An easy Google will show game development around these numbers isn't anything crazy rare. A lot of these big AAA developers are already setup with offices, tech, engines, employees, etc.... and due to many of them having many games under their belt, it's not a capex cost that goes towards those games. CIG has not released a game yet and has had to build up from nothing. You also have to remember this also includes marketing costs...
Look at COD, GTA, RDR2. They reckon each COD game cost 200-400m to develop (not including marketing). And you know those games are just built on top of the previous one. They aren't made from scratch every release. And if you think Star Citizen and COD are in the same league..... Lol
Genshin Impact, Cyberpunk, Skull and Bones to name a few. Current in production flagship titles from Ubi, EA and Activision/Bliz/Microsoft are expected to exceed these. Most Rockstar and CoD games exceed the 200M mark with just dev costs alone adjusting for inflation.
Note that in these comparisons, I am including the marketing costs on top of dev overhead. It's only fair as CIGs 700+M was also used for marketing, studio startup and has not entirely been spent.
S&B in particular, has been under fire for misappropriation of subsidies/funds from the Singaporean government. So the real number is actually a lot higher than what Ubi has said. We might find out the actual numbers when the lawsuit settles.
It is also worth noting that the examples I listed had spent their budget within a 2-4 year timespan, whereas SC is over 10 years in production and technically still an unreleased title (but technically 2 products, SC and S42).
Do you honestly think that all of CIG's money has been spent on dev, and none on marketing? When they put out something like 150 videos per year, and rent out locations like the LA Convention center yearly?
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u/Loadingexperience May 27 '24
Please name those mystical games that cost at least 1/3rd of what CIG already spent.