What does it cost to develop a game?
From PhilSteinmeyer.com
The easy, and useless answer is 'It depends'
Here's some ballparks, based on my experience and industry scuttlebutt:
Console games A to AAA level games, single or multi-platform $4 to $12 million.
Console budget games (cheap licenses and the like) $500K to $1.0 million.
PC-only A to AAA level games $2-$15 million (though far fewer games are being budgeted at the high-end these days, what with PC game sales way down)
PC Budget games (the stuff you see at Wal-Mart for $10-20) - $50K to $200K
Actual numbers may vary widely. In general, console game budgets (for premium games) are expected to increase with the coming X-Box 2 and PS3, and PC game budgets are falling (as PC sales fall).
Another way to guesstimate budgets is to multiply man-years times cost/man year.
For man-years, look at the game's credits, count up, and try to adjust for those who weren't on the project the whole time. Cost per man-year tends to run $100-$120K for West Coast developers, and $70-90K elsewhere in the U.S. (note: these costs include salary, taxes, insurance, overhead, hardware, software etc). West european salaries tend to be a bit lower than U.S., but taxes and other costs are higher, and with the high Euro, development costs in the U.K., Germany and France are probably in roughly the same ranges as the U.S. costs. In eastern europe, development costs may be as low as $20-$30K per man/year.
The easy, and useless answer is 'It depends'
Here's some ballparks, based on my experience and industry scuttlebutt:
Actual numbers may vary widely. In general, console game budgets (for premium games) are expected to increase with the coming X-Box 2 and PS3, and PC game budgets are falling (as PC sales fall).
Another way to guesstimate budgets is to multiply man-years times cost/man year.
For man-years, look at the game's credits, count up, and try to adjust for those who weren't on the project the whole time. Cost per man-year tends to run $100-$120K for West Coast developers, and $70-90K elsewhere in the U.S. (note: these costs include salary, taxes, insurance, overhead, hardware, software etc). West european salaries tend to be a bit lower than U.S., but taxes and other costs are higher, and with the high Euro, development costs in the U.K., Germany and France are probably in roughly the same ranges as the U.S. costs. In eastern europe, development costs may be as low as $20-$30K per man/year.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home