Games to cost $60m, says Ubisoft boss

By Ellie Gibson Published 16 June, 2009

To make, not to buy obviously.

Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot has predicted game budgets will rise to an average of USD 60 million (GBP 37 million / EUR 43 million) in the future.

"The next generation is going to be so powerful that playing a game is going to be the equivalent of playing a CGI movie today," Guillemot told CNBC. Right now, of course, games for Xbox 360 and PS3 cost between USD 20 million and USD 30 million to make, and look like Saturday morning cartoons drawn by people who were ill the day Mr Jarvis taught hands.

Guillemot went on to discuss the new fad for motion-sensing technology, saying he's excited about Project Natal and the like but knows hardcore gamers are lazy old chumps. "The current pad for gamers is giving them a lot," he said. "They play for hours, so they don't want to get up and down. They don’t want to be tired after five minutes. These games are about reactivity."

The Ubi exec is also aware we all love The Future when it comes to new consoles. "For us, the current machines are very powerful and we can do high quality work. I'd like to stay with this generation as long as possible, but my customers will want the best machine possible," he said.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (34) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • makeamazing #1 3 years ago

    saying he's excited about Project Natal and the like but knows hardcore gamers are lazy old chumps.

    And there lies in the problem with Natal :)

    On the games are going to cost $60.... I'm not sure of that, maybe inital titles, but I think you will start to see companies re-using assets, and making assets with higher LOD's and reducing them when needed (which is what I thought they did anyway?). I suspect more sequels, quicker releases and more DLC. Tis the only way to keep costs down.

  • MeBrains #2 3 years ago

    anyone interested in starting up a studio?

  • Tzetrik #3 3 years ago

    What a load of BS. Just because Ubisoft are pouring money down the drain doesnt mean the rest of the industry will.

  • Vice.Destroyer #4 3 years ago

    Did that guy just diss the industry's artists? And did he just big up Mr Jarvis?

  • ZuluHero #5 3 years ago

    when you have to feed and clothe teams of 450 people no doubt...

  • Dizzy #6 3 years ago

    >And there lies in the problem with Natal :)

    Natal is not aimed at the hardcore gamers except for some small extra features (like GUI control and maybe some optional detection to help in certain games)
    Edited by 1 at 16/06/09 @ 10:18

  • Freek #7 3 years ago

    "The next generation is going to be so powerful that playing a game is going to be the equivalent of playing a CGI movie today,

    They said that about the PS2, it's never true because it's a moving target. As soon as processor power increases to give real time graphics better quality, pre-renderd graphics also make a leap.

  • ChthonicEcho #8 3 years ago

    @Freek

    Yes, but the gap between real-time graphics and pre-rendered ones is getting smaller and smaller. Fewer and fewer games are using pre-rendered graphics, and if they are, it's mostly to add some nice effects and/or do without loading if the scene takes place in a completely different environment. There'll be a point where the difference between real-time and pre-rendered will be insubstantial if at all existent.

    Reminds me of my Mathematical Analysis course, particularly limits of functions.

  • beckyh #9 3 years ago

    "look like Saturday morning cartoons drawn by people who were ill the day Mr Jarvis taught hands. "

    eh???

    I got the joke. It means that developers are crap at doing hands in games. So when Mr Jarvis was teaching how to do hands in school, they were off sick and missed the lesson. Its a slant on an old joke ... "when god was giving out brains, he was in the kidney queue"

    But he is right, hands in games are always rubbish :-)

  • Canyarion #10 3 years ago

    So they need to sell like 2 million games to break even?

    That's retarded. And they're wondering how Nintendo suddenly got the 2nd richest company of Japan.

  • loopy #11 3 years ago

    "Did that guy just diss the industry's artists? And did he just big up Mr Jarvis?"

    I'm pretty sure it was just sarcasm actually.

  • penhalion #12 3 years ago

    As I always say, when I hear this nonsense.

    Do us a financial breakdown of just how you managed to get a game to cost 60 million to make. If you are somehow factoring in the running costs of the entire studio over a period of 2 years, then fine but, that figure should then be devided by the number of titles currently in development at that studio!

  • HolyJebus #13 3 years ago

    As I said, was it 3 years ago now, I expect the next generation of consoles to look like the (in)famous E3 Killzone trailer. With worse animation.

  • sneetch #14 3 years ago

    @Dizzy
    And there lies in the problem with Natal :)

    Natal is not aimed at the hardcore gamers except for some small extra features (like GUI control and maybe some optional detection to help in certain games)

    I'm really looking forward to Natal but I have the same problem I have with standing up to Wii; my TV is quite low down about couch level, oddly enough. I'll have to raise it to comfortably play and in a rented apartment I'm not sure where the hell I can put it.

  • JensonJet #15 3 years ago

    USD 20 million? Seems hard to believe any games have cost that much. With the one-price-fits-all attitude on console games it's no wonder we're seeing games last fewer hours than they used to. It's surely starting to make more sense for developers to make games ever smaller or just pump out simple casual market games when the sale price is fixed. It's very odd that a large game like Oblivion or Mass Effect is the same price as say Left4Dead or Terminator Salvation when the difference in production costs must be huge. It's a strange industry.

  • Hexagon #16 3 years ago

    A game in this generation with a €43 million budget would be a phenomenal game. A game in the next generation with a €43 million budget will likely be a good or average game. Meh...

  • Alkeno #17 3 years ago

    I don't understand what's the deal with huge budgets. Development costs money, people like to get paid at the end of the months, Epic wants the money for their Unreal Engine lincences, that sort of thing.

    Halo 3 and Killzone 2 were over 40 million euros in budget already, so it makes sense that this generations "monsters" represent average efforts in the next generation. Think about the leap needed to go from a NES game to a SNES game, how many more people where involved? And to go from a SNES game to a Playstation game?

    The issue with increasing budgets is that game industry will follow the path of cinema. Big studios will unite and form megastudios like Ubisoft doing high-budget blockbusters, medium sized studios with head towards niché development of little masterpieces (or so they will try) and then we will have smaller studios with limited budgets doing what they can to survive.

    It's not a good thing nor a bad thing, I think it's just the natural evolution of the industry.

  • Hexagon #18 3 years ago

    @ farticusmaximus

    According to my source, Killzone 2 only cost around €19 million to produce. Maybe that's why it lacked character. :-P

  • Les #19 3 years ago

    "It's not a good thing nor a bad thing, I think it's just the natural evolution of the industry."

    I'm afraid the increasing budgets will mean more risk control and even more games in which space marines shoot aliens in the face. As long as you don't value graphics over gameplay, there's little to worry about though.

  • Hexagon #20 3 years ago

    @ farticusmaximus

    There is an article here on Eurogamer that states that Killzone 2 will top €16 million but it's from 2006. Nevertheless, I doubt they doubled more than the original cost in development since then. :-P

  • Doctor_What #21 3 years ago

    Most games have lacked character since the year dot. That's a lot more to do with character design being driven by committee and focus groups than the budget.

    Killzone 2's characters are pretty generic, but at least it had a good (and slightly unusual for games) ending.

    Halo 3's dialogue (like many other sci-fi games) is ripped wholesale from Aliens, the characters take tabula rasa to a new level, the cutscenes are self-indulgent, and plot is a mess to anyone who doesn't fancy reading the novels and spending all day scanning websites and forums. The ending was also pretty dull.

    Left 4 Dead has more character than either of those and probably had half the budget. Short lines that fit the action perfectly and excellent AI/human interaction really bring it to life.

    Even Lost Winds on the Wii has more character than Halo 3, and I'll go out on a limb to say that it had a smaller budget.

    The best characters in the last few years of gaming? I think it's got to be Drake, Sully, and Elana from Uncharted. The script and cutscenes lifted a set of solid (but repetitive) gameplay mechanics up into being one the most enjoyable games this generation.

    Character in games is nothing to do with budget. It's about getting good writing and narrative control in place from the very beginning of the project.

  • riz23 #22 3 years ago

    I've always found that it is feet and not hands that are the problem.

    That is all.

  • Les #23 3 years ago

    "Character in games is nothing to do with budget. It's about getting good writing and narrative control in place from the very beginning of the project."

    I would hope that a quality writer gets paid more than a crappy one though... ;)

    But I agree with the point I think you want to make: Just throwing lots and lots of money at the superficials will not give a game character. On the other hand, apparently gamers (sometimes?) don't care much about character given the huge sales numbers of the likes of Halo, GTA and licensed games...

  • EvilBob_leeds #24 3 years ago

    Killzone 2 had that kind of budget and turned out to be a soulless bag of shite.

    How would you know anyway Farticus? You don't own a PS3, much less a copy of Killzone 2. Stop ripping off other peoples opinions and trying to pass them off as your own, fan boy.
    Edited by 1 at 16/06/09 @ 14:43

  • EvilBob_leeds #25 3 years ago

    On topic, I think this will likely get worse, especially with big budget games - a games studio might or might not hit paydirt with characters, but it's pretty much a dead cert that if enough aliens and bullets are thrown into the mix, they'll recoup their expenditure. All you need to do at the end is to tack on something resembling a story line and a few cut scenes and you're all done.

    I also don't think you need much of a story to give a game a strong feeling of character - the earlier Bullfrog games Power monger and Syndicate had a great deal of it, but very little story line to speak of.

  • penhalion #26 3 years ago

    Interactive media is different from movies in the sense that it's all about the characters and then secondly about the story those characters find themselves in. The characters draw you into the game, while the story keeps you playing.

    A movie simply let's you watch someones story unfold but, a game requires the player to have a vested interest in how tht story turns out. If the story is uninteresting or full of plot holes, then sooner or later the player ends up questioning why the heck they are doing what they are doing, whether that is killing aliens or saving a kingdom from evil.

    Killzone 2 and Halo 3 both have disapointing plots. Halo because the introduction of the advocate totally fragmented the plot and forced players to play as the very enemy they had vested so much emotion into fighting. Killzone 2, because at the very end you are faced with a fleet of enemy cruisers that make everything you just did a totally pointless suicide mission. You also end up thinking that there is no way they had such a huge fleet of ships and somehow forgot to use them in the first Killzone game. It's a nonsense plot twist in the same way the advocate was.

  • Les #27 3 years ago

    "A movie simply let's you watch someones story unfold but, a game requires the player to have a vested interest in how tht story turns out."

    In my case it's rather the other way around. With a movie I care for the story: It's the main reason I watch it. With a game, I couldn't care less about the story. As long as the gameplay is good/enjoyable I'll keep on playing. The story is only important in the sense that it distracts from the gameplay if it is truly bad.

  • Quak #28 3 years ago

    I thought we already had Toy Story graphics with the PlayStation 2?

  • AphoticCosmos #29 3 years ago

    Didn't Too Human cost over $100 million to make?

    [And then smell like ass]

  • JensonJet #30 3 years ago

    I always assumed people thought characters were more important to a movie than the story. Surely we watch James Bond or Indiana Jones movies, for example, because we care for the characters, not specifically what they get up to. A movie based on story without much care for characters describes many forgettable blockbusters. The general storyline for most movies can be summed up in a sentence or two, but what makes a good mafia story, or spy story, or road-trip movie, etc fun and interesting is the characters involved. A good director or writer can tell an engaging story, but without the characters or personalities to drive the story on you ultimately end up with a lifeless uninteresting film. I'm pretty sure everyone's favourite movies are just that because of the characters or the actors portraying the characters.

    With games the exact opposite seems to be the case. The majority of characters within games are very one dimensional, assuming they have any personality at all. Again, I always assumed people loved the games they do because they provide an excellent experience. Whether it's intense battles, wonderous discoveries, thrilling racing or exciting sports, it's the experience of being submerged into a virtual world that makes for a great game.

  • Calgon #31 3 years ago

    Didnt MGS4 cost 40 million to make?

    Isnt GT5 up to 60million spent on it already before its even complete?

    /Sorry just had to join in with the made up figures without any proof game.


    Here I will show you how its done:

    n4g.com "It seems that some mismanagement on Guerrilla Games' part has ballooned the development costs of Killzone 2 for the Sony PlayStation 3 to almost double its original price (that being, US$ 30 million just hiked up to US$ 60 million dollars). Allegedl

    It seems these days big budgets are kept hush by platform holders and publishers so dont expect to find to many official figures... its probably down to the classic dumb troll statements such as "epic fail"... "mega flop"... "omg lolz how much? What a waste of money they are amateurs I could run that business better myself"... "Tehy iz doomed fo' shurez!"... and so on that you read online so often.

    Edited by 1 at 16/06/09 @ 18:37

  • Les #32 3 years ago

    ^

    Whether this is satire or genuine, it's hilarious either way. +1000 :D

  • Meho #33 3 years ago

    Jeez, you guys. GTA IV cost around 100 million to make:

    [link url=http://www.gamesindustry.biz/arti cles/gta-iv-most-expensive-game-ever-developed
    ]http://ww w.gamesindustry.biz/articles/gt...[/link]

    And Shenmue was infamously 70 million

    And I am pretty sure Final Fantasy XII was near 100 million but I can't find the reference. So, thse budgets are already here, just not common. But they exist.

  • lagoonalight #34 3 years ago

    Okay we all know you pay yourselves exceedingly well with the top programmers at the top companies making millions.

    Take a pay cut you F'ing dick.

    Thing is we never hear where any of this money goes. Teh CEO of each company takes a huge cut and profit is often injected right back into other games. Please. STFU.

    And please stop trying rape Killzone 2. Your tactics have never worked on educated people and they never will.
    Edited by 2 at 18/06/09 @ 03:40