Not sure why New World is being brought up in this thread. They had nowhere near $500 million in development funds for the project. Not even close. They actually had a very strict and modest budget. Now SWTOR on the otherhand.....
Define Modest..
It's public knowledge that Amazon Game Studio has a 500 Million Annual Budget, now, Obviously, New World, didn't take all of that, but it was in development for 5 years.
Amazon Games Studio has made 9 games, in those 5 years.
So lets say, New World only got 1/10 the budget during that time, so we are looking at, a modest 50 Million, a year, by 5 years, so... 250 million to make the game, would be a very safe modest guess.
Given that some of the games released by Amazon where not made by Amazon, and some were mobile/phone games, I highly doubt that they rivaled New World in development costs, but lets work with what we have.
Now if you have some info that can give us a better cost estimate for New World, perhaps some insider info, that would be great, right now, even looking at a very modest and reasonable guess, it's looking to be the second most expensive MMO ever made.
AGS have 4 major development teams. With 3 major projects in development. One is a massive project. NW didnt take $500 million not even close.
(For the record I dont believe the $500 Million a year budget for AGS based on two random people saying so in a news article)
2nd most expensive? I would put it 5th
Star Citizen SWTOR ESO FF14 New World
No dis, but, as of right now, the 500 Million budget is not up for debate, your feelings on the matte are noted, but, unless you have a better source to dispute the 500 Million, the 500 Million is firm.
Star Citizen is still in development, at almost 400 Million funded, the most expensive MMO to date.
The next highest one, is SWTOR at 200 Million.
Now, As for Amazon's spending on New World, my Number of 250 Million, was a very Low Ball Number, the reality is no doubt that New World got a lot more than the paltry 250 Million I cited.
I would wager realistically, closer to 350 Million, given how they have pretty much overhauled the game a few times, and did so in a comparatively record setting amount time, which, NGL, that was rather impressive.
But, lets not delude ourselves here, remaking and restructuring a MMO style game a few times over in 5 years, well, that kind of work, dedication, and talent, does not come cheap.
I would say, given how these companies work, I feel, that no doubt New World was in fact far more expensive to make than Star Citizen, which is why Amazon is not talking about how much it cost to make it.
If they kept it cheap, they never would have shut up about much they did and little they spent.....
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Not sure why New World is being brought up in this thread. They had nowhere near $500 million in development funds for the project. Not even close. They actually had a very strict and modest budget. Now SWTOR on the otherhand.....
SWTOR had a $200 million development budget and it has made more than $1 billion so far.
Development and total are not the same. Marketing can, an many times does, encompass more than development costs. It is guesstimated in the industry they spent up to $400+ Million USD total. For Development and Marketing. (With over 800 developers working on it for 6 years! Massive payroll anyone?)
Then you factor in IP cut where the money gets tricky. When you create a game with an IP you own the revenue is not divided. In SWTOR's case EA does not own SW so they dont benefit from the total sales.
Think about this, SWTOR has brought in around a billion dollars in 10 years. WOW made that a year during that time. Not thinking SWTOR was the success Lucas was looking for.
Marketing is such an expensive endeavour. It just sucks my competitiveness away like a vacuum cleaner.
So much financial resources required for something that you wish could of gone into the actual product.
I believe profit margins in the media industry might be a little on the high side. I do a decent amount of business with them and they seem to spend pretty frivolously.
Think people are asking, or maybe looking, in wrong direction.
The one big game or thing, will more likely go towards the service/games libraries kind of options.
Fits in better with the way the big companies are looking i think. Having more options of the smaller price tags on creating games, and more options to hold people to the subs/services they offer.
I do not think the amount of cash that is available to the dev's make as much difference to the end product as people think. Even less to the buy to play or sub. If the original game ideas/products do not attract enough players, no matter the cost they will fail to attract enough players/revenue to last.
Not sure why New World is being brought up in this thread. They had nowhere near $500 million in development funds for the project. Not even close. They actually had a very strict and modest budget. Now SWTOR on the otherhand.....
SWTOR had a $200 million development budget and it has made more than $1 billion so far.
Development and total are not the same. Marketing can, an many times does, encompass more than development costs. It is guesstimated in the industry they spent up to $400+ Million USD total. For Development and Marketing. (With over 800 developers working on it for 6 years! Massive payroll anyone?)
Then you factor in IP cut where the money gets tricky. When you create a game with an IP you own the revenue is not divided. In SWTOR's case EA does not own SW so they dont benefit from the total sales.
Think about this, SWTOR has brought in around a billion dollars in 10 years. WOW made that a year during that time. Not thinking SWTOR was the success Lucas was looking for.
Marketing is such an expensive endeavour. It just sucks my competitiveness away like a vacuum cleaner.
So much financial resources required for something that you wish could of gone into the actual product.
I believe profit margins in the media industry might be a little on the high side. I do a decent amount of business with them and they seem to spend pretty frivolously.
imho
OT- I heard you mention something about Yellow pages advertising. In 2008 I was top 4 yellow page advertising sales in all of AT&T. 2009 Defaults came and book shrunk 75%. This is around the time adwords came on the scene. AT&T sold the yellow pages a couple years later.
I haven't seen a books on a door step in 10 years. Are they still charging you 5k a month for a full page?
Not sure why New World is being brought up in this thread. They had nowhere near $500 million in development funds for the project. Not even close. They actually had a very strict and modest budget. Now SWTOR on the otherhand.....
SWTOR had a $200 million development budget and it has made more than $1 billion so far.
Development and total are not the same. Marketing can, an many times does, encompass more than development costs. It is guesstimated in the industry they spent up to $400+ Million USD total. For Development and Marketing. (With over 800 developers working on it for 6 years! Massive payroll anyone?)
Then you factor in IP cut where the money gets tricky. When you create a game with an IP you own the revenue is not divided. In SWTOR's case EA does not own SW so they dont benefit from the total sales.
Think about this, SWTOR has brought in around a billion dollars in 10 years. WOW made that a year during that time. Not thinking SWTOR was the success Lucas was looking for.
Marketing is such an expensive endeavour. It just sucks my competitiveness away like a vacuum cleaner.
So much financial resources required for something that you wish could of gone into the actual product.
I believe profit margins in the media industry might be a little on the high side. I do a decent amount of business with them and they seem to spend pretty frivolously.
imho
OT- I heard you mention something about Yellow pages advertising. In 2008 I was top 4 yellow page advertising sales in all of AT&T. 2009 Defaults came and book shrunk 75%. This is around the time adwords came on the scene. AT&T sold the yellow pages a couple years later.
I haven't seen a books on a door step in 10 years. Are they still charging you 5k a month for a full page?
I tried a radio ad for a product. It was two 30 second ads a day on a popular local news and talk show station. One ad during the lunch hour and one ad during the rush hour drive home.
The ad cost me 27k a month.
edit: The ad only aired on weekdays, weekends were not included
Not sure why New World is being brought up in this thread. They had nowhere near $500 million in development funds for the project. Not even close. They actually had a very strict and modest budget. Now SWTOR on the otherhand.....
SWTOR had a $200 million development budget and it has made more than $1 billion so far.
Development and total are not the same. Marketing can, an many times does, encompass more than development costs. It is guesstimated in the industry they spent up to $400+ Million USD total. For Development and Marketing. (With over 800 developers working on it for 6 years! Massive payroll anyone?)
Then you factor in IP cut where the money gets tricky. When you create a game with an IP you own the revenue is not divided. In SWTOR's case EA does not own SW so they dont benefit from the total sales.
Think about this, SWTOR has brought in around a billion dollars in 10 years. WOW made that a year during that time. Not thinking SWTOR was the success Lucas was looking for.
Marketing is such an expensive endeavour. It just sucks my competitiveness away like a vacuum cleaner.
So much financial resources required for something that you wish could of gone into the actual product.
I believe profit margins in the media industry might be a little on the high side. I do a decent amount of business with them and they seem to spend pretty frivolously.
imho
OT- I heard you mention something about Yellow pages advertising. In 2008 I was top 4 yellow page advertising sales in all of AT&T. 2009 Defaults came and book shrunk 75%. This is around the time adwords came on the scene. AT&T sold the yellow pages a couple years later.
I haven't seen a books on a door step in 10 years. Are they still charging you 5k a month for a full page?
I tried a radio ad for a product. It was two 30 second ads a day on a popular local news and talk show station. One ad during the lunch hour and one ad during the rush hour drive home.
Not sure why New World is being brought up in this thread. They had nowhere near $500 million in development funds for the project. Not even close. They actually had a very strict and modest budget. Now SWTOR on the otherhand.....
SWTOR had a $200 million development budget and it has made more than $1 billion so far.
Development and total are not the same. Marketing can, an many times does, encompass more than development costs. It is guesstimated in the industry they spent up to $400+ Million USD total. For Development and Marketing. (With over 800 developers working on it for 6 years! Massive payroll anyone?)
Then you factor in IP cut where the money gets tricky. When you create a game with an IP you own the revenue is not divided. In SWTOR's case EA does not own SW so they dont benefit from the total sales.
Think about this, SWTOR has brought in around a billion dollars in 10 years. WOW made that a year during that time. Not thinking SWTOR was the success Lucas was looking for.
Marketing is such an expensive endeavour. It just sucks my competitiveness away like a vacuum cleaner.
So much financial resources required for something that you wish could of gone into the actual product.
I believe profit margins in the media industry might be a little on the high side. I do a decent amount of business with them and they seem to spend pretty frivolously.
imho
OT- I heard you mention something about Yellow pages advertising. In 2008 I was top 4 yellow page advertising sales in all of AT&T. 2009 Defaults came and book shrunk 75%. This is around the time adwords came on the scene. AT&T sold the yellow pages a couple years later.
I haven't seen a books on a door step in 10 years. Are they still charging you 5k a month for a full page?
I tried a radio ad for a product. It was two 30 second ads a day on a popular local news and talk show station. One ad during the lunch hour and one ad during the rush hour drive home.
The ad cost me 27k a month.
PAIN has to be done though one way or the other.
Right now I do 5-6 million a year in sales. My target is 15%.
Do the math.
People would have to pay much more for my services and I’m quite comfortable where I am.
edit: You must remember that this 15% isn't personal wealth, it's company wealth.
When I cash out, I'll have to pay capital gains on everything. In Canada if I can sell it to someone who will keep the business going, I can get a once in a lifetime 800k capital gains deduction.
I'm going to toss out some specific numbers, solving for #months until Investment cost is repaid using my simple number above.
Customers Box Cost Sub Cost Months Total (mil) Notes
1,000,000 $50 $15 0 500.0 B2P
800,000 $50 $15 39 508.0 Traditional
500,000 $50 $15 64 505.0
250,000 $50 $15 130 503.75
100,000 $50 $15 330 500.0
500,000 $75 $25 37 500.0 Costs +$25,+$10
250,000 $75 $25 77 500.0
100,000 $75 $25 197 500.0
500,000 $100 $35 26 505.0 Costs +$50,+$20
250,000 $100 $35 65 506.0
100,000 $100 $35 140 503.0
Quick observation: The $500 million game is going to either force a game to have a larger, stable customer base, increase the box and sub costs, or have investors willing to wait 2+ years post release to have any chance at a profit.
So, it is easy to predict that any new game that is targeting a small number of customers will have to operate on a strict budget and have very patient investors. This is the reality behind my distrust of projects like Pantheon or COE.
Pantheon (guestimation)
25,000 $50 $15 24 10.25 (10 mil dev???)
COE (guestimation)
10,000 $50 $15 50 8.15 (8 mil dev???)
(Apologies for any messed up formatting. Maybe in HTML-5.0 we'll be able to do columnar alignment inside a text box. Now, to live that long.)
edit: (trying to fix columns)
I wouldn't count on a game's average player hanging around for multiple years.
1 million customers at $50 each is $50 million, not $500 million.
Oops, my bad. I had a typo in my spreadsheet. Where I have 1,000,000 customers above, I had 10,000,000 in the spreadsheet. The other numbers are/were correct. (Should have formatted that cell, didn't).
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
It's about what I have the data for.. I want to believe I am a sexy god of lust, reality on the other hand, has shown me, I am old ugly fatass.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Comments
Star Citizen is still in development, at almost 400 Million funded, the most expensive MMO to date.
The next highest one, is SWTOR at 200 Million.
Now, As for Amazon's spending on New World, my Number of 250 Million, was a very Low Ball Number, the reality is no doubt that New World got a lot more than the paltry 250 Million I cited.
I would wager realistically, closer to 350 Million, given how they have pretty much overhauled the game a few times, and did so in a comparatively record setting amount time, which, NGL, that was rather impressive.
But, lets not delude ourselves here, remaking and restructuring a MMO style game a few times over in 5 years, well, that kind of work, dedication, and talent, does not come cheap.
I would say, given how these companies work, I feel, that no doubt New World was in fact far more expensive to make than Star Citizen, which is why Amazon is not talking about how much it cost to make it.
If they kept it cheap, they never would have shut up about much they did and little they spent.....
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
I believe profit margins in the media industry might be a little on the high side. I do a decent amount of business with them and they seem to spend pretty frivolously.
imho
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
The one big game or thing, will more likely go towards the service/games libraries kind of options.
Fits in better with the way the big companies are looking i think. Having more options of the smaller price tags on creating games, and more options to hold people to the subs/services they offer.
I do not think the amount of cash that is available to the dev's make as much difference to the end product as people think. Even less to the buy to play or sub. If the original game ideas/products do not attract enough players, no matter the cost they will fail to attract enough players/revenue to last.
I haven't seen a books on a door step in 10 years. Are they still charging you 5k a month for a full page?
The ad cost me 27k a month.
edit: The ad only aired on weekdays, weekends were not included
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
PAIN has to be done though one way or the other.
Do the math.
People would have to pay much more for my services and I’m quite comfortable where I am.
edit: You must remember that this 15% isn't personal wealth, it's company wealth.
When I cash out, I'll have to pay capital gains on everything. In Canada if I can sell it to someone who will keep the business going, I can get a once in a lifetime 800k capital gains deduction.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.