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[Derp]

Isn't the budget for Skyrim like 3 times more?

What? No. Skyrim's is apparently around $80m (that's development and marketing combined btw). And to go along with that, Skyrim is literally the best selling RPG of all time. It's sold over 20 million.

When you compare budgets, please compare sales figures as well. Because even if Skyrim somehow WAS 3x the budget, it'd still be completely justified by sales numbers. Look at GTA 5 for example.

 

[a916]

$500 million....

.....yeah.....

Amen to that!

Destiny didn't cost $500 million, why do people keep saying this as fact? It's been clarified to death and yet people still bring up this number.

 

[la flama blanca]

I don't think I'll ever be convinced that those marketing dollars are ever necessary as long as you solely focus on the product.

 

[Rembrandt]

I don't think I'll ever be convinced that those marketing dollars are ever necessary as long as you solely focus on the product.

probably because you can't hear with your head that deep in the sand.

 

[JaseC]

I don't think I'll ever be convinced that those marketing dollars are ever necessary as long as you solely focus on the product.

CDPR didn't pay for marketing, so it wouldn't have made a difference in this case.

 

[Ushay]

Nice to know that they didn't waste money like most developers out there do. Having sold $4 million would easily put them in a position of profit.

Makes me very excited for their next project(s)

 

[la flama blanca]

probably because you can't hear with your head that deep in the sand.

Plenty of companies are paving the way proving otherwise. Tell me how an overbloated marketing budget producing something that's not exactly quantifiable in terms of it's effectiveness is necessary in this day and age, especially with tools like the internet. Gabe Newell's podcast a while back that discussed this issue.

CDPR didn't pay for marketing, so it wouldn't have made a difference in this case.

I understand, I was making a broad point, I guess only because I'm in the gaming peripheral market right now and see the absurdity of marketing first hand.

 

[Meciu]

I can't believe all the people in here shaming western AAA budgets while ignoring that the game was made in fucking POLAND.

Everything in Poland is 60-80% cheaper than the US.

What? You're crazy dude. That's not even close to that even if data below is from 2013. Of course there are some products that are cheaper but the majority isn't especially when you compare it to the average wage in both countries.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

What? You're crazy dude. That's not even close to that even if data below is from 2013. Of course there are some products that are cheaper but the majority isn't especially when you compare it to the average wage in both countries.

Can someone translate this? I understand most of it, but I'd like to be able to read it a bit better.

 

[danm999]

Plenty of companies are paving the way proving otherwise. Tell me how an overbloated marketing budget producing something that's not exactly quantifiable in terms of it's effectiveness is necessary in this day and age, especially with tools like the internet. Gabe Newell's podcast a while back that discussed this issue.

You can definitely market a game without spending millions, but how many games go that route and sell 4 million copies in their first two weeks?

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Destiny didn't cost $500 million, why do people keep saying this as fact? It's been clarified to death and yet people still bring up this number.

Except it did, check my earlier post with a quote from an Acti executive.

 

[Meciu]

Can someone translate this? I understand most of it, but I'd like to be able to read it a bit better.

Name of product / Price in PLN (polish zloty) / How much/many can you buy with average polish wage / Price in USD / How much/many can you buy with average USA wage / Polish proce Index

I know this data is kinda old and when it comes to wages the gap may be smaller now, but even so we surely don't have stuff 60-80% cheaper here. Especially in big cities. And even if some or even the majority of this stuff is cheaper now, just look at how much/many you can actually afford in States compared to Poland.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

Except it did, check my earlier post with a quote from an Acti executive.

A single videogame absolutely did not cost 500 million dollars. Was Destiny as a whole a 500 million multi game, multi year investment for Activision? Probably.

 

[Sakura]

Except it did, check my earlier post with a quote from an Acti executive.

From the same article you linked
"In June, Bungie’s Pete Parsons clarified development costs of the game itself were nowhere near $500 million, and the huge number reflected “the long-term investment” being made for the future of the product."
^-^;

 

[_Clash_]

Can someone translate this? I understand most of it, but I'd like to be able to read it a bit better.

"What can be bought by a Pole on a buget" (red)
What can be bought by an american (dark blue)


Table

Product| Price zloty | How much a Pole will buy| Price USD| How much an American will buy| Polish price index (baby blue)

Product 1 x,x,x,x,x

Product 2 x,x,x,x,x

 

[_Clash_]

So,

Just so that I actually learn something from this thread. The reason why the Witcher 3 is cheaper to produce in Poland is due to a lower average wage. The reason Poland has a lower average wage is not clear-cut, however because Poland represents a developing economy that hasn't experienced the full effects of unionization in it's work force and globalisation of it's economy, they can be considered two reasons why the minimum wage is as it is?

 

[stan423321]

Can someone translate this? I understand most of it, but I'd like to be able to read it a bit better.

I hope you don't want a picture. (Please note that in Poland fairly more jobs are paid in monthly basis, therefore I go with salary and not wage.)

What can Pole afford, what can an American do
- | average netto salary in PL | average netto salary in US
product | Price in PLN | Salary/Price | Price in USD | Salary/Price | PRICE INDEX (US ratio/PL ratio)
square meter in capital (to buy)
one liter of octane 95 gasoline (the other options in Poland are octane 98, diesel, propane, never seen octane 92 or below here)
loaf of bread
chicken breast
box of Marlboro cigarettes
non-import beer (Tyskie in PL, Budweiser in US)
Coke bottle
sugar (kind not specified, so beet?)
Snickers bar
Nescafe instant coffee
2500g of potatoes
Big Mac
milk (3,5% of fat in PL, 2% in US)
table + 4 chairs at IKEA
monthly commute ticket (Warsaw/Chicago)
weekend cinema ticket (Warsaw/Chicago)
~120 km train ticket
VW Golf GTI (TSI 2,0 in PL, 2,2 in US, whatever that means)
250 kWh of power
average price of 20 Mbps internet
-----average PRICE INDEX

I personally find the whole thing a little bit iffy, since the whole thing is written completely from Polish perspective - I think that average American will simply not buy potatoes or long-distance train tickets to the extent average Pole does, for example - but the raw data looks real.

 

[Micerider]

So,

Just so that I actually learn something from this thread. The reason why the Witcher 3 is cheaper to produce in Poland is due to a lower average wage. The reason Poland has a lower average wage is not clear-cut, however because Poland represents a developing economy that hasn't experienced the full effects of unionization in it's work force and globalisation of it's economy, they can be considered two reasons why the minimum wage is as it is?

Polish wages are increasing with close to 2 digits ratio per year nowadays (in big cities at least), so thus might not last extremely long. It's a booming economy because it offers almost all the advantages of the rest of Europe (high level of education and skills) with the advantages of lower salaries and pretty young workforce.

I have been managing teams across Belgium and Poland for close to three yearw now and I can't say the price of Belgian employees is bringing as much bang for our bucks for sure.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

I hope you don't want a picture. (Please note that in Poland fairly more jobs are paid in monthly basis, therefore I go with salary and not wage.)

What can Pole afford, what can an American do
- | average netto salary in PL | average netto salary in US
product | Price in PLN | Salary/Price | Price in USD | Salary/Price | PRICE INDEX (US ratio/PL ratio)
square meter in capital (to buy)
one liter of octane 95 gasoline (the other options in Poland are octane 98, diesel, propane, never seen octane 92 or below here)
loaf of bread
chicken breast
box of Marlboro cigarettes
non-import beer (Tyskie in PL, Budweiser in US)
Coke bottle
sugar (kind not specified, so beet?)
Snickers bar
Nescafe instant coffee
2500g of potatoes
Big Mac
milk (3,5% of fat in PL, 2% in US)
table + 4 chairs at IKEA
monthly commute ticket (Warsaw/Chicago)
weekend cinema ticket (Warsaw/Chicago)
~120 km train ticket
VW Golf GTI (TSI 2,0 in PL, 2,2 in US, whatever that means)
250 kWh of power
average price of 20 Mbps internet
-----average PRICE INDEX

I personally find the whole thing a little bit iffy, since the whole thing is written completely from Polish perspective - I think that average American will simply not buy potatoes or long-distance train tickets to the extent average Pole does, for example - but the raw data looks real.

Best one! Thanks!

 

[Sjefen]

thats alot of money in Poland, I wonder what the costs would be in US/UK

 

[Silentium]

thats alot of money in Poland, I wonder what the costs would be in US/UK

Posting my answer below from the previous page, but you can actually adjust values between countries using purchasing power parity calculations (not perfect, but pretty useful).

If you adjust the 120,000,000 złoty development costs to reflect purchasing power parity (not a perfect measure/use here, but still useful as an indication), you get approximately US$62.4M. Added to the marketing costs (assuming most of that is foreign/western spend), you end up with almost $100M total spend, which seems reasonably consistent with what other publishers/developers have said AAA game development costs (notwithstanding epics like GTA V). Thus based the favourable development costs and the success of the Witcher III, I'm thinking the big Western developers may be taking a closer look at Eastern Europe.

 

[veloxStrix]

Destiny didn't cost $500 million, why do people keep saying this as fact? It's been clarified to death and yet people still bring up this number.

$500 million for one game sounds a lot better than the actual sum.

 

[aliengmr]

Except it did, check my earlier post with a quote from an Acti executive.

No, development costs were somewhere in the $150 million range. (might be $250 but that could be me just mistaking it for GTAV, which was $265) Either way it wasn't $500 million.

Edit: The $500 million figure is due to a multi-game "commitment" thing, but it isn't an actual figure.

 

[Thretau]

It is kind of depressing reality that, it cost more to Market the game than it did to actually create it.

Rule of thumb for movies is you multiply the reported budget with 1.5 and then you get the amount spent on marketing. Could be worse for Witcher 3 I guess. I'm sure biggest game franchises spend as much as movies on marketing.

 

[EGM1966]

So essentially in line with a lot of other big games - just looks cheaper due to economics of Poland vs say US.

Seems big games are like big films now: half the cost or more is actually international marketing as you need global sales to make profit and that means global advertising.

Would love to know howuch (if any but I presume it's some) of that marketing spend was covered by MS.

I wonder if we'll see any big developers consider following commercial software in having lots of development take place "off shore" with lower relative costs. I know based on this I'd be tempted to hire a bunch of well qualified coders in Poland over a similar bunch in U.S. if I was funding a game.

 

[GameAddict411]

Actually, that's a lot more than I expected. They're Polish developers. I doubt that any other developers in the region even have 1/4 of that budget. It certainly matches a lot of the recent triple a titles that comes out of the bug publishers.

 

[Rembrandt]

Plenty of companies are paving the way proving otherwise. Tell me how an overbloated marketing budget producing something that's not exactly quantifiable in terms of it's effectiveness is necessary in this day and age, especially with tools like the internet. Gabe Newell's podcast a while back that discussed this issue.

They're proving what exactly? and if you're in the gaming peripheral market, you should definitely know just how effective marketing is.

You can definitely market a game without spending millions, but how many games go that route and sell 4 million copies in their first two weeks?

This is my main point.

 

[wildfire]

Actually, that's a lot more than I expected. They're Polish developers. I doubt that any other developers in the region even have 1/4 of that budget. It certainly matches a lot of the recent triple a titles that comes out of the bug publishers.

It certainly does feel like CDPR made the equivalent of GTA V considering their economy.

 

[Portugeezer]

What? You're crazy dude. That's not even close to that even if data below is from 2013. Of course there are some products that are cheaper but the majority isn't especially when you compare it to the average wage in both countries.

Yeah American prices in general are cheaper than a lot of countries, however I would guess Poland's housing/rent is a lot cheaper.

 

[Y2Kev]

Mammoth achievement on that budget but holy crap games are expensive. Even in Poland!

 

[d9b]

Only $32 million? I don't even get out of bed for less than $33 million, lol.
They spent more on marketing... That's nuts!

 

[blastprocessor]

We use Polish SW developers. They are MUCH cheaper than UK developers so much so that they are doing one of our projects. They mostly work as contractors too and are still far cheaper.

 

[Valtýr]

I didn't notice any marketing at all for The Witcher 3.

There were ads all over Twitch and literally giant ads for it in Time Square in NYC.

 

[Raist]

Somehow I doubt the "low" budget is due to lower wages...

Of course it is. Salaries is by far the primary source of costs for a development studio.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

All you actually need to know from that list to figure out wage disparity and purchasing power.

 

[geordiemp]

It is kind of depressing reality that, it cost more to Market the game than it did to actually create it.

Was thinking the same thing, but also why so much on marketing ?

Is it really needed, if you make a good game, it will review well and sell anyway no matter what the marketing imo

 

[Prime crotch]

oh my fucking stars and garters, yall cant be this dumb

 

[Turin Turambar]

Was thinking the same thing, but also why so much on marketing ?

Is it really needed, if you make a good game, it will review well and sell anyway no matter what the marketing imo

If people don't hear of your game they don't even bother of looking at reviews of it.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Mammoth achievement on that budget but holy crap games are expensive. Even in Poland!

Huge open world games I guess. Witcher 2 looked fucking great for its time, which wasn't that long ago, but on less than a third of the (development) cost of TW3. Was like 10 mil, vs 32. Part of that is the next gen tax, but a lot of it is just its a way bigger commitment to build these huge worlds.

 

[Karl Hawk]

oh my fucking stars and garters, yall cant be this dumb

If that Skullgirls crowd-funding thread doesn't prove that almost all gaffers don't know shit about game development budgets, I dunno what will.

 

[d9b]

Maybe they don't have CEOs who command €5 million per year and do fuck all...

 

[mcrommert]

They did the same (but lower numbers) with Witcher 2. Really low production costs but extremely high polish and quality.

Now imagine these people were given the big boy budgets that EA and Ubisoft piss down the drain every year...

Rich western countries vs less rich western/eastern country

Mammoth achievement on that budget but holy crap games are expensive. Even in Poland!

I think this is the craziest thing of all...even in Poland you can't get away from the crushing weight of the cost of AAA

 

[DieH@rd]

$65M sounds about right. Production costs are much lower in Poland then in the west, but marketing is never cheap.

How much did Destiny cost?

We don't know, but that one Acti exect mentioned 10 year investment of $500M.

 

[d9b]

They sold 4million so far... How much money did they earn (up to this point)?

 

[martino]

kl

 

[Turin Turambar]

Huge open world games I guess. Witcher 2 looked fucking great for its time, which wasn't that long ago, but on less than a third of the (development) cost of TW3. Was like 10 mil, vs 32. Part of that is the next gen tax, but a lot of it is just its a way bigger commitment to build these huge worlds.

Yep.

And in addition to the open world factor, let's remember how huge is TW3: so huge that even limiting yourself to only the more linear main quest parts, I think the experience still would be longer than your average TW2 run (unless you are doing a 100% completionist run of TW2).

And all that dialogue dubbed in several languages and all that animation done for every cutscene even if it's just a little quest done talking with a peasant, all that cost money.

 

[solokazama]

Game pubs to now outsource everything to Poland. That's damn cheap labor.

Polish studio CI games outsourced Lord of the Fallen to German sub-studio.

Paycheks in IT are quite decent in Poland tbh not top of the world level, but not bad either

it changed a lot during last 10 years (and 25 years ago Poland broke down rus communists and started to be on its own);

25 years ago average salary in Poland was 12-15 lower than in USA (!)
now its 2-3 times lower, in IT its 1.5-2.5 lower.

Its huge what Poland did in last 25 years and the cherrypie for us is WItcher 3

 

[Nordicus]

Yep.

And in addition to the open world factor, let's remember how huge is TW3: so huge that even limiting yourself to only the more linear main quest parts, I think the experience still would be longer than your average TW2 run (unless you are doing a 100% completionist run of TW2).

And all that dialogue dubbed in several languages and all that animation done for every cutscene even if it's just a little quest done talking with a peasant, all that cost money.

Then designing scenes to allow the player to do things out of order and have the dialog make sense, which this game does better and more often than any voice acted game.... ever, probably

 

[Chaos17]

Production costs were 120 million PLN, which is roughly $32 million.

"On day 1" - which may also mean all the preorders.

Here's the article I took it from (in Polish, use Google Translate/Chrome)

http://pieniadze.gazeta.pl/pieniadz...Trzyletnie_naklady_na_produkcje_zwrocily.html

I don't know if I should happy to know that hafl of the budget was for the marketting... but it's okay, I like CDRP works.

 

[mcw]

Wow that's quite a low budget for a game of this scope. I bet the very same game would have cost up to $200 million if developed in countries like the US. While the overall quality of TW3 was pretty high, it didn't feel as polished as most big budget western RPGs.

I completely disagree. To me, it was the most Polish game so far this gen.