Gears of War made for less than $10M


Recommended Posts

Gears of War made for less than $10M

Epic Games' vice president says cost to make holiday hit was "between 9 and 10 million"; UE3 designed for "next-gen, high-definition," not Wii.

While the graphics, sound, and online gameplay of the current wave of gaming platforms is nice, it comes at a hefty price. Development costs of next-generation games have been estimated to run as high as $25 million, with Forbes recently revealing that Capcom's Lost Planet cost $20 million to produce.

However, a game can apparently look fantastic, win multiple Game of the Year awards, and sell like gangbusters for about half that price. In an interview with Wired.com, Epic Games vice president Mark Rein said that Gears of War cost "somewhere between 9 and 10 million dollars" to make. Rein did not talk about marketing costs of the game. As of January 19, the game had sold 3 million copies worldwide, and according to the most recent figures from NPD Funworld, the game sold more than 1.8 million copies in the US last year, generating more than $107 million in revenue.

Rein attributes the cost shaving to his company's popular game engine Unreal Engine 3, and he says that other producers could benefit from licensing UE3.

"People are always saying that making next-generation games is really expensive, and we're saying, you should license our technology," said Rein. "Because we have really great tools for building content and a great pipeline that makes your team more productive...which means that your designers can actually do things that previously, programmers had to do."

As far as any Unreal Engine 3-powered gaming headed to the Wii, it's possible, but Nintendo fans shouldn't get their hopes up, according to Rein.

"It's not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It's really designed for next-gen, high-definition [platforms]," said Rein. "One of our licensees has been porting it, and they might be successful at that, and that would be great if they do it. It's doable, but not something that we're going to focus on."

By Tim Surette -- GameSpot

Posted Feb 6, 2007 2:24 pm CT

Story from GameSpot: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6165464.html

Copyright ?2006 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

:devil:: :shifty:: :whistle::

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^^ I agree, is the engine develpment in that $10 mill? Somehow I don't take that to be the case.

Does it need to be? They probably make a lot of that money back by liscencing the engine out to as many developers as they do.

-Spenser

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does it need to be? They probably make a lot of that money back by liscencing the engine out to as many developers as they do.

Well, yes, it does. Bragging about how awesome the engine is, cutting off 10 million in development costs (assuming LP has its own engine :p) is abit of a lie considering the engine cost them to develop a few million and the licensing for the engine is in the millions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^ Um, the licensing for UE3 isn't $10 million. I think that was the point they were making -- if you license their software, it won't escalate to that high of a cost. Furthermore, I highly doubt "licensing for the engine is in the millions." Maybe around a million, but more? I don't think so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^ Um, the licensing for UE3 isn't $10 million. I think that was the point they were making -- if you license their software, it won't escalate to that high of a cost. Furthermore, I highly doubt "licensing for the engine is in the millions." Maybe around a million, but more? I don't think so.

Yeah, a million is about right I think, Quake 3 was.. 500,000 a few months ago (if I remember correctly :\), so Source and Unreal would be the 1-2 million mark I spose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I'm suprised by that. With the quality of the game and the detail it has, I would have expected it to have cost alot more than that.

Well done to Epic!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^^ I agree, is the engine develpment in that $10 mill? Somehow I don't take that to be the case.
precisely. And they ommited marketing which while maybe not a production cost surely would have upped the figure on the overall GoW project. But yeah, its a bit daft to compare it to a game that needs to create its own engine. Hell using the U3 engine wouldnt have cost them a cent due to it being an inhouse engine.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

UE3 alone probably costed $10M to make from scratch, but in Gears of War, they didn't have to put any production into the engine, since it was previously developed. They just took the engine and added the game to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.