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According to Tom Henderson, Gears of war E-Day has a 400 million dollar budget.

Well, let's hope it does better than Concord!
 
It's gaming, media and tech gaffers.

The industries where no budget is ever too high. More the better like a wild west of endless money bags.

Give em credit. They always know how to break the bank when it comes to budgets.
 
I wonder if part of this "reset" they're getting ready to do is yank AAA first party games from Game Pass. That still wouldn't make their money back if they made everyone buy it at full price, but that would make at least some sense why they made it exclusive.
 
He also seems baffled as to how it's going to make money being exclusive. He questions who's going to buy it when it's on gamepass day 1.

I'm going to buy it. It costs a little more than 3 months of gamepass in my region. Less if I find a key on sale. My history makes it likely I would want to play a gears game in more than 3 different months.
 
my-source-is-that-i-made-it-the-fuck-up.gif
 
I have to imagine that these bloated budgets in gaming are caused by similar things as what's plagued the regular software development space in the past decade. I've been in it for almost 20 years. Back in the old days, I used to just report to my director, and things were good. Nowadays, every project I'm in has a glut of outside contractors + nonsense middle management type roles that do nothing but complicate the project and make things go at crawl speed. I have to do daily standups, go to P.I. planning, go to a biweekly Kanban board review with DevOps, give a weekly status report to the Product Owner and Portfolio Manager, and on and on. All of it is complete nonsense and it just wastes my time when I could be using it to do actual work. So naturally, the projects take way longer than they need to be, and there are way more people involved than necessary. And senior leadership wonders why budgets are ballooning beyond control.
 
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I wonder if part of this "reset" they're getting ready to do is yank AAA first party games from Game Pass. That still wouldn't make their money back if they made everyone buy it at full price, but that would make at least some sense why they made it exclusive.

A Gears game could make its money back if it wasn't on Game Pass, if it scored over 90 on Metacritic and was a Game of the Year contender. We have to consider Microsoft owns the IP.
 
I give it less than 6 months before a PS5 version magically shows up. There's no way they are making that money back on Xbox GP and PC alone. Even with a PS5 version it will be tough to break even if at all.
 
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I give it less than 6 months before a PS5 version magically shows up. There's no way they are making that money back on Xbox GP and PC alone. Even with a PS5 version it will be tough to break even if at all.

They said Gears of War: E-Day is not a timed exclusive.

They didn't say anything about Gears of Wad: E-Day Director's Cut, however.
 
This looks like robbery to me. I just don't get it.
Big studio, large team and several years of going at it.

My once relatively tiny company with the IT and data center foot print of a mosquito would burn 10 million a year just to exist. Coalition is an elephant.
 
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A Gears game could make its money back if it wasn't on Game Pass, if it scored over 90 on Metacritic and was a Game of the Year contender. We have to consider Microsoft owns the IP.

I REALLY hope that's true. I loved the original trilogy. I feel like there's still life in this IP if they handle it correctly.
 
I'm not sure it would have made money with a ps5 version.

Without, I'm quite sure it won't. But there's no way MS don't know that. I guess they've decided to accept taking big losses again, which they will need to do if they're going to "fix" the brand.
 
Big studio, large team and several years of going at it.

My once relatively tiny company with the IT and data center foot print of a mosquito would burn 10 million a year just to exist. Coalition is an elephant.
Really not that big. Wikipedia says 200 employees and they're based in Vancouver, cheaper than California. The project will take 6 years to complete.

$200M, I can believe. $400M sounds like nonsense.
 
All that money for something that looks and plays exactly the same. You'd think with all that money they could reinvent the series with something that's not a fresh coat of paint.
 
So they need to sell ~6 million copies to break even.

The best selling gears game is gears of war 2, which sold ~6.75 million.

So they need to sell as many copies as the best selling game in the franchise, at full price, and with gamepass on top. Not to mention how steam will take 30% cut, so they need to sell even more copies just to recoup the budget.

They are F*cked
 
So they need to sell ~6 million copies to break even.

The best selling gears game is gears of war 2, which sold ~6.75 million.

So they need to sell as many copies as the best selling game in the franchise, at full price, and with gamepass on top. Not to mention how steam will take 30% cut, so they need to sell even more copies just to recoup the budget.

They are F*cked
Oooooo Someone learned how to use a calculator, get this man a CFO job.
 
I'm kinda having doubts about that figure given the employee count reported around the game, but if it is...bold strategy to not release it on Playstation as well.

At least the game's showing was pretty good, so I'm gonna be there day one to at least try it. I do think AAA production is gonna hit a reckoning with production costs, and a standard cap is gonna have to happen. They gotta do more with less.
 
So they need to sell ~6 million copies to break even.

The best selling gears game is gears of war 2, which sold ~6.75 million.

So they need to sell as many copies as the best selling game in the franchise, at full price, and with gamepass on top. Not to mention how steam will take 30% cut, so they need to sell even more copies just to recoup the budget.

They are F*cked
This is assuming all the copies will sell via Xbox storefronts. On Steam they capture "only" 70% of the revenue.

Also, since console gamers are trained to play games via gamepass most revenue will probably have to come from Steam.
 
You just know that a year from release (or even less), we'll be hearing about the PS5 port release date. That is an insane amount of money to recoup with one platform and for a game that will be available on gamepass day one.
 
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