how much does it cost?
Christ, and what if that game that was spent many hours making and millions of dollars to develop didn''t even sell a million copies? Wouldn''t a company go bankrupt right off the bat?
quote:Original post by Stezka
does anybody have an indea abut that benchmark (see my last reply) ?
10$ maybe , perhaps nothing, depends on the complexity.
http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/kea/kea.html
http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/gotterdammerung.html
A program like 3dMark probably costs next to nothing to make. I would think that all you need to do is repeatly do things for a set ammount of time and just keep track of the results. Example, print triangles to the screen for 30 seconds and keep a count of the number of triangles. Or do a mathmatical calculation over and over with integers and count the number of times completed. Same with floats. Same with 3d cubes, ect. This could be done by one decent programmer in aa minimal ammount of time. Of course i could be wrong, im no professional... yet.
AP, what company do you work for? What is the game? Just curious cause I like action/platform games.
just wanted to add in that 20 out of 50 isn''t a gross underestimate.
take your average Xbox, PS2, GameCube title...
the game is being sold to a store for like $42, theres $8 of the cost going to the store that you''re buying it from.
50-8=42
M$ gets $5 for every Xbox game and the other companies get $7 for each of their titles
42-7=35
advertising costs money, lots of money... say the company is shooting for a million copies sold and decide to invest 5 million into advertising....
35-5=30
okay, now on the publiisher''s end, cost of actual production is like $3 per game and the publisher is going to be demanding compensation for publishing and releasing the game. Saying they take $7 isn''t all that unreasonable.
30-3-7=20
The developers then wind up with $20 out of the $50 that you paid for your game.
take your average Xbox, PS2, GameCube title...
the game is being sold to a store for like $42, theres $8 of the cost going to the store that you''re buying it from.
50-8=42
M$ gets $5 for every Xbox game and the other companies get $7 for each of their titles
42-7=35
advertising costs money, lots of money... say the company is shooting for a million copies sold and decide to invest 5 million into advertising....
35-5=30
okay, now on the publiisher''s end, cost of actual production is like $3 per game and the publisher is going to be demanding compensation for publishing and releasing the game. Saying they take $7 isn''t all that unreasonable.
30-3-7=20
The developers then wind up with $20 out of the $50 that you paid for your game.
quote:Original post by Furion
Christ, and what if that game that was spent many hours making and millions of dollars to develop didn''t even sell a million copies? Wouldn''t a company go bankrupt right off the bat?
That''s not how it works. A game company like Valve designs a concept for a game. They go to a publisher (like Sierra) who has loads of money. The publisher likes the idea and funds the company. Then the company works on the game. 20 people for 2 years, that''s 4 million dollars the publisher pays. Sometimes a game gets cancelled, the publisher pays. If the game is a success, the publisher gets a cut of the profits. The idea is to front a few million, then make 10 million when the game sells a million copies. At $50 a game, a publisher gets $10, the game company gets $10, the rest goes to costs (boxes, shipping, stores). The stores sell $25 games (bulk price) for $50, they make the money and have almost no risks.
A publisher might foot the bill for 10 games that each cost 4 million, then half gets cancelled, a quarter are duds that never make any money, the remaining quarter is supposed to earn the money back.
No game company except ID can afford to pay for R&D and development themselves, they need to go to the big buys for funding.
In answer to your original question Peter Molyneux said Black and White cost £4,000,000 to develop - but they sure as hell took their sweet time making it :-)
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