitable any more, as you can see for example with Dead Space 2.
You can read major publishers financial reports and subtract digital revenue. And what you see is a very clear picture. Either these companies aren't profitable without them or the amount they come ahead is extremely slim.
Full priced packaged games at $60 is not enough money to cover modern development costs. It's why you see them so heavily implemented. It's increasingly difficult for a non "Live" game to be profitable any more, as you can see for example with Dead Space 2.
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
AA in this day and age would be more expensive than it was last gen. As no way they wouldn't be making this on frostbite.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
Damn, this is insane. Would any of this have to do with last gen machine configurations?
The PS3 was a development hell and the 360 was easy to deal with so wouldn't those vastly different platform contribute to this balloon irregardless of marketing?
If it is this is mostly due to marketing, that's extreme. There needs to be another way of communicating or getting people engaged
The PS3 was a development hell and the 360 was easy to deal with so wouldn't those vastly different platform contribute to this balloon irregardless of marketing?
If it is this is mostly due to marketing, that's extreme. There needs to be another way of communicating or getting people engaged
Is there any such thing as 'the average Nintendo game'? Games like Arms and Splatoon will be peanuts, but Zelda and Odyssey on the other hand quite the opposite.
So many gamers demand the best graphics, the best animations, the most immersive worlds and that shit costs money. Something is going to have to give at some point. I've noticed a resurgence -- or a rekindling, so to speak -- of the AA market this generation. I wonder if that will help alleviate some of the issues. Doubtful, though.
I do have to wonder, though, why EA never did jump on board the remaster bandwagon. I can't imagine it would have been too much of an investment to package the Dead Space trilogy, along with Mass Effect and some others, and ship them out earlier this generation. It seems to have helped other publishers, but I remember they were dead set against it from the beginning.
I do have to wonder, though, why EA never did jump on board the remaster bandwagon. I can't imagine it would have been too much of an investment to package the Dead Space trilogy, along with Mass Effect and some others, and ship them out earlier this generation. It seems to have helped other publishers, but I remember they were dead set against it from the beginning.
This is crazy to me. AAA devs will very soon need to change how they make games... or I guess just make every game GaaS ><
Off topic I played Dead Space 1 and 2 for the first time this year.
I think Dead Space 1 is a vastly superior game. Atmosphere, sound design and just general vibes... way better. I still think Dead Space 2 was great, just not a masterpiece like the first one for me.
Off topic I played Dead Space 1 and 2 for the first time this year.
I think Dead Space 1 is a vastly superior game. Atmosphere, sound design and just general vibes... way better. I still think Dead Space 2 was great, just not a masterpiece like the first one for me.
Sygma
Member
zero dawn is at around 45 million
RE6 had more than 600 people working on it. Those salaries add up fast when you're dealing with such a massive amount of staff.
If anything, marketing is more expensive now. You need to really pay on Facebook to get noticed, similarly with other social media. And people consume a more diverse array of social media this gen then last, so you need to cover your bases everywhere. You need to do sponsorships with streamers, etc.
The math is different with first party games because they can use tools directly from the manufacturer, only target a single platform, and co-market with the platform.
What?? That is really impressive budgeting given the end product. Wow.
games are sold for $60. the DLC and all that jazz that cost extra? those require dev time too. even the MT's and stuff that are relatively cheap only exist because they can't push above $60 for a game. if we had moved to an $80 price point this gen instead of "deluxe editions" that bundle in the season pass and a bunch of other stuff for that price or higher, AAA wouldn't be such a disaster.
Oh, ok, EA, fire all of those middle-management people and the accountants whose entire job is to minimize budgets, this guy on the internet is convinced that they're doing a bad job despite knowing nothing about how much money games cost to make.
BTW, for movies a good rule of thumb to make money back is 2.5x the production budget, to cover for marketing and distribution costs, and most blockbusters have $100M+ production budgets these days. The recent Blade Runner movie cost $150M to market in the US alone. So $60M to market a AAA marquee game doesn't sound too out of the ordinary.
FWIW, they mentioned at E3 last year that BotW only needed to sell 2 million copies to be profitable, and that was with the largest staff that's ever worked on a Nintendo game. Nintendo knows how to balance the budget, to say the very least.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
There's no way to magically cheapen the cost of higher quality assets within the scope of games these days.
I thought I heard somewhere that BotW was the first Nintendo game to have 100+ people working on it. Could be wrong though.
Yeah I'm a little confused as to whether the tweets are saying the entire budget was $60m or 60+60. The latter would make more sense as to why the game wasn't a profit maker.
Regarding the whole micro transaction & lootbox discussion, I think people would be more accepting of financial realities if publishers were a little more up front about what their budgets are for AAA games.
Regarding the whole micro transaction & lootbox discussion, I think people would be more accepting of financial realities if publishers were a little more up front about what their budgets are for AAA games.
Mostly this. Apart from the usual suspects (think FIFA, CoD, Nintendo stuff) you can always predict which games will be on sale in the next few months. As sad as it sounds, but Dead Space 2 was such an obvious contender; the original wasn't a hit, the second game was hoping for a better reception, but looking into sales charts and the like showed me why I should wait.
The same will happen with the Evil Within 2 for example. While its beeing sent out to die (and I don't believe it has a sixty milion dollar budget), you just know it would be a mistake to buy if fullprice.
Well Dead Space 2 was in development for Wii...
boiled goose
good with gravy
AAA third party games ignored the best selling console and all made similat games for an uber saturated market.
Everyone wanted to be cod or gta
Everyone wanted to be cod or gta
Audioboxer
Member
Maybe so, but who at EA thought a horror game was going to smash a $120m+ budget? That's project mismanagement at the highest level to have thought that would be the case. Even Alan Wake didn't hit 4 million sales.
From this page about 1.5m and the PC copy made a profit http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-20-alan-wake-pc-makes-money-back-in-48-hours
Sho_Nuff82
Member
We need to start building up game studios in Kansas and Detroit.
As consumers we got a wide variety of quality games. Given the chance, I'd gladly ask them to do it again. Or are we going to pretend that great TV shows and movies don't go unappreciated as well?
As consumers we got a wide variety of quality games. Given the chance, I'd gladly ask them to do it again. Or are we going to pretend that great TV shows and movies don't go unappreciated as well?
Yearsoflurking
Member
Can't compare 3rd party development to 1st. Not only im sure that doesn't include overall tool development. Besides it's not in San fran
Cost of keeping people on salary, marketing, etc. ND is not a good comparison because they crunch like hell. Not saying Visceral didn't, but still. Apples to oranges.
OrbitalBeard
Member
I believe Skyward Sword had over 100 people working on it as well. BotW's team was likely much larger.
Yup. Dead Space 2 is such a phenomenal horror experience. More people need to play it!
CassidyIzABeast
Member
60m for production, 60 for marketing. 120M to break even
$60 * 4M copies = 240M - 30% that goes to the middle man is 168M.
So in the perfect dream world where all 4M sold at $60. They only made a profit of 48M.
That aint enough. Especially when any cutbacks are met with a torrent of "downgrade total" and minor upgrades gets you a "Dead Space 2.5" label.
Sure. Just make games with smaller scope until, with technology advancements, you can efficiently fund bigger games.
Publishers these days are just constantly trying to one up themselves, with bigger (empty) worlds, more "content", flashier graphics (that go stale after a few years because the art is weak), and pervasive online infrastructures (that close off access to parts of the games when servers inevitably go down).
That, oft meanigless, fluff needs hundreds if not thousands of (paid) employees to produce, market and ship. No wonder they're risk averse, have unreasonable sales expectations, they kill off studios after one faux pas and they keep adding stupid, costly crap in full priced games.
The best part is that they've cornered themselves during the years, by feeding the gamers' mentality with the constant need of better graphics and bigger worlds in order to sell their games. They've done this to themselves and now they wonder why 4 million copies isn't enough. Meanwhile Nintendo, indies and level-headed mid-tier developers are quietly making their profit.
The consumer blaming, especially by consumer themselves, is revolting given the circumstances.
I'm actually curious how much of an impact the multiplayer mode in Dead Space 2 had on the budget. I don't mean this to imply "EA drove the budget up by forcing multiplayer!", but I wonder if it actually had an overall positive or negative impact on revenue. For those that don't remember, Dead Space 2 had a small multiplayer mode that consisted of humans vs. necromorphs, and was largely unremarkable. While it's possible it could have a significant impact on the budget, it was also a very small part of the game and likely benefited from reusing assets from the singleplayer. There was only one DLC pack, but it was given away for free.There was also an online pass meant to prevent lost revenue due to used sales, but because the multiplayer didn't seem all that popular I can't imagine people were running out to buy it. That said, the multiplayer would still need to be tested with development resources allocated to it, and perhaps server costs would need to be factored in as well (assuming the game wasn't P2P, once again it's been awhile).
Edit: I see this was discussed while I was writing my post.
Edit: I see this was discussed while I was writing my post.
We need to tally this up.
AndrewDean84xX
Banned
No offense to the team, but why we're they allowed to make a third Dead Space then?
sleepwalkcapsules
Member
I still ask myself how Double Fine survives being based of in the Bay Area.
They have their fanbase but they're yet to find a big success. Hope their niche is enough to keep them afloat.
Good points. Still an impressive show. Would love to see a writeup on the dev pipeline for it.
I think part of that has to do with them getting more per copy on a game, and being able to bundle their software marketing costs into the hardware marketing. Doesn't hurt that they don't splurge for a lot of VA and similar expenses as well.
Or maybe the ungodly fees and cuts that platform holders and retail wield is maybe out of control.
In a sense asking AAA devs to change their strategy is kind of like victim-blaming.
Bethesda found the secret and stopped marketing their games. Guess what? Those games bombed.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Devs already ARE using technology advancements which make the process "easier," doesn't mean that the cost of all those assets magically decreases. And no, decreasing scope is not that easy. People keep spouting hypotheticals without considering the realities of game development.
Wonder how much of an effect the pointless multiplayer had on the budget
That marketing is usually as expensive as the game/movie itself is so crazy to me.
That marketing is usually as expensive as the game/movie itself is so crazy to me.
ArkhamFantasy
Member
I wonder how much of that was the tacked on multiplayer that literally nobody asked for.
Primethius
Banned
Yes sir.
I'd give up better graphics in a heart beat if it would result in smaller budgets. Hell, I'd given up more if the industry actually became less explorative and didn't have a balooning budget problem.
As it stands, I have sympathy for the devs and little to no sympathy for publishers. Given the way gaming is heading, I don't particularly care if the AAA industry dies out.
Yearsoflurking
Member
Publisher go by what sells, as of right now games as a service is selling. EA can't afford to have a bunch of midtier titles hoping to keep investors happy with small profits. Comparing a 3rd party developer who's single source of income is games to Nintendo is disingenuous
Brotherhood93
Member
I only played the original Dead Space so don't know, did Dead Space 3 re-use a lot of assets from DS2? It would have been cheaper to make in that case and as a sequel to a game that sold ~2m copies in it's first month might have made sense.
All true, but think of how many studios have folded when selling twice that number wasn't enough. It's really does highlight just how crazy spending gets on AAA titles.
Yearsoflurking
Member
Yeah it's impressive, makes me wonder how soon companies will start investing in talent in cheaper countries. Wither 3 was relatively inexpensive in Poland.
AndrewRyan
Member
Didn't play until a year after its release because don't normally play horror games but heard how great Dead Space 2 was in terms of atmosphere. Ended up loving every minute of it.
Didn't buy DS3 because the the reviews explained what they had done to it and generally don't buy games from EA.
Didn't buy DS3 because the the reviews explained what they had done to it and generally don't buy games from EA.
UnemployedVillain
Member
I'm almost certain most don't make $150k. That's the salary of senior level programmers outside of the VG industry
Alexander DeLarge
Member
It's not like the obscene cost of living/salary expectations in San Francisco happened overnight.
It is.
OrbitalBeard
Member
Dead Space 2 also had MP, which certainly contributed to its high budget.
I'm honestly not sure why EA thought the audience wanted a MP component.