This might be a dumb question. So I get that there goes a lot of work and time in creating a high quality game and with major game studios like ubisoft and fromsoft the cost can rank up to hundreds of millions of dollars, but even though it takes a lot of work to make a good game, how does it cost 500 million dollars? like where does that money go to? is there one specific part of making a game that costs a lot of money for large studios?
In: Technology
There are different expenses AAA companies have, especially in a bigger scale, that smaller companies don’t have.
For example Marketing for AAA companies takes sometimes up to the same cost as the development of the game itself.
Also AAA companies grew to a size which forces them to earn more money. Therefor they development games that have to appeal to a wider audience, not just a nieche like indy games. What that means is, they more often trash ideas, start from scratch or rework major parts of the game, which prolongs the development cost. Additionally they have expenses for bigger offices, translators, legal, HR, but also for R&D.
AAA companies look for billion dollar games. Not for million dollar games.
In short:
More people = more cost.
Bigger Audience = more advertisement cost.
Latest Answers