GTA5 cost 266 million to make.

[Eric]

That's 66 million more then SWTOR which cost 200 million and was before the most expensive video game ever made.

Of course it's GTA, so I'm sure it'll lifetime 15 million+

[Don]

Did they had to resurrect someone to do the voice acting or what?

[Eric]

[SineSwiper]

Why? This is just bad business, even for GTA and Rockstar. Hell, it's not like there's expensive graphics to make with this one, unlike a FPS or a racing game.

Also, if Valve actually spent a bit more money on their HL series, they would actually get episodes out at a reasonable rate. That being said, they are making bank on the episodes they put out.

[Don]

These budget thing reminds me of the info of how airlines never made money in the history of the industry if you look at their revenue, but this doesn't mean the guys in the business are poor. They're probably pay too much so as an industry the profit is negative.

[Oracle]

Why do I get the feeling that this game will lose money or not make as much as they expect, and the studio will turn around and blame piracy for poor "profits"?

[Don]

I remember when Google was growing some guy pointed out if it goes projected by the analysts they'd have to own half of the world by now to justify that kind of returns which probably isn't happening.

[Eric]

Why do I get the feeling that this game will lose money or not make as much as they expect, and the studio will turn around and blame piracy for poor "profits"?

I mean it's GTA, I don't know if that's a real possibility.

[Shrinweck]

Why? This is just bad business, even for GTA and Rockstar. Hell, it's not like there's expensive graphics to make with this one, unlike a FPS or a racing game.

Also, if Valve actually spent a bit more money on their HL series, they would actually get episodes out at a reasonable rate. That being said, they are making bank on the episodes they put out.

I think Valve is doing it's best not to become bloated and become just another company like Ubisoft putting out its sequels to IPs every 1-2 years. Long development cycles with medium-sized budgets (definitely not indie, but clearly not big budget) are what they do and they churn out classics with that formula... That said it would be nice to get some closure to whats actually going on in Portal and Half-life in our lifetimes.

[Julius Seeker]

How are they spending their money? That's what I'm wondering.

[bovine]

I think the game looks pretty cool......................

[Don]

I think it'll be interesting if we ever see a breakdown of a major game's budget. I'm willing to bet a ton of that is waste. I can understand in a movie a particular superstar might command $50 million, but I see no such parallel in a game.

[SineSwiper]

I think Valve is doing it's best not to become bloated and become just another company like Ubisoft putting out its sequels to IPs every 1-2 years.

That was the frelling point with the episodes! Fast and quick releases, instead of waiting a few years for each episode.

HL2 - Q4 2004
HL2:E1 - Q2 2006
HL2:E2 - Q4 2007
???? - Q3 2013?

[Julius Seeker]

I think it'll be interesting if we ever see a breakdown of a major game's budget. I'm willing to bet a ton of that is waste. I can understand in a movie a particular superstar might command $50 million, but I see no such parallel in a game.

Maybe they've started actually paying their staff overtime in the UK?

[Zeus]

Why do I get the feeling that this game will lose money or not make as much as they expect, and the studio will turn around and blame piracy for poor "profits"?

I mean it's GTA, I don't know if that's a real possibility.

Still, at a $266M budget, that's 4.43M copies to get just that much revenue at $60 a pop. If you assume they pull in $20 profit per game (I figure that's about average after you count licensing fees, printing costs, and distribution channel profits), that means they'll have to sell 13.3M copies.....just to break even. Wow.....

No wonder RE6 was considered a "failure" after selling 5M copies worldwide

[Eric]

Why do I get the feeling that this game will lose money or not make as much as they expect, and the studio will turn around and blame piracy for poor "profits"?

I mean it's GTA, I don't know if that's a real possibility.

Still, at a $266M budget, that's 4.43M copies to get just that much revenue at $60 a pop. If you assume they pull in $20 profit per game (I figure that's about average after you count licensing fees, printing costs, and distribution channel profits), that means they'll have to sell 13.3M copies.....just to break even. Wow.....

No wonder RE6 was considered a "failure" after selling 5M copies worldwide

GTA: San Andreas sold like 27.5 million, GTAIV sold 25 million, it's not like their target isn't unreasonable lol.

Capcom should consider themselves lucky that RE6 sold even that much, awful game.

[Blotus]

I cannot give any heed to a scenario where this game isn't massively profitable.

The PS3/360 install base is about as big as it's going to get, and this is a game that will sell worldwide. Heavy advertising and tons of word-of-mouth boost. I THINK -- and I'm not going to look it up -- that combined, that's 150million consoles. Even if 1/10 buy the game (and I imagine that's lowballing it), that's 15million on consoles, then eventually there's the PC port which will sell over Steam/Amazon which will sell millions over the years with sales,

THEN you've got the inevitable next-gen versions, which will not sell as many as the current gen, but a lot. Eventually, there will be GOTY versions packed with DLC, and some of those will sell too. Much later, it will be dirt cheap to download, but sell a lot.

Prediction: 30+million lifetime

[bovine]

I went to get this game at around 4pm and there was a queue. Apparently there had been one all day.

More GTAs need to come out to spur the economy.

[Eric]

GTA5 has already made $800,000,000. So yeah. lol

[Anarky]

I was just about to post the same thing Eric.

http://kotaku.com/yep-grand-theft-auto- ... 1343137251

[Oracle]

I was just about to post the same thing Eric.

http://kotaku.com/yep-grand-theft-auto- ... 1343137251

So they sold around 13.3 million copies on the first day (using $60 as the price point).

I assume that is gross revenue from sales. Still pretty insane.

[SineSwiper]

Prediction: 30+million lifetime

GTA5 has already made $800,000,000. So yeah. lol

Burn. BTW, $800M is roughly 13 million in sales.

Also, this is funny by comparison. I wonder if somebody is going to make a big graphic for GTA V's numbers.

[Blotus]

Spoiler: it's really good.

[Eric]

29 million sold and counting. :o

[Zeus]

29 million sold and counting. :o

Smarter people than me figured $266M was a cheap budget for a game like that...and were right :-)