God of War III cost $44m to make

By Tom Bramwell Published 9 March, 2010

"That's right within budget."

Sony Santa Monica's God of War III cost a massive $44 million to make, according to director of product development John Hight.

"We are stamping discs now, so we're effectively done, just got a couple of countries that we're finishing up on this week, and we've spent $44 million on God of War III," Hight told Giant Bomb.

"Believe it or not, that's right within budget." All that and they still had to ditch the epilogue.

It was money well spent by all accounts, however, including our account. Check out our 9/10 God of War III review to see what we made of it. The game's due out on 19th March.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 2 years ago

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

  • woodnotes #1 2 years ago

    Bargain.

  • StooMonster #2 2 years ago

    How much do they make per sale?

    /wonders how many they have to sell to break-even

  • MavSkipper #3 2 years ago

    They don't even have to sell a million to break even... assuming it costs more than $44 per game(which it obviously is).

  • Goodfella #4 2 years ago

    Yeah, I'd like to know exactly. I seem to recall reading an article a while back though that stated retailers get by far the biggest chunk of profit, then the publisher then the developer.

  • rotmm #5 2 years ago

    @MavSkipper, "They don't even have to sell a million to break even... assuming it costs more than $44 per game(which it obviously is)."

    Exactly. Because in this day and age, pressing the BluRay's is free, as are the boxes that the game come packaged in. Also, warehouses will currently store games for free, and no one pays anymore for shipping. On top of that, retailers have decided to sell at cost and make no profit, as well as the governments around the world deciding that there are no taxes to be taken from videogame profits.

    So you're right. Sony need to sell far less than a million to break even on this game.

  • DavoTheDiv_2010 #6 2 years ago

    MavSkipper, don't think you've factored in the big chunk given to retailers, plus there's a whole heap of overheads like transportation costs etc.

  • matrim83 #7 2 years ago

    I think I read somewhere that publishers get 27 USD from a 60 USD game. The rest goes to retailers, platform royalties, cost of returns etc. Also you have to add the advertisement costs to numbers like that 44 Mill as well.

  • MiniAmin #8 2 years ago

    I think you guys/girls will find this interesting: [link url=http://latim esblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/02/anatomy-of -a-60-dollar-video-game.html
    ]http://la timesblogs.latimes.com/entertai...[/link]

    It breaks down where your money goes after buying a game. For a game that retails at $60 the publishers will take around $27.

    Obviously it isn't ideal as everything's indicated in US Dollars, but it's a useful graph nonetheless.

  • matrim83 #9 2 years ago

    So first party developers make 34 $ a game. Factor in advertisement to the cost of 5-6 million to a budget like that and you have to sell almost 2 million to break even.

    Jeez no wonder studios keep going under. :(

  • MavSkipper #10 2 years ago

    True.

    Well that's what I get for posting on simple calculation(on impulse no less :)). My question now is what made it $44m?

  • Stompy #11 2 years ago

    Hollywood-style big budget vs. indie will get more intense when the budgetary scale is so wide between the two kinds of developer.

  • dudefella #12 2 years ago

    @Mavskipper: if you watch that interview, he says they had like 160(I believe, from memory) people working on the game. That's a lot of people! Factor in the technology that they developed in-house and a production time of almost 3 years, and you're probably there. And that figure is probably excluding marketing, just development costs.

  • matrim83 #13 2 years ago

    Yeah. 160 people being paid (on an average) between 60-70 grand a year. For 3-4 years. Thats the majority of the costs there.

  • TeaFiend #14 2 years ago

    I wish I had $44m.

  • dsmx #15 2 years ago

    about $25 from every sale goes to them therefore the need to sell around 1.76 million copies to break even.

  • karooo #16 2 years ago

    It will sell 1.5 million easily in week 1 though
    Edited by 2 at 10/03/10 @ 03:27

  • StooMonster #17 2 years ago

    karooo makes a fair point, if this is just cost of development one wonders what the marketing budget is. Then the breakeven point requires even more copies to be sold.

    What does a top selling PS3 game shift these days?

  • Kinkster #18 2 years ago

    "Well that's what I get for posting on simple calculation(on impulse no less :)). My question now is what made it $44m? "

    I bet it wasn't paid overtime ;-)

  • INSOMANiAC #19 2 years ago

    Couldnt they have just reskinned GOW 1 or 2 ?

    Square square triange, square square triangle *repeat until end*

  • Geordiemp #20 2 years ago

    Not every first party game has to make profit.

    Well, there are developing game engines and techniques to be used by other studios, so the payback is not so straight forward.

    As long as it either sells PS3's or raises the bar and gives engine code to others for the Ps3, then thats a benefit...

    For example, the new SPU AA smoothing given to one of the SPU's was praised, if it gets used on other games then it helps sell the platform.....

    Personally, I like my beat em ups to have control of the camera, in GOW demo kept rolling around trying to adjust the camera LOL...

  • monkfishjoe #21 2 years ago

    this is going to sell well, so it'll make it's money back no problems. But I wonder how much is being spent on marketing and other costs (pressing discs etc). It must be a fair amount.

    Still, an article like this will save on some of that marketing budget...

  • rotmm #22 2 years ago

    @monkfishjoe, "this is going to sell well, so it'll make it's money back no problems."

    I'm not gong to disagree with you outright, but that certainly is a bold statement to make about a God of War title.

    The first God of War has sold around 3 million copies since it was released in 1995, at which point there were around 90 million PS2's out there. God of War 2 sold less than 3 million copies when there were around 120m PS2's in homes around the world.

    Both games were considered technical masterpieces and great games of their type, scoring Metacritic averages of 94 and 93 respectively. God of War 3 currently sits at 94 on Metacritic....

    ...but is selling to a PS3 owning public of around 34 million.

    There's no getting away from it.... the God of War games have previously sold only to a small niche of the Playstation audience, around 2-4%. I hope that God of War 3 breaks that trend and does some serious numbers, but I won't be overly surprised if it only does 1-1.5m (which, based on the budget, would at least make it a break-even game).
    Edited by 1 at 09/03/10 @ 22:19

  • callum9999 #23 2 years ago

    Miniadmin - that chart has no citations whatsoever, for all we know whoever did it just sat down and made up all the figures in their head. I don't know why people keep linking to it when its obviously suspect.

  • monkfishjoe #24 2 years ago

    @ rotmm

    Good point. I suppose this is where that vocal minority can be mis-leading. Maybe it won't make it's money back. It'll be interesting.

    I kind of hope it does - it's not good that so many games can fail to make there money back in this generation. Even first party developers will start to get reigned in creatively, which is no good for us consumers.

    Fingeres crossed, eh.