Game budget.

[Ryu Hayabusa]

I have heard that the game budget is exceeding 150 million USD due to high staff turnover and lengthy development process. The game has been in development since 2015 lmao. I would appreciate if somebody can confirm this figure with links please.

[76561199793990591]

I mean, Inquisition was $150M, so yes, higher than that seems a safe bet.

[deathmaster snikch]

Even working one hour a day wouldn't take them all those years to produce this product.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

I don't think there are publicly available hard figures, only rumors and speculation.
But a quick search says that Inquisition started development in 2011 and released in 2014, 9 years in development is gonna mean big bucks just from paying salaries

[SK]

I don't think there is any confirmed amount, just speculation. But considering it went through several development iterations, it is likely to be high.

Consider the cost of developing part of a game, scrapping, and starting again.
Can't really do anything about it though.

Can happen in any industry, construction, game dev, TV, etc.
Really have 3 options:
1) Scrap the project entirely, take a loss, and prevent any future development costs.
2) Release it as is, knowing it's crap and recouping what you can.
2) Continue working on it and go even more over-budget, with the hope you can recoup even more.

This is why sometimes you'll see half finished apartment buildings. If the cost of housing drops significantly after they've started construction they'll abandon the project since it's not worth finishing.

[Coldhands]

$150 million doesn't sound abnormally high for a AAA game these days.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

Originally posted by Coldhands:

$150 million doesn't sound abnormally high for a AAA game these days.

If Inquisition cost $150M and was in development for 3 years then DAV being in development for 9 years... bodes poorly

[Coldhands]

Originally posted by Drake Ravenwolf:

Originally posted by Coldhands:

$150 million doesn't sound abnormally high for a AAA game these days.

If Inquisition cost $150M and was in development for 3 years then DAV being in development for 9 years... bodes poorly

Why?

[Drake Ravenwolf]

Originally posted by Coldhands:

Originally posted by Drake Ravenwolf:

If Inquisition cost $150M and was in development for 3 years then DAV being in development for 9 years... bodes poorly

Why?

Salaries usually continue to be paid year after year

[NewYears1978]

Originally posted by Drake Ravenwolf:

Originally posted by Coldhands:

$150 million doesn't sound abnormally high for a AAA game these days.

If Inquisition cost $150M and was in development for 3 years then DAV being in development for 9 years... bodes poorly

Yeah, this game had to cost a fortune. From what I understand it was originally supposed to be a live service game until gamers finally started fighting back against that. I am not sure but there must have been some live service games come out and fail during the early days of DAV production.

Then I guess maybe it was shelved altogether, but then later all the original left Bioware people left (I think?) and they brought new people in on it.

So yeah, I bet it cost a fortune, and also a good valid reason why the game might not be good. But I hope it is.

[SK]

Originally posted by Drake Ravenwolf:

Originally posted by Coldhands:

$150 million doesn't sound abnormally high for a AAA game these days.

If Inquisition cost $150M and was in development for 3 years then DAV being in development for 9 years... bodes poorly

$150M for DAI is probably decently accurate.
Josh Sawyer said he wants to make PoE3 if Microsoft will approve $120M to make a larger-scale RPG to match BG3.

In comparison, PoE2: Deadfire was kickstarted for just $4.5m and was completed in around a year. But was a small-scale CRPG.

BG3 supposedly cost around $100M but was in development for 7 years. Granted a lot of that was Larian scaling up their studio significantly, plus COVID.
Larian is actually larger than Bioware now.

[Ryu Hayabusa]

Originally posted by Jusenkyo9:

I mean, Inquisition was $150M, so yes, higher than that seems a safe bet.

Damn. So we are looking at least 200 million dollars or even more wasted on this game.

[Skyfall_25]

I'm not sure if $100 million is only for the veilguard or if it includes the budget for the cancelled dreadwolf version. Remember it's not just a simple name change. Solas was the game's focal point before and a lot of it was reworked to focus on the veilguard. That can't have been cheap.

[Neiker]

Almost 10 years of development.....

Easily over 400Mil, but theres no safe way of knowing seeing by how many hands this project went wich brings direction changes that where made mid project erasing thousands of hours of work.

[Elvi]

I would love to know the exact numbers for the first trailer. How much it cost, how long did it take, how many peple worked on it. Because it was trully some of the worst marketing s***e in game industry history and I suspect it was not cheap at all.

[Iso Koala]

Originally posted by Coldhands:

$150 million doesn't sound abnormally high for a AAA game these days.

Yes, But people sometimes assume too much for every single AAA game. Its usually that expensive when game is in development for extended times.

Generally you can count that if there is 200 people working full time, the cost is 20 millions per year (100k per person/year) and that includes hardware, software and office costs, as most people dont earn 100k a year as graphic artist etc. So a largish studio with 200 devs, spending 5 years in development, would be around 100 million usd, add +-20 millions for outsourcing, QA, VA costs (and - from that +- comes that in Poland or China for example developing is cheaper).