Hi, I'm working on an essay on the games industry, and I'm finding it hard to find certain pieces of information. For example, finding how much it cost to make in say the 1990's to make a game. Even finding how much it costs to make a game today seems to be a struggle (I've had people spout figures, but I don't want to write anything down that I can't back up with evidence). Are there any good resources out there for stats like these? Also things like the top selling games of year XXXX would be handy (the further back it goes the better, although I'm aware stats far back in the past may be hard to come by).

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Original post by Winegums For example, finding how much it cost to make in say the 1990's to make a game.

anywhere from nothing to a million $. Care to be a little more specific as to what type of game? Otherwise its gonna be impossible for anyone to give a meaningful answer. Cost of games depends on how big they are, what the local cost of doing business is, what the size of team was and a host of other factors. Even with all that info it is tough to find the data you are looking for as explained below....

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Even finding how much it costs to make a game today seems to be a struggle

that is because it is confidential business information. Companies don't disclose the cost of development.

Best place to look for stuff like this is the Gamasutra.com post mortems but those don't include detailed costings and only relate to the specific product under discussion.

sorry that post was quite vague. When I say game I mean like console title for the snes or megadrive in the 1990s, or ps3/xbox360 in todays environment (trying to compare production costs between then and now y'see...).

actually anything back to the days of bedroom programmers would also be handy. Thoguh it seems all this sort of information is hard to come by (I wouldn't have thought information from over a decade ago would be so closley guarded. then again, maybe nobody bothered to publish it online or anything...).

I did look around on gamasutra, but i can't find much. Even just a ballpark figure for <contemporary xbox 360 title> would be great, though I'm aware that this figure fluxuates greatly (something like viva pinata, or gears of war is what i'm looking for).

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Original post by Winegums it seems all this sort of information is hard to come by (I wouldn't have thought information from over a decade ago would be so closley guarded. then again, maybe nobody bothered to publish it online or anything...).

Read my March column, "Data in the haystack":
http://www.igda.org/columns/gamesgame/gamesgame_Mar07.php