How Much Did Modern Warfare 2 Cost to Make?

[Treblaine]

This is utterly ridiculous.

Someone at activision needs to be fired for WASTING so much money on marketing a game which already had inherently has so much hype. I mean did anybody remember seeing any TV ads? Was it played during the super-bowl? I saw a 15 second add on TV once... but that was advertising the Xbox 360 bundle, I assumed Microsoft would pay for that one. Hell it had the Xbox logo at the end of the ad.

Most of what sold this game was for free, on the internet and by professional journalists. This game was popular by word of mouth.

$40 million (i'm taking the lower estimate) is not a lot for actually making such a big entertainment product, especially one that is going for so much realism it likely needed a lot of research and physical costs. I mean the voice talent alone mustn't have been cheap.

But disk distribution should not cost so much. If DVDs are being sold for £3 each - new - then distribution costs cannot be that severe, especially given the economies of scale. I think they are just lumping in the insignificant distribution with their overblown marketing budget so that it doesn't seem quite so bad.

You know something is DEEPLY wrong with a publisher if they spend an 5 times as much on marketing as development.

Hey Activison! How's this for a marketing scheme:

Take $180m of that $200m and just keep it in your fucking pocket, then maybe you won't be so desperate to monetise everything with crazy idea of subscriptions and unfair pricing.

 

[Treblaine]

The whole argument of "it would have cost too much to make the PC version good" just went flying out the fucking window. On fire.

Comment of the week!

 

[Kollega]

200 Programmers? A week? I hear a small group of hackers got it working a a couple of days.

First, beta-testing. Second, you know what they say. There is no kill like overkill.

 

[John Funk]

This is utterly ridiculous.

Someone at activision needs to be fired for WASTING so much money on marketing a game which already had inherently has so much hype. I mean did anybody remember seeing any TV ads? Was it played during the super-bowl? I saw a 15 second add on TV once... but that was advertising the Xbox 360 bundle, I assumed Microsoft would pay for that one. Hell it had the Xbox logo at the end of the ad.

Most of what sold this game was for free, on the internet and by professional journalists. This game was popular by word of mouth.

$40 million (i'm taking the lower estimate) is not a lot for actually making such a big entertainment product, especially one that is going for so much realism it likely needed a lot of research and physical costs. I mean the voice talent alone mustn't have been cheap.

But disk distribution should not cost so much. If DVDs are being sold for £3 each - new - then distribution costs cannot be that severe, especially given the economies of scale. I think they are just lumping in the insignificant distribution with their overblown marketing budget so that it doesn't seem quite so bad.

You know something is DEEPLY wrong with a publisher if they spend an 5 times as much on marketing as development.

Hey Activison! How's this for a marketing scheme:

Take $180m of that $200m and just keep it in your fucking pocket, then maybe you won't be so desperate to monetise everything with crazy idea of subscriptions and unfair pricing.

You have to remember that there's a lot of stuff that goes into a "launch budget." Production, distribution, marketing - and not just in the States, or in the UK, but worldwide. For a followup to one of the biggest games of 2007 (or indeed in recent memory) Activision clearly wanted to take no chances here, and as we've seen, it paid off hugely.

To be honest, I don't think you know nearly as much about how much it costs to make a game - and market it - as you think you do (this judging from some of the other comments I've seen, not so much these here). Especially given that it's a followup to a very popular game, and the expectation that it will be an improvement.

For all we have core gamers crowing in other threads that "oh, graphics don't matter why do you spend so much money on them," if MW2 came out looking like the first CoD, do you really think it wouldn't have been eviscerated by press and gamers alike?

 

[Therumancer]

Now sometime ask yourself how much of that money they actually needed to make, promote, and distribute the game, and what some of the people involved were getting paid, and how ridiculous that was.

See, I'm not really sure that gamers and people in the industry are ignorant about how much it costs to make a game. I think they are ignorant as to how much the industry is spending tomake a game which is something else entirely when you get down to it.

It's sort of like how people compared the gaming industry to Hollywood, but then again consider how Hollywood is pretty much a poster child for excess in everything from production budgets, to the way people live.

There are also stories about what some of that money is used for. For example how so and so star demands a new trailer for every production which has to have all these things, and then they never use it. Chalk up like a million dollars loss to something like that, and then go hunting for other stories and conflicts between producers and movie makers and well it can paint some interesting pictures. There are entire books and stuff full of nothing but endless lists of Cr@p those budgets have been used for.

For example, lets look at Valve, which is one of my favorite companies despite not being a huge shooter fan (which is why I pick on them, it's a sign of jaded love). Due to the Left 4 Dead contreversy they decided to fly a random gamer-dude critic who started a boycott to their HQ and give him the grand tour, apparently deciding to blow him away with a helicopter ride in the process. I doubt that was cheap, but now consider where that money came from, and chances are it's being included in the price of production for Left4Dead 2.

I guess the big point is that I don't much care what Hollywood does since I'm still only paying $7 for a matinee ticket. But after the industry raised prices $10, and is demanding $60 a pop for admission to a product with a similar "budget" I've become a lot more critical of the industry, how it operates, and where all of these lavish budgets are likely to be going. Especially given plans by companies like Sony to include premium content in their online to try and gouge gamers for even more money... as if we weren't paying enough.

 

[Fearzone]

L4D2 boycott was a brief fanboy rant that passed as quickly as it came. L4D2 has done us (PC gamers) well. Everybody who has it loves it, and agrees it was money well spent. It's looking to be my next game, and I don't even like zombies NOR fps's.

Interesting when the cost of marketing is 4x the cost of production.

 

[Treblaine]

This is utterly ridiculous.

Someone at activision needs to be fired for WASTING so much money on marketing a game which already had inherently has so much hype. I mean did anybody remember seeing any TV ads? Was it played during the super-bowl? I saw a 15 second add on TV once... but that was advertising the Xbox 360 bundle, I assumed Microsoft would pay for that one. Hell it had the Xbox logo at the end of the ad.

Most of what sold this game was for free, on the internet and by professional journalists. This game was popular by word of mouth.

$40 million (i'm taking the lower estimate) is not a lot for actually making such a big entertainment product, especially one that is going for so much realism it likely needed a lot of research and physical costs. I mean the voice talent alone mustn't have been cheap.

But disk distribution should not cost so much. If DVDs are being sold for £3 each - new - then distribution costs cannot be that severe, especially given the economies of scale. I think they are just lumping in the insignificant distribution with their overblown marketing budget so that it doesn't seem quite so bad.

You know something is DEEPLY wrong with a publisher if they spend an 5 times as much on marketing as development.

Hey Activison! How's this for a marketing scheme:

Take $180m of that $200m and just keep it in your fucking pocket, then maybe you won't be so desperate to monetise everything with crazy idea of subscriptions and unfair pricing.

You have to remember that there's a lot of stuff that goes into a "launch budget." Production, distribution, marketing - and not just in the States, or in the UK, but worldwide. For a followup to one of the biggest games of 2007 (or indeed in recent memory) Activision clearly wanted to take no chances here, and as we've seen, it paid off hugely.

To be honest, I don't think you know nearly as much about how much it costs to make a game - and market it - as you think you do (this judging from some of the other comments I've seen, not so much these here). Especially given that it's a followup to a very popular game, and the expectation that it will be an improvement.

For all we have core gamers crowing in other threads that "oh, graphics don't matter why do you spend so much money on them," if MW2 came out looking like the first CoD, do you really think it wouldn't have been eviscerated by press and gamers alike?

I know but remember $200 million was the same as the budget for Transformers 2... one of the most expensive films in recent years.

And $200 million is still FIVE TIMES the development costs. If the actual game dev costs are high then how about spend more on the game and less on advertising which honestly I have felt virtually diddly squat all presence over here.

I mean... how... the... fffuuuu.... HOW do you spend THAT much money on marketing when it has had so little to show for it?!??? Most of the hype for this game has been generated by its prequels and has spread like crazy from there. I mean what do you remember about the MW2 ad campaign? It's not like Killzone 2 where it was advertised like the second coming of Christ, and by the way, Killzone 2 sold fairly poorly to spite having the best ad campaign I've seen for a video game

What has sold this game is the Buzz, the Hype, the Reputation! So much free advertising in internet rumour and stories circulating.

Have YOU any idea how much money Two Hundred Million Dollars is?

I would like to know an example of another game that has spent that much on marketing, or more appropriately, what game spend FIVE TIMES its development budget on convincing people to buy it.

And then after that complain that they need to monetise their games even more.

 

[Nova5]

With any luck, hopefully we'll be running out of MewTwo news soon. It makes me kind of miss the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, to be honest.

You and me both, man. Seriously.

 

[Warstratigier]

they seriously didn't need to throw that money out.....unless they really need more "uneducated" people, the sort that can't be self-informed, to rope into. Still 200m$ into advertising, that explains the price hike some but seemed...so unnecessary.

 

[Treblaine]

they seriously didn't need to throw that money out.....unless they really need more "uneducated" people, the sort that can't be self-informed, to rope into. Still 200m$ into advertising, that explains the price hike some but seemed...so unnecessary.

The irony is that a whole lot of that advertising may have been used to counter the negative effect of the price hike.

Wah wah waaaaaaaa

 

[robrob]

I honestly can't recall seeing any advertising for MW2 besides Steam and reading about it on tech/gaming websites where they would have written about it even if they were paid not to.

$200m is insanity for a game that already had a tonne of hype. Isn't that the point of series, they self-generate hype so no one has to spend this kind of money? Or does Activision have some kind of marketing machine that needs to be fed gold bars to run?

 

[Tron-tonian]

The $40-50 million is what floors me. It's a 5-6 hour single player game, with multiplayer added on. A lot of the MP code was likely rehashed form older games in the series.

So just WTF were they doing with there time? Or paying people?

The post-production budget, while also completely bonkers, is at least in the hands of an executive who decides that the game needs it. Fine. They want to spend a ton of cash to market the game, that's their call.

But dumping that kind of money into a game that has the SP length of a decent expansion? That makes me wonder how many ex-3D Realms employees are working over there...

 

[Srkkl]

How did they manage to spend that much money on a glorified DLC?
Really, this amazes me.

I don't think judging a game you haven't even played a demo of is very smart, and "glorified DLC"? The only game I would call glorified DLC would be L4D.

OT: Thats pretty insane, at least it wasn't like the 400(?) million spent on Transformers 2 and then the final product sucking.

 

[slowpoke999]

I don't think judging a game you haven't even played a demo of is very smart, and "glorified DLC"? The only game I would call glorified DLC would be L4D.

OT: Thats pretty insane, at least it wasn't like the 400(?) million spent on Transformers 2 and then the final product sucking.

Ok lemme just put my 2 cents in and officially close the gates of hell before any other fanboys attack you. L4D has been heralded as one of the best zombie fps of all times and often said to be a game where multiplayer feels necessary. Unless you meant L4d2, i don't think a game can be called a DLC, hell even an expansion to another game when it is BIGGER then the original. I've been playing l4d2 and some campaigns feel like endurance battles they're so freaking long.

 

[Lord Krunk]

Which makes it all the more depressing that they nerfed the PC version, when they spent so much money to make it.

 

[Srkkl]

I don't think judging a game you haven't even played a demo of is very smart, and "glorified DLC"? The only game I would call glorified DLC would be L4D.

OT: Thats pretty insane, at least it wasn't like the 400(?) million spent on Transformers 2 and then the final product sucking.

Ok lemme just put my 2 cents in and officially close the gates of hell before any other fanboys attack you. L4D has been heralded as one of the best zombie fps of all times and often said to be a game where multiplayer feels necessary. Unless you meant L4d2, i don't think a game can be called a DLC, hell even an expansion to another game when it is BIGGER then the original. I've been playing l4d2 and some campaigns feel like endurance battles they're so freaking long.

It's pretty easy to be hailed as "the best zombie FPS" when I can count all the other Zombie FPS's out there on one hand. To clarify I meant L4D the first one, I'm not wasting money on the secound. The first had extremely tedious and repetitive campaigns that all seemed exactly the same with the different ways to escape, and the L4D2 demo made it seem exactly the same as the first. There were six wepons not including pistols and explosives and that made the game super boring.

 

[Jaqen Hghar]

I don't think judging a game you haven't even played a demo of is very smart, and "glorified DLC"? The only game I would call glorified DLC would be L4D.

OT: Thats pretty insane, at least it wasn't like the 400(?) million spent on Transformers 2 and then the final product sucking.

The game is 4-6 hours long. You got one Co-op mode that is new. And you got some new MP maps, kill streaks, death streaks etc. Very minor things when considering all of the things they removed. All that sounds like what you would get in a good DLC. So I give you that, this is a good DLC for MW. Or it would be a good game if it was around $30 (I don't care if it sold for less than that in the UK at the beginning, since that wasn't the retail price).

If this game didn't have it's price jacked up, then I would be almost OK with the part of it being so short. But they jacked up the price. On a very short SP game with largely the same MP as last time, only gimped on the PC. The whole game is gimped on the PC. Luckily, gamers are fixing that.

And I sure as hell won't buy it. Which means I just have to research it the best I can in order to criticize it. Which I think I have. So I am entitled to judge all I like,
Never played L4D, so cannot comment on that. But from what I have seen the second game ads enough to be called a game on it's own. Being longer, bigger and better than the first one. The only thing MW2 did bigger than MW is the amount of cheesy action scenes. And probably a few new guns.

Edit:

It's pretty easy to be hailed as "the best zombie FPS" when I can count all the other Zombie FPS's out there on one hand. To clarify I meant L4D the first one, I'm not wasting money on the secound. The first had extremely tedious and repetitive campaigns that all seemed exactly the same with the different ways to escape, and the L4D2 demo made it seem exactly the same as the first. There were six wepons not including pistols and explosives and that made the game super boring.

How does that make it seem like DLC? I have tried the L4D2 demo, which according you to is exactly the same as L4D. If it is, I regret not buying it when it came out, because it was one of the most exciting MP sessions I have ever played. The pressure and everything was awesome. Just what I expected from a zombie run-and-gun game. Of course every campaign is the same. You are running away from a zombie infestation. What else can you do? Which is perfectly fine, and from my small experience, is a blast playing with friends.
You don't need more weapons either, since you are playing normal people. No soldiers here. And the weapons are what they can find left behind by other survivors.
I just cannot see where L4D or L4D2 can be called DLC. While MW2 have every reason to be called just that.

Oh, and I did play the demo for MW. It was boring. The same gameplay as every other shooter out there. If MW2 is the same, only better (according to most of those who say I should buy it), then MW2 is boring. Unlike FPS games that actually add something new. Like... oh. L4D?

 

[Srkkl]

The game is 4-6 hours long. You got one Co-op mode that is new. And you got some new MP maps, kill streaks, death streaks etc. Very minor things when considering all of the things they removed. All that sounds like what you would get in a good DLC. So I give you that, this is a good DLC for MW. Or it would be a good game if it was around $30 (I don't care if it sold for less than that in the UK at the beginning, since that wasn't the retail price).

If this game didn't have it's price jacked up, then I would be almost OK with the part of it being so short. But they jacked up the price. On a very short SP game with largely the same MP as last time, only gimped on the PC. The whole game is gimped on the PC. Luckily, gamers are fixing that.

And I sure as hell won't buy it. Which means I just have to research it the best I can in order to criticize it. Which I think I have. So I am entitled to judge all I like,
Never played L4D, so cannot comment on that. But from what I have seen the second game ads enough to be called a game on it's own. Being longer, bigger and better than the first one. The only thing MW2 did bigger than MW is the amount of cheesy action scenes. And probably a few new guns.

Edit:

It's pretty easy to be hailed as "the best zombie FPS" when I can count all the other Zombie FPS's out there on one hand. To clarify I meant L4D the first one, I'm not wasting money on the secound. The first had extremely tedious and repetitive campaigns that all seemed exactly the same with the different ways to escape, and the L4D2 demo made it seem exactly the same as the first. There were six wepons not including pistols and explosives and that made the game super boring.

How does that make it seem like DLC? I have tried the L4D2 demo, which according you to is exactly the same as L4D. If it is, I regret not buying it when it came out, because it was one of the most exciting MP sessions I have ever played. The pressure and everything was awesome. Just what I expected from a zombie run-and-gun game. Of course every campaign is the same. You are running away from a zombie infestation. What else can you do? Which is perfectly fine, and from my small experience, is a blast playing with friends.
You don't need more weapons either, since you are playing normal people. No soldiers here. And the weapons are what they can find left behind by other survivors.
I just cannot see where L4D or L4D2 can be called DLC. While MW2 have every reason to be called just that.

Oh, and I did play the demo for MW. It was boring. The same gameplay as every other shooter out there. If MW2 is the same, only better (according to most of those who say I should buy it), then MW2 is boring. Unlike FPS games that actually add something new. Like... oh. L4D?

1. MW2 added a lot of new awesome stuff as well as evened out everthing that was bad about the first one (Juggernaut, Martyrdom) making the multiplayer actually really different and a lot more fun.

2. The campaign for me was about 9 hours on regular mainly because I took my time and actually enjoyed it and even though the shortness of a game really makes or breaks a game for me (I love games like Fallout 3 that take hours) and when I heard the how short MW2 was I was kinda pissed at first but honestly it was one of the coolest/engaging first person experiences I've ever seen in any game, It actually made me feel real emotion and if it was any longer the the story would have gotten bad, it was a perfect time frame. Now how I do accept this game may not be for you I would at least suggest renting it to experience the campaign the greatness really do make up for the length.

3. The co-op mode that you seemed to shrug off is really awesome with a friend that knows what they are doing, they made it so you can actually put military tactics in to it and it makes it a really fun experience.

Also I didn't think they had a demo for the game. EDIT: They didn't make a demo, so really, unless you play even a little of it you can't really judge it, research or not.

On the topic of Left 4 Dead.
1. If you really don't like shortness each of the 4 campaigns of the game was an average of 30 minutes on normal difficulty with 4 friends playing. Each one has absolutely no story accept get to the Helicopter, Boat, Airplane, Armored car, which make the game unengaging and uninteresting.

2. The gameplay was pretty crappy (I don't get how somthing slapping you makes you unable to move) it felt like you were floating the whole time, they have no iron sights but an accuracy rating at each checkpoint which pissed me off a lot.

3. The online versus on the first one if you were the zombie side you died so fast and your attacks were all up close accept for the smoker and that did the shittyest damage ever and it was HELL playing with people who didn't have mics in which means anyone who wasn't on your friends list.

Also every reason you said MW2 was DLC is exactly what L4D2 did, just add small improvements, which is what a sequel should you know, do. However the original was sucky, short, and boring, and when the only "improvements" are melee wepons and different looking guns.

 

[Generic_Dave]

The whole argument of "it would have cost too much to make the PC version good" just went flying out the fucking window. On fire.

Exactly, my friend. They spend 50 mil to make it, 200 mil to hype it... couldn't they just hire two hundred extra programmers to make dedicated servers in a week?

Because it wasn't worth it relative to PC sales, not to sales as a whole. What's the breakdown for sales console to PC? I saw something that said the 360 took up 60% of sales. When you factor in PS3, I'd say you could count the PC sales in the 15 to 20% area...so the basic argument isn't that it cost too much, its that it cost too much to make a specific addition to the game for a low selling version.

And besides, BIGGEST SELLING GAME EVER! In spite of the "boycott". Why would they care?

 

[theultimateend]

recouped all their losses on launch day.

$310 Million > $250 Million.

OT: Not really all that surprising. With development costs on the rise these type of prices will eventually be the norm. I'd love to see how much cash was thrown at marketting for Halo 3 and ODST

P.S. It's funny to see all the troll worthy comments already hitting this thread. =p MewTwo hate is officially the new Halo hate.

I think much of the hate comes from the fact that you can sell anything if you spend enough on advertising.

You could sell genocide, shitty world leaders, twilight, or modern warfare 2.

Don't get me wrong it isn't a bad game. But there is nothing about it that sets it apart from anything else in its genre that was done marginally well. Which is the only reason I'm bothered. People praise it like it broke some ground when it didn't.

I don't mind things doing well because people are suckers for marketing, but I'd prefer people not act like intense marketing == quality product.