..........does any 3d quality game make? It would be great if u could give a few figures about some recent game.

I see final fantasy 8 and it is awesome. But final fantasy 9 may be more great.
Unreal tournamet y Quake3.





-eng3d.softhome.net-

Ok, the simplest answer to this is loads of money. It costs on average between 1.5 - 2 million US Dolars to make a 3D game.

Unreal Torniment cost $2,000,000
Vampire The Masquerade cost $1,800,000

And the development costs keep rising.

Wow. Wouldn''t have expected that much... Though I guess if you count the people and time they spend on games like these...

I saw a statement on Tomb raiders website that they sold 17 million copies of the game (probably all episodes combined), so they should have made a decent profit from it.

Of course you are talking hyper-hyped games here, so for any game you and I might develop (no offence ;-) the sales (probably also development costs!) will be slightly less :-)


Kind regards,
Maarten Egmond.

Bear in mind that the Japanese business model (as exemplified by Square) is to use the computer game as an advertisement for the character goods they will undoubtedly make available for purchase. So in effect, whether the computer game sales recoup the development costs is irrelevant, so long as the merchandising hits its sales targets.

But that''s the mindset across the big water. It''s not the only way to go about things. It''s only the most profitable.

$0.02

:-) Yes, the spin-off products seem like a nice market for the big guys. But I guses I''ll have to get my game published first ;-))

Kind regards,
Maarten Egmond.

Also keep in mind that the actual development house only makes somewhere around 12% of the total revenue for a project.

So lets take a pretty optimistic figure of 1 million units sold at $40 a pop.

That''s gross revenue of $40,000,000. The development house will see 4.8 million of that. Leaving a profit margin somewhere around 3.4 million or so. Not bad, but you have to factor in things like taxes.

However, that''s 1 million units you''d have to sell. Most games never even reach 100,000 units sold, which gives you a net income of 480,000. Now you see the incredible risks involved in the creation of a game. Unless the game is one of the best titles in a year, your bound to lose alot of money. This is really evident in the PC market, which also has longer production times (more cost) and tend to have slightly higher budgets than their console bretheren. No wonder everyone is talking about jumping ship with the new consoles on the horizon.

I wont start up my old arguments again, but unless you are doing Mechwarrior 4, Quake 4 or Age of empires 3 in terms of scope, YOU DONT HAVE TO SPEND EVEN ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Some of the best games are cheap games. Deer hunter is the obvious answer, and although people knock it, why didnt they think of the idea first? it was a masterstroke to do that game. Rollercoaster tycoon is another hit game that cost comparitivly very little to make. I get sick and tired of hearing this ''perceived widom'' that it cost x million to make a hit game. This is hype thats started by the big publishers themselves who want to make sure no Deer Hunter or Rollercoaster tycoon comes along and steals Tomb Raider XXIV''s thunder.
I dont know how much Starfleet command cost, for example, but its much more playable to me (and worth the money) than Quake 3 or Final Fantasy.

http://www.positech.co.uk

Agreed Cliffsky. On the other hand money always helps.
But if I had one million to spend I wouldn''t spend it for developing a game. I would put it in stocks. Real good stocks.

For $1 million?

How about 3/4 in stocks and use the rest to pay for food and electricity while you program games---something you love---for two solid years?



Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.
email: grhodes@sed.ara.com