Epic's Gears of War 4 Would Have Cost $100 Million to Make, Dev Says

"CEO Tim Sweeney also talks about how "toxic and destructive" it can be when a publisher stands between developers and gamers."

[Godmars290]

Would love to know what the production breakdown was from game to game in terms of staff and resources. How much of differences in costs were because of inflation, and needed increases for quality.

This is proof that the game industry is pricing itself out of business.

[BrandanT]

Or they're probably spending tons of money on marketing.

[Muzikguy]

I've been seeing this for awhile too. It's just like what record companies were doing in the music industry. Publishers don't deserve the prices they charge. These days games can be published much easier. Kind of like recording CDs can be done much easier. Movies are getting that way too. Technology is just making things much easier for average people to use. That's when I feel like these big companies have been taking people for granted. I like when I see self published games. Marketing is a cinch these days too. If something is good, social media and the Internet can do all your marketing for next to nothing if not free

[WhoCaresWhatMyNameIs]

@Godmars290

If you read the original article on Polygon. Sweeney explains they spend $12 million on Gears 1 and gain huge revenue. By the time Gears 3 came out, it cost 5-6 times as much as Gears 1 and the revenue was super small. So making Gears 4 at $100 million dollars wasn't as far fetch as it seems. Like Sweeney, they would have broken even or loss a lot of money. That's one of the main reason why Epic left the console segment and sold Gears to microsoft. They really couldn't afford to make another sequel.

Account taxes, building, utilities, equipment, R&D, salaries, employee benefits, work process, company expenses, marketing, etc...not hard to reach that number if your staff is large and that's all you're working on.

[rainslacker]

Not sure about staff. I work near Epic's offices, and their building isn't huge, and has some rather wide open spaces inside it. I'd imagine they couldn't have more than 200 employees working there, and many of them would be engine engineers. When I took a tour, it was between productions, and it didn't seem like many people worked there, although their parking lot was pretty full, so probably never saw them is all.

Granted, they could outsource a lot of work as well, which would play into the resources.

Nowadays though, a lot of money goes into content like cut scenes. Game play, structure, general concept, and engine are all pretty well refined, so some of the early production work would have gone faster. I'd imagine a lot of it would be outsourcing and marketing though, which is typically where most game budgets get inflated nowadays.

Pricing itself out of business though? Game would only have to sell 1.6 million to break even on revenue, and maybe around 2.2 million to break even. Since it is a given to sell at least 4 million pretty easily, the publisher would be looking at around 180 million in net revenue, with another 60 million going to the distribution channel....and that's the low end of sales. Keep in mind when Epic was going to do it, they were talking of going multi-plat with PC and PS4(presumably). That would increase sales even more.

[ShadowKnight]

Hope Gears 4 turns out great.

[Night99]

It is just good that Microsoft purchased this IP along with some important developers of Epic who created this IP, because it is a very important IP for Xbox and Epic really seems to not be that interested any longer to develope games, their focus is on the unreal engine.

[kraenk12]

Instead they went for the 10 million option and it shows.

[MachuchalBrotha316]

Not a finished product. So lets wait and see

[kraenk12]

True that.

[Free_Fro]

and you say I try too hard ^_^..

[kraenk12]

Why?! It's true. The Gears 4 beta looks hardly better than Epic's Gears 3. I'd even say the art style is way worse. If Epic had done it would look miles better I promise you that.

[WhoCaresWhatMyNameIs]

@kraenk12

Let's wait to judge after the finished product comes out. Betas are such...work in progress.

[Hold_It]

Have you actually played the Beta, or are you just going by terrible Youtube/Twitch/Ustream uploads?

[gangsta_red]

Always on, never off.

[jb227]

It's funny to me that MS ended up spending no doubt more than $100 million on the name itself. Imagine if they had used that same budget to instead create a Gears inspired new IP? They could have another runaway hit on their hands. As it stands I'm pretty sure Gears has seen its best day. Its just weird to me that MS would drop exorbitant amounts on a license whose best days are obviously behind it (seriously how many games in the history of the medium have sustained their status critically & commercially into their second trilogy?)

The article kinda buried the lead though because the most interesting statements from Sweeney were the ones about MS standing between the developer & the game, which lead to them severing their ties. Apparently Epic would still be handling a large portion of any financial risk because Sweeney said that they were the ones that decided against pushing forward w/ Gears because it could lose Epic a lot of money. So apparently contrary to popular belief about these deals, MS doesn't foot the entire bill & the studios themselves can still be damaged by poorly managed 3rd party exclusives.

[Drithe]

100 million? I call bullshyt on that.

[mEATgrinder]

I cant see where the money was spent in the Beta

[Ysmir6723]

What?For this?So what would bfme3 cost???1.000.000$???

[gedden7]

BS... Just give me dev costs.. Not marketing and licenses...

[Khaotic]

I don't trust Sweeney, and free to play is a plague on gaming. There are very few ftp games that are not gross.