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Guess GW2 budget
gotha
Member UncommonPosts: 1,074
I have been unable to find any info on budget so i am just gonna take a sht in the wind.
Staff they said is about 150 people. If you are paying an average of 60-75k a year thats about 10 mil per years (give or take)
3-5 years let say development time (just estimating). Also the fact it prob was not 150 for the entire time. I am gonna guess 30-50 million budget wise. Putting it around age of conans budget (40 million)
Another shit in the wind guess. Darkfall cost 15 million to make. staff of about 24-30 depending on time of development cycle. (lets say 30 cause it divides into 150 well and i am bad at math). So 5 times the staff of darkfall. So 75 million. That just seems extremely high.
Another way to guess. WoW was create by a similar sized team. Its budget was 100 million.
So answer in the end. I have no fricken clue.
This also all could mean nothing. DAOC was made for 2.5 million dollars and 25 people.
Comments
this is from Jeff Strains: How to Create a Successful MMO article from 2007
Developing a new MMO requires a lot of money and a lot of time. If you are starting today and don’t have at least three years and $30 million dollars, consider developing in another genre. Also be prepared to attract and manage a large development team. We have 140 full-time developers working on Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 at ArenaNet, and that number will probably have to grow throughout the Guild Wars 2 development cycle.
so i quess your estimated is quite ok ! my quess at least 60 million
Yeh, i would disagree with the 30 million though. I think part of it hinges on the expectations of the investor. Darkfall did it with 15 million 20-30 staff, sure the game had some flaws but it sold 100k copies and is still expanding staff(even while greece is contracting).
I would say 20 million with a proper niche you would be ok to make a decent profit over time. Not ok to make a raping however, which seems to be what most large publishers want.
50-100m wouldn't be too outrageous a number. Remember that gw2 will likely sell more than gw1, which sold 6 million copies at least, and if, say, 2m copies are picked up at the $50 region (definitely feasible), that's the investment totally covered. Then you have expansions ect. which are easier to make (having the engine and basic mechanics down) which bring in more money.
Therefore a relatively large investment would be feasible and should see a return.
However it doesn't mean anything anyway
The major cash flow into the bussiness comes from NCSoft. They are counting on this game to be what their pathetic MMOs couldn't do.
Are you guys seriously trying to guess the budget of a game in development? How foolish an undertaking that is, when companies like Blizzard can spend upto $100mill on the marketing alone. Yeah, developers use their budget on more things than their staff's wages (¬_¬)
People your forgetting GW also had a cash shop for all those years and lots got sold out of it. Besides till you read the NCsoft quartly report after GW2 comes out you won't know the budget number.
Back in Juny 2010 Daniel Dociu Said in an interview, that dev. team was close to 200.
Add to that music score and something very costly : big load of Multi-language voiced dialog, must be close to 100 millions.
4 years + 150 people and it won't be released for year or more? i hope they have somthing to show for it....
You do know that lineage after 10 years still make NCsoft a nice amount of money no? not even starting about lineage 2
Another one that thinks the full 100% procent of the box price goes to the company....
Make that 150 people with an average sallary of 50K and 5 years... thats 200x50Kx5=37,5 Millions ....and that doesn't take intoo account the other costs....
Budget should be 50M atleast...
lets say thy make 25 dollars for every box they sell,(and much more if they only sell digital downloads) They should sell 2 million boxes to break even.
And they use the money they make with DLC and other stuff in their webshop to pay for the costs of their servers and their people after release...
People should realise that this game will cost money after release if you want to enjoy all content. I think it will be more along the lines of the Quest packs we see in Lotro F2p, but then only for the extra content.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Well if you put it this way, any MMO that is still running is generating revenue. Nice amount of money is a relative thing.
And I can see a lot of NCSoft games which were supposed to be the next big hit but well most of them failed to meet the company's expectations. And they aren't doing so well in the western world. Aion is doing okay though but so was Lineage 2 when it came out.
NCSoft, they seem to stick to the 'release as many MMOs as humanly possible' approach rather than focus on a single game.
Well they paid over 100 million or more for Tabula Rasa which was probably the biggest failure in online gaming history so we know they aren't afraid to take chances. I can't see how GW2 would cost any less than that by the time it is released. I'm sure it will do better than any other NCsoft game has done recently since it really couldn't do much worse. Let's hope they learned from the mistakes they made.
Not to mention that they will also be running several different servers this time around, so more maintenance costs and such.
Which i really like in a publisher. Thanks to NCSoft we actually see some MMOs that aren't WoW+a single feature (not saying they don't release the latter either of course!).
well, the're backed by NCsoft, and NCsoft seems to trust them well enough to allow them to choose their own release date, which means they must be investing allot in Anet. Considering that it must be a fair sum.
... A lot.
Someone said it--gotta get the actual doc from the company if you want to know. Otherwise, we're talking about such a huge range in which to speculate (anywhere from 20 to 200 mil) that the speculation isn't meaningful.
Peace and safety.
I didn't know that, do you have a link of that to where NC Soft says the 100 million dollar budget is not true?
I actually found it believable since I know that they had to redo the whole game design for Tabula Rasa midway during the project, Tabula Rasa as it ended up to be was totally different from how Garriot at first envisioned and started out Tabula Rasa.
About WoW, I thought they had a budget of 60 to 70 million dollar tops, admittedly, that's also only what I read, I don't have an official source.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
What I heard Darkfall is only 2 mill and Age of Conan was under 30 mill. Guild Wars 2 is around 50 mill I think.
Darkfall cost at least 10 million, per Tasos. On top of that, Aventurine secured a 20 mil Euro convertible bond (worth $27 mil USD at the time) to raise money. In other words, it cost a lot more than 2 million.
~Ripper
age of conan around 30 mill? then id say gw2 goes around that also, maybe a lil more or a lil less than aoc, higher budget not always mean better game in all aspects.
Companies like to round up numbers and Tasos is the devil himself. Just like SWTOR currently its 300 mill. Reality its under 100 mill. Darkfall is 2-3 mill.
people still buy boxes?
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.