$10m Development Costs for Gears of War

Epic Games VP Mark Rein has slammed suggestions that huge budgets are required to create next-gen games, revealing that forthcoming Xbox 360 title Gears of War has cost "around $10 million" to produce.

Speaking at the London Games Summit, Rein said that it's taken a team of 20 - 30 people around two years to complete work on GOW - arguing that despite claims by some industry figures, it's still possible to create next-gen titles using medium sized teams and without gigantic budgets.
GOW, he continued, "wasn't cheap but didn't cost the crazy figures you hear other companies quoting of $20, $30 million". Rein made similar comments in an interview with GI.biz last year, where he accused "big companies like EA" of "going around trying to scare people".

When asked by an audience member how much GOW had cost to produce, Rein replied, "So far, around $10 million, maybe a little less.

[DC RID3R]

is it me, or is it only us/euro devs who can bankroll the multi-million budgets nowadays???

apart from a few MAJOR 3rd party jap devs i.e squarenix,CAPCOM,konami,SEGA etc, the future looks pretty bleak for smaller dev teams (as far as ps3,360's concerened) unless they just prioritise on smaller costing games for the wii maybe?

[FeralPhoenix]

Damm, EA better be careful 'cause they are starting to get alot of "negative" attention....and thats not good no matter how "Big" you are.

[FeralPhoenix]

double post

[Ravenator529]

I really like how Mark Rein has been quite outspoken on many of the claims that some of these other gaming companies are making.

The only thing that I will have to say in defense to EA's comments is that EA deals in licensing to major sports organizations. This all gets rolled into development costs. I couldn't imagine what EA has to pay for the MLB, NFL (exclusive), NBA, PGA, and NHL licenses! Not to mention what the cost is for the athletes time for "live camera capture" for many of these games.

Epic doesn't have to worry about paying for licenses because they use their own created engine (Unreal Engine) to create most of their games. So in turn, production costs can be lower.

Granted, I think time=quality which is why we receive such quality games from Epic.

For EA, they think money=quality. Which is obviously not the case. Their Madden franchise is catching more heat in recent years and their NBA and NHL games have been running second place to 2K NBA and NHL.

[Funky Town_TX]

Why does GOW cost $60. The dev cost should be past off to the consumer. If it is not that expensive then we should benefit from lower cost right ? Eitherway, if R:FOM and GRAW are worth $60 then so is GOW.

[BIadestarX]

For the same reason Nintendo is selling a GC with a wii mote for $250. And for the same reason you will be paying $50,$60+ for many PS3/wii/xbox 360 games that will not be as fun or look as impressive. why should they charge less than other companies when they are giving you a better product. Be happy that at least this game will be good.

[BIadestarX]

Wow, compare to other companies that's cheap. Will they make that money back? heck yeah!
All those companies complaining about game development cost being to high should take note. And yet 10M sounds like a big number, but this is a AAA game we are talking about which plays and look a lot better than other games for which development cost it's a lot higher.

[specialguest]

gone are the days when game developers can create a simple 2D pixelized sprite charactered game title with a low budget and charge us $50-$60 dollars for it. *ahem* Super NES.

[beans]

Good read but I don't see why the wii games are going to be so expensive? You would think since the console is cheaper and the games look nowhere near as good as GOW that they would charge no more than 40 bucks a game! I was really thinking on getting one but now I think im gonna pass and just stick with my 360!

[jiggajayp]

And the cost to dev a game for the ps3 is 56 million dollars! Now that`s not counting the 17.6 million dollars that it costs to upgrade your studio with the right hardware to dev ps3 games! Whew, I see ps3 games holding that expensive price tag for some time now!

[Fraggerock]

I played the game last night on a huge movie screen in NYC at the Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Gears event. This game is completely worth $60.00. It is amazingly fun. It's going to be the biggest 360 Live game so far. Nothing is more gratifying then chainsawing your opponent in half. AMEN

[PS3n360]

lucky SOB.

[Boink]

I hate you.

[THAMMER1]

what did you like the most.

[super bill]

ea may have exclusive to nfl.but there madden is getting worse every year.this years version for the 360 isnt worth 20 qiud let alone 50.ea are so lazy at making sports games and they still expect you to fork out 50 quid.not anymore.we want 2k nfl back.

[THAMMER1]

They will make back the cost after 166,000 copys are sold. And they will sell that many in the 1st min. of sales.

[PS360PCROCKS]

I want espn football back that was a really good game. But 10 million seems like so much geez I cant believe that's cheap

[Cyclonus]

then why is MS shelling out EIGHTY million for three Too Human games?! That works out to $26.6 million for each game; i.e, over two and one half times the budget of Gears of War...

Does. Not. Compute.

[EVER OLVERA]

Link please...

[Jakens]

to cost 35 Million dollors. That is a lot of money. I expect Gears of War to outsell Spiderman 3.

[power of Green]

Gow's not bad for an 1st gen 360 game, so what if it's a little late. Gow 2 will be off the hook graphically now that Epic knows the 360 more.

[power of Green]

Yah! yah! yah! But Gow's a 2nd gen 360 game. NopE! it's really not it started when the other release tittles started and Epic was learning the new tech and running on Pc's just as the other games that MS gave the go ahead to rush to make the early launch.