Originally posted by Alders

I'm sure producing those CGI trailers wasn't exactly cheap either.  They should have spend 200mil on a 2 hour long feature which i think would have been a hit.

Yeah, those 3 cinematics, produced by Blur were expensive as f*ck. Add royalties for Star Wars license, Voice over in 3! languages, and marketing (promo, booths on major expos like E3, friday updates etc.) for more than 3 years!

Probably cost more than paying 800 people working on the game for years.

Originally posted by Dromedarr

Originally posted by davestr1zl

Originally posted by Bardus

105 views so far and not a sole has taken a stab at this. I'm kinda surprised TBH or is TOR the only game we have any numbers for? Maybe they thought they were bragging by leaking it?

No one knows how much TOR cost, nothing was leaked, only speculated.

Likewise its very unlikely that anyone knows how much the vast majority of games actually cost, so honestly its impossible to compare as it will be comparing one speculation to another.

200mill, 800 people working on it, 4 countries, confirmed in LA times. Google for link if you dont trust me.

EALouses 300m BUDGET (not development costs) dont seem way far fetched now.

Wouldnt be surprised if development costed 200m and marketing had 100m budget.

Maybe even development dipped into marketing budget.

Originally posted by Bardus

It's widely excepted that TOR is the most expensive game ever, but whenever anyone mentions lack of content and features there's always someone that says we can't compare a new game to one that's been live for a lot longer.

My question is does anyone have the production cost and/or life span cost of other games so we can see who really has the most bang for the buck?

Unfortunately no. Every company releases their own figures, and some are more questionable than others. There simply isn't an official figure for TOR publicly available that I know of. There are some ballpark figures, but it's still a best guess.

However, I don't think you really need to know that to get a decent understanding of which games are providing the best 'bang' for their production cost. There's a general understanding of which games are more expensive / less expensive. And it's pretty easy to see how much content each game has to offer. First off, when talking about content, the top runners are going to be themeparks. They live or die by the amount of content they provide. Of that, I would probably place within that list games like WoW, EQ2, DAoC, GW2. All of which have an overwhelming amount of content, and none of which are topping the charts in terms of development costs.
 

I think there are a couple sandbox games that I would like to include on that list, but in terms of content sandbox games generally have less content, but you get more out of it. Eve is a good example of this.

Originally posted by smh_alot

Originally posted by Dromedarr

Originally posted by davestr1zl

Originally posted by Bardus

105 views so far and not a sole has taken a stab at this. I'm kinda surprised TBH or is TOR the only game we have any numbers for? Maybe they thought they were bragging by leaking it?

No one knows how much TOR cost, nothing was leaked, only speculated.

Likewise its very unlikely that anyone knows how much the vast majority of games actually cost, so honestly its impossible to compare as it will be comparing one speculation to another.

200mill, 800 people working on it, 4 countries, confirmed in LA times. Google for link if you dont trust me.

 

Those were figures that article writer was throwing around, but there has been no confirmation from EA/BW at all. In fact, there has been no reference or other indication at all in that article - no quote, no 'according to' or 'via' - where he got his figures from or whether it was an estimation, a lazy rounding up, a general guess, another source, even if that was the only place where that figure was mentioned. Without all that, it makes those figures dubious and odd.

I mean, come on... do you honestly think that the game cost only 100mill? that's budget of AAA singleplayer game these days. 2 years of development and marketing. SWTOR got 5 year of development and huge marketing push and biggest voice over porject in history not only games, but entertainment in general!

well a lot of random numbers here...so lets speak with acutal ones :P

EA said that with 500.000 subs for over a year they will make a profit,also LA will take 35% of the profi AFTER and ONLY AFTER EA makes the initial investment 

http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/15726/ea-will-make-a-profit-with-star-wars-the-old-republic-lucasarts-take-35

here is the link with the statements so  lets do some basic math

500.000 x 60$ (the box sales)=30.000.000 Millions

now subs

500.000 x 15$(subs)=7.500.000/month

7.500.000 x 12(months)=90.000.000

so

90.000.000+30.000.000=120.000.000

in the first year alone

since they say that and after that they state about the long term investement in years they expect to make those money in the first year,because they say that a plan for years that will eventually give them aroun 400 million its like a 3-4 year plan with pure profit for them and LA so most probably the game costed around 150.000.000$ thats a 30 million error margin in the numbers :P 

now we know for sure that SWTOR sold 2.1 million copies and it had for 4 months 1.7 million subs so we have the

(i will not count colectors and such)

2.100.000*60$=126.000.000$(ops their initial investement

now we have 

1.700.000*15(tmonthly income)=25.500.000$

after that

25.500.000*4(the months they were taking those money)=102.000.000

so we have 

126.000.000+102.000.000=228.000.000

all of the above not taking the acount of collectors edition and the extra 2 months they have at 1.4million users 

so its simple

EA made a shit ton of money and after they made their investment back and saw that the game isnt working and having in mind 35% of EA share they said you know what...not in the top 5 priorities...

They made in 4 months double the money they needed to make in a year to make a profit even if you take working cost and cost of advertising.Now even if their plan was a 2 year and not an one year plan they still made those money (but iam pretty sure they were on a one year plan)

And its obvious that they gambled on the box sales and it worked...

Also keep in mind that the game was sold more expensive outside of the US so you can add that too since 60 euro are not 60$ :P  and also the digital sales that i really dont know how much they did of that 

(KEEP IN MIND THAT I MIGHT BE TOTALLY FLAWED ON THE NUMBERS BUT ITS THE MOST OFFICIAL WE CAN GET)

EDIT:in the numbers i forgot the free month so its 25 million less BUT i didnt took in acount 2 months so i suppoce it evens up

EDIT 2 : Aslo the number i gave is half they number they were expecting to reach in a multiple year plan(500 million in the quote)So the number they wanted to see OVER MANY YEARS is 500 millions and htey managed to get half that number in 4 months.

If Trion spent $50 million to make RIFT and half that was marketing. What on earth did Bioware do with the $200+ Million for SWTOR??

I know...

Originally posted by antonatsis

well a lot of random numbers here...so lets speak with acutal ones :P

 

EA said that with 500.000 subs for over a year they will make a profit,also LA will take 35% of the profi AFTER and ONLY AFTER EA makes the initial investment 

 

http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/15726/ea-will-make-a-profit-with-star-wars-the-old-republic-lucasarts-take-35

 

here is the link with the statements so  lets do some basic math

 

500.000 x 60$ (the box sales)=30.000.000 Millions

now subs

500.000 x 15$(subs)=7.500.000/month

7.500.000 x 12(months)=90.000.000

so

90.000.000+30.000.000=120.000.000

in the first year alone

since they say that and after that they state about the long term investement in years they expect to make those money in the first year,because they say that a plan for years that will eventually give them aroun 400 million its like a 3-4 year plan with pure profit for them and LA so most probably the game costed around 150.000.000$ thats a 30 million error margin in the numbers :P 

 

now we know for sure that SWTOR sold 2.1 million copies and it had for 4 months 1.7 million subs so we have the

(i will not count colectors and such)

2.100.000*60$=126.000.000$(ops their initial investement

now we have 

1.700.000*15(tmonthly income)=25.500.000$

after that

25.500.000*4(the months they were taking those money)=102.000.000

so we have 

126.000.000+102.000.000=228.000.000

all of the above not taking the acount of collectors edition and the extra 2 months they have at 1.4million users 

so its simple

EA made a shit ton of money and after they made their investment back and saw that the game isnt working and having in mind 35% of EA share they said you know what...not in the top 5 priorities...

 

They made in 4 months double the money they needed to make in a year to make a profit even if you take working cost and cost of advertising.Now even if their plan was a 2 year and not an one year plan they still made those money (but iam pretty sure they were on a one year plan)

And its obvious that they gambled on the box sales and it worked...

 

Also keep in mind that the game was sold more expensive outside of the US so you can add that too since 60 euro are not 60$ :P  and also the digital sales that i really dont know how much they did of that 

 

(KEEP IN MIND THAT I MIGHT BE TOTALLY FLAWED ON THE NUMBERS BUT ITS THE MOST OFFICIAL WE CAN GET)

 

EDIT:in the numbers i forgot the free month so its 25 million less BUT i didnt took in acount 2 months so i suppoce it evens up

 

EDIT 2 : Aslo the number i gave is half they number they were expecting to reach in a multiple year plan(500 million in the quote)So the number they wanted to see OVER MANY YEARS is 500 millions and htey managed to get half that number in 4 months.

They said they needed 500k subs, they didn't say for how long and neither did they include how many box sales they needed. The way i took that was to mean that 500k subs would cover the running costs + continued developement of the game + some profit for EA. I mean you have to take into account taxes, running costs of hundreds of servers, continued wages of the people working on the game, rent for buildings for people and serverfarms etc.

Also there might be other licensing fees included we know nothing about, for codecs and libraries used in the game, also they have to pay for bandwith and a big priority connection to the net. Factor in bills for electricity and other departments of EA wanting their share(Origin sales etc still don't count for 100% since they need to take atleast their operational costs out) you very quickly can reach pretty big numbers pretty fast.

I think your numbers are very, very optimistic in almost every regard. For example the 1.7 mil subs always included the people in their free 30 days, and with the bad retention they have ... its safe to assume they never had 1.7 paying subs. Probably not much more thab 1 million. Also many of those that are actually on a paying sub(as in beyond the free 30 days) are on plans for less than 15$ per month.

The analyst you linked said he estimates they will need 400k subs just to cover the running costs(after they made back their investment!), thats pretty realistic imho considering 250k-300k subs appears to be edge of survival for MMOs these days.