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$300 Million Budget
Thillian
Member UncommonPosts: 3,156
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/35051/ZeniMax-aka-Bethesda-Gets-300M-Investment
Article from 2007. Back then, WoW was still on rise, theme-park games that later turned into financial failures (AoC, WAR, SWTOR) were still only being prepared. ESO is probably the last huge-budget themepark title.
If ESO has 300 milion budget, how much did SWTOR have with all its glamorous voice acting and adv campaign? The 500 milion budget now sounds a lot more plausible.
REALITY CHECK
Comments
I don't know, but yea, I already knew about this $300 million budget, and I know WoW's budget was only $100 million up till launch (which explains a lot).
LOL
No actually it doesnt, but gotta love people who keep dumb conspiracy theories alive. More power to you.
You didn't need a whole bunch of mo cap, hi rez textures, fancy post processing effects and expensive actors.
Want more variety in mmos, stop demanding fps quality production values
But just thinking about the amount of world in the game it will be expensive. What was the budget for oblivion and skyrim? Because TESO is 9 times the size.
Yea, that's true, plus they created their own graphics engine, that should've cost a pretty penny...
Conspiracy theories?
When someone comes from inside EA and leaks a bunch of information, and all of that information proves to be true, why wouldn't the budget?
How else do you explain the huge HUGE drop in EA stocks? SWTOR cost a lot, and it made next to nothing on that investment.
It's a shame. ESO might be a good game if they just got rid of the instancing.
It's their online division. You don't work on multiple MMOs side by side. Not without multiple games under your belt, or not without just being a publisher.
It really is sad to see the lifeblood of DAoC diluted by publishers and investors into making themeparks.
first of all the 300 mil $ are for the whole company and their future games, not only for TESO. just read the article. second, high budget mmorpgs do have 50+ mil $ development cost (not included are marketing or administration). third you can easily reconstruct the development cost of a mmorpg by knowing the estimated amount of employees on this project multiply them with 5000 $ (average monthly cost of an employee for a company) and again multiply it with the months the game is in development.
for those who want real numbers simply look at the financial report of ncsoft for q3/2012.
Do you think they would invest 300 milion into "future games" which were to be developed six years from then? Do you think they paid in 2007 for games that were to start development in 2013?
REALITY CHECK
i don't think it, i know it and its easy to get this knowledge. trion worlds (rift, eon, defiance) f.e. was founded 2006 with a investment capital of 100 million € given by f.e. time warner investments group, comcast ventures and bertelsman digital media investments. and the concepts for all their 3 mmogs were on the table back in 2006. just google it :-)
and as a little addition to the topic just read: 50 Million Budget for Rift
and to spread a rumour i heard last week: it seams that funcom is about to get sold. maybe zenimax will by it?
I have a different opinion then, I don't think they leave milions of dollars to sit on account for 6 years before using them to finance the so-called "future games". I'm certain they used those 300 millions to set up the online division, get licenses, and pay the staff and maintenance for 6 years until 2013, with some reserve, plus marketing and distribution and other costs associated with ESO exclusively.
REALITY CHECK
wasnt talking about ESO, was saying in general. Larn to read no, where in my topic did i state the game, go troll sumone elses post.
ZeniMax (aka Bethesda) announced today that it has recieved a $300 million USD investment from Providence Equity Partners Inc for convertible preferred ZeniMax stock. This cash will be used to fund its newly formed online division (headed up by former Mythic Exec Producer Matt Firor)
plus develop and publish future games as well.
OP just spreading rumors.
Or take 100Mill, reskin EQ1 and update it, and pocket the rest. Oh wait that was what WoW basically did my bad.
Seriously though, lets all stop this whole pretending wow was actually original and realize that the formula existed long before and claiming its a clone is just like saying every game is a carbon copy of DnD Paper Edition.
So you expect your local mailman to have inside information on foreign policy? I mean, he's an employee of the federal government, right? That's about the stretch suggesting the outlandish suggestion for TOR.
EA stock tanked not because someone leaked info (accurate or not), but because they invested money into the game, and it did not meet expectations, no matter what the budget really was. If it was 150 million or 300 million it still did not meet expectations. It's tanking wasnt because of that dollar figure. Far more credible people gave budget info after the fact, and even at the numbers EA gave it still wasnt profitable. Doesnt matter which number is right.
I like the strawman argument though, stock goes down, that proves the "inside information was true." Ignore the fact that it wasnt profitable at any level, regardless what the budget was.
they werent/arent investing in a game. they are investing in a a brand new compnay. Zenimax Online Studios. which needed a stuido, employees, equipment, ......among other things.
Which qualifies to be included in ESO budget.
REALITY CHECK
i really appreciate your opinion and thoughts, but if you don't belive me just talk with someone from you bank about how investment groups and funds are working. its not uncommon that they do longterm investments. keep in mind that such groups invest in a lot of diffrent companies. and if you look here you can see the amount of money these investment groups are operating with. bertelsmann digital media does have consolidated revenues of 22 billion (!) us dollar. providence equity partners inc, the groups which gives zenimax 300 million $, does have revenues of 21 billion $. so these 300 millions are, well, more or less peanuts to them.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
In case no one has stated the obvious, a lot of that money likely went to game publishing and marketing, other game development, as well as ESO. I'd bet only half was really put towards ESO, at the most.
Only if ESO were the only game that studio would make. Otherwise you divide that across titles.
Theyve probably done some preliminary work on the fallout mmo before the court case.
Is it an entirely new engine? I would have thought it would be a heavily modified version of the skyrim engine (itself based on game bryo, which many of the devs will be familiar with from daoc) or even one of iDs engines as they are part of the same group, or dishonoureds engine for sane reason.
$300 million for SWTOR...
$300 Million for TESO....
Halo 4 estimate 100 million development with marketing costs included (50 Million / 50 million estimated per previous games.) Net return on day one of release was $220 million in confirmed sales. Franchise returns so far, happily chugging along toward 4 billion.