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Crysis 3 Cost $66M To Make.

S

Saty

Member
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/187602/Whats_holding_back_Crysis_3.php
He notes that Crysis 3 has triple the budget of the original game in the franchise -- a budget it can only get thanks to the fact that it's multiplatform. But that creates limitations.

"The consoles are eight year old devices. Of course, in one way or another, they will limit you. It's impossible not to limited by a limited console. By definition it's the case. So if it were PC only, could we have done more things? Certainly, yes. Could we have afforded a budge to make a game like Crysis 3 PC only? No. People have to understand that this is a journey of give and take."
Click to expand...

Crysis 1 cost $22 million.
CEO and President of game developer Crytek said Crysis cost 15 million Euros (22 million USD) to develop during a panel about the future of gaming graphics at the Games Convention Developers Conference in Leipzig, Germany
Click to expand...
http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/08/19/gc-2008-crysis-cost-22-million-to-make
 
F

FordGTGuy

Banned
It was also created in 2008 when the dollar was worth more, $66 million isn't surprising at all for a game of it's type.
 
P

polyh3dron

Banned
$66 mil for a multiplatform AAA game is not that bad, right?

Also, PC games are going to see a huge leap in graphic quality when the next gen consoles are out.
 
H

hteng

Banned
aside from the visuals game felt even more watered down than Crysis 2 somehow, to me at least. I didn't think it would cost them much money seeing they are still using the same engine from crysis 2.
 
J

jett

D-Member
They'll need to sell over 2 million units to break even. Probably 3 if you account for marketing and advertising.
 
I

IdreamofHIME

Member
Is this is a lot?
Needs more comparisons to other similar games budgets. It's not like the movie industry where most people know the scale of budgets.
 
adamsapple

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Holy shit.

The version 3 engine was developed for Crysis 2. Where the fuck did all that money go ?
 
O

Opus Angelorum

Member
Well all of the ground work (engine) is completed for the next generation transition, and I think their engine will be used by more developers this time.
 
P

polyh3dron

Banned
IdreamofHIME said:
Is this is a lot?
Needs more comparisons to other similar games budgets. It's not like the movie industry where most people know the scale of budgets.
Click to expand...
Also in the movie biz when they tell you what a movie's budget is, that doesn't include marketing and distribution and when people talk about game budgets they do a lot more funny business with the numbers.
 
M

M.D

Member
Really? How come?

They already an engine in place, and the development cycle wasn't super long (in fact it seems pretty short). Plus, I thought the single player was really short?

I wonder if this includes marketing?
 
G

GMM

Banned
IdreamofHIME said:
Is this is a lot?
Needs more comparisons to other similar games budgets. It's not like the movie industry where most people know the scale of budgets.
Click to expand...

This is A LOT of money, especially when taking their tools into consideration. No wonder CryTek is going F2P when they can't keep to a lower budget.
 
D

diamount

Banned
M.D said:
Really? How come?

They already an engine in place, and the development cycle wasn't super long (in fact it seems pretty short). Plus, I thought the single player was really short?

I wonder if this includes marketing?
Click to expand...

Would've thought EA would of handled the marketing.
 
S

sp3000

Member
You might want to add the whole interview to the OP

"It is better than Crysis 2. It is better than Crysis 1. Technical and creatively, and storytelling -- all aspects," he says.

Even if that's true -- after all, it is, to a great extent, subjective -- the developer anticipated lower ratings this time around. After researching, Crytek found "about 20 games that we analyzed that got hammered, sequels or three-quels, where number two, number three, or number four got significantly lower ratings than the previous iterations."

He lays the blame on two major factors.

One is the current console generation creating "fatigue" in gamers. "Some games have lost up to 20 percent, despite the fact that the games are quite good still," Yerli says. "That's because there's a certain fatigue level with the old generation currently. The markets are down." In his words, "people's expectations are much more radical than the current generation of games are doing."

"I think the new generation of consoles will reinvigorate that and help to elevate that again, and elevate new concepts of gaming which old platforms are right now limiting, too."

He also places some blame on the fact that the original Crysis came to the market "free of any burden."

When it launched in 2007, only on PC, it was released against first-generation Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games. Thanks to that, "it was so different to others that the relative impact it created was so much more bigger than Crysis 2 or Crysis 3," Yerli says.

And if there's one thing you just can't compete with, it's the subjectivity of human memory. "So, for me, the relative impact that Crysis 3 has created is lower than what Crysis 1 did. But I would think at any level it's better than Crysis 2, and it's certainly still better than Crysis 1. People remember Crysis 1 much bigger than it was, because it had a high impact," Yerli says.

He notes that Crysis 3 has triple the budget of the original game in the franchise -- a budget it can only get thanks to the fact that it's multiplatform. But that creates limitations.

"The consoles are eight year old devices. Of course, in one way or another, they will limit you. It's impossible not to limited by a limited console. By definition it's the case. So if it were PC only, could we have done more things? Certainly, yes. Could we have afforded a budge to make a game like Crysis 3 PC only? No. People have to understand that this is a journey of give and take."
Click to expand...

Best part is he pretty much acknowledges that consolizing Crysis ruined the two sequels.

Funny that the huge budget and they still could not surpass the original game.
 
C

Captain Smoker

Member
Go EA.

ea_ex.PNG
 
M

M.D

Member
polyh3dron said:
$66 mil for a multiplatform AAA game is not that bad, right?

Also, PC games are going to see a huge leap in graphic quality when the next gen consoles are out.
Click to expand...

Gran Turismo 5 cost $60 million a full year before it came out.
The game was announced at E3 2005, so we can assume it was in development for 3-4 at that time, and they had to scan hundreds of cars and tracks and model them, plus record sounds and built an entirely new engine and deal with online and multiplayer for the very first time.
 
M

MrCookiepants

Member
Well then. This is gonna be a huge flop.

electroplankton said:
I still have to understand how these guys got money to produce the second and the third chapter. The first one sold really bad.
Click to expand...

No, it didn't. Did 3 million on PC which would have made them a profit with the reported budget. They also made money licensing the engine. I guess they thought the series would grow from there. They were wrong.
 
A

Augustus

Banned
M.D said:
Gran Turismo 5 cost $60 million a full year before it came out.
The game was announced at E3 2005, so we can assume it was in development for 3-4 at that time, and they had to scan hundreds of cars and tracks and model them, plus record sounds and built an entirely new engine and deal with online and multiplayer for the very first time.
Click to expand...

Im pretty sure it was revealed that the sales from GT5 prologue by itself covered the entire budget for the full game, so all of the sales for full GT5 were pretty much profit at that point.
 
cripterion

cripterion

Member
That's seems like a lot of money for a game with apparently such a short campaign. People said it took 5 hours to beat the game.
 
S

specialguy

Banned
jett said:
They'll need to sell over 2 million units to break even. Probably 3 if you account for marketing and advertising.
Click to expand...

I wonder if they'll get there? I checked a few days ago and the multiplayer leaderboards had around 77k on there on 360. I wonder how many purchaser play multiplayer? Half maybe?

I have no idea what that really means for sales. Judging by the UK charttrack split, PS3 version probably sold much less.

It had about the same, slightly less, user reviews on Xbox live as Metal Gear Rising...

OTOH it's probably a game that will keep selling on PC for ages.
 
D

Darklord

Banned
Is this where they start whinging about PC gaming and piracy again and that's why it didn't sell as well as they wanted?
 
B

Bedlam

Member
So it took them $66M to make a mediocre 5 hour SP campaign, even with recycled assets from the prequel. Good going, Crytek. I hope your F2P/microtransaction future works out for you (no, I don't).
 
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