Sure, many have pulled off great games with a team of two and hit the jackpot. Those are rare cases, but making video games really isn’t a cheap affair after all. “Triple A” games require teams of hundreds of designers, developers, animators, writers, voice-actors etc. to pull off. Making video games is no less than making a big budget Hollywood movie, video games actually require a lot more.
Here is a list of twenty most expensive games ever made. You’ll be surprised to see how much making a game costs.
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20. L.A. NOIRE (Rs. 300 Crore)
Released in May 2011, L.A. Noire boosted Take-Two Interactive’s (Rockstar Games’ parent company) share to a three-year high level. It sold 50 lakh copies in just 10 months. L.A. Noire was also the fastest selling new IP in the UK. Return of investment ftw!
19. HEAVY RAIN (Rs. 310 Crore)
More than half of this bomb figure were just marketing costs, the development cost being the smaller half. Well, video games need Hollywood style marketing too, you know. Heavy Rain is a Sony first party (and a PS3 exclusive) game, so why the hell not! It was announced at Digital Dragons 2013 that the game recovered all of its costs and on top of that, it ended up with profits of Rs. 835 crore.
18. HALO REACH (Rs. 330 Crore)
What does some odd three hundred crore of development costs mean when Halo Reach made Rs. 1200 crore in just the first 3 day of sales, absolutely peanuts. Not just that, it sold merchandise worth Rs. 2100 crore sixteen days after its launch in 2010. Now that’s the definition of insanity.
17. HALO 3 (Rs. 332 Crore)
Halo 3 (released in 2007) took a bomb to develop and market, but it also set the record of the highest grossing entertainment product within 24 hours of release. Another Xbox exclusive, it sold 33 lakh copies in its first 12 days of sale. As of 2012, Halo 3 has sold more than 1.5 crore copies worldwide. Beat that, you Titanics and Batmans!
16. GRAN TURISMO 5 (Rs. 370 Crore)
Enough with the Xbox exclusives already, we now have a PlayStation exclusive and a fairly old franchise. Released in November 2010, Gran Turismo 5 was the highest selling game for the PlayStation 3 of all time, until Grand Theft Auto V arrived. Oh, and here’s another crazy stat, GT5 sold 4.5 lakh copies “per day” for 13 days straight. That’s something!
15. TOO HUMAN (Rs. 385 Crore)
After hearing all those success stories, here’s an Xbox 360 exclusive that might not be as successful as the rest. Too Human suffered from average critic ratings and worse sales, not even hitting the 10 lakh mark. GameDaily gave Too Human the “Underperformer of the Year” award in 2008. Hell, even Ben “Yahtzee” Crosshaw, the host of the popular “Zero Punctuation” show named this the worst game he ever reviewed.
14. METAL GEAR SOLID 4 (Rs. 390 Crore)
Here we have a classic. MGS 4 was given a straight 10 on 10 score by GameSpot and IGN. Released in 2008, the game was considered ‘perfect’ and sold 50 lakh copies within one year.
13. WORLD OF WARCRAFT (Rs. 390 Crore)
So powerful was the image of Blizzard’s WoW that is sprung a plethora of similar games, and gave birth to the MMORPG genre. WoW was the pinnacle point of online gaming, and did something never done before. It holds the record of the most number of MMORPG subscribers by Guinness. A survey in 2008 showed that WoW held 62 percent of the entire MMORPG subscription market. As of January 2014, more than ten crore accounts have been created for the game.
12. GHOST RECON FUTURE SOLDIER (Rs. 392 Crore)
11. CRYSIS 3 (Rs. 400 Crore)
Crysis 3 (2013) wasn’t all that great, and Crysis 1 and 2 took less money to develop and were more successful. Just a case study for management and business students. Also, annualization kills creativity. Lessons learnt, EA!
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So there you go, that’s only ten of them. The 1 – 10 ranking games of this list will be published soon.
