http://vr-zone.com/articles/grand-theft-auto-v-expensive-video-game-production-history-beats-big-budget-hollywood-films/55320.html

Its budget? $265 million! Holy shit! That's more than the majority of Hollywood movies. It already has 2.5 million pre-orders and is expected to pass $1bn in sales. God damn.

In context GTA4 was about $100m, most AAA games are around $40m-50m and the most expensive before this was The Old Republic which almost broke $200m.

Yea, neat. It certainly seems to have one of the biggest maps ever, again. With Hollywood cutscenes, celebrity DJ's and voiceovers, I could see that happening. Yea.

The article says that only one movie has a bigger budget, but that $265 million number includes marketing, and film budgets never include marketing. But still, shit, that's a lot of money.

This is why i like Rockstar/Take 2 They take a shit ton of risks in their games and do not play it safe unlike some other companies (Activision).

That's million bucks.

.....and unlike a big budget Hollywood movie its not going to be some whitewashed, mediocre piece of shit that has been focus tested to oblivion....

@jimmyfenix: They haven't released a single bad game in recent memory. Everything this generation has been gold.

No other publisher would have the balls to put out something like LA: Noire.

Oh if I only had that amount of money.

Making another GTA game is pretty much the safest bet that Rockstar could make. It's one of the safest bets that any games company could make. Spending that kind of money on an unknown new IP would be a huge risk. Spending it on GTA is safe. GTA will sell tens of millions of copies and make that money back easily. Guaranteed.

@mattyftm: I meant in the sense of not releasing a new GTA game every single year. We have seen it with Assassins creed and COD that the quality of those games have severely dropped from year to year but sales have remained the same. I agree that GTA is a safe bet but imagine if it got annualized like Assassins creed and Cod they could probably make even more money at the risk of degrading its quality.

If the money they get from GTA can make another game like Bully, Red dead or The warriors or help take two fund games like Bioshock and Mafia or a new IP i am happy.

I don't doubt it. The sheer amount of content they produced is ridiculous.

I'm sure that will pay off for them, though the ever inflating budgets of these games kind of stresses me out for some reason.

This isn't a risk for them though. GTA is gigantic, the last one sold 25 million copies. It's CoD level of popularity. The difference is Actvision likes pumping the well until it dries up. Take 2 want GTA as their golden boy for as long as possible. It's a series that's been around for nearly 17 years and will probably last another 17. CoD will never last that long. Believe it or not the current day CoD(MW1 and beyond) has only been around for 6 years. It feels like 16 though.

That's pretty fucking nuts. I expect it'll be worth it though.

It probably won't take them very long to make that money back if it already has 2.5 million pre-orders.

Guys, the article says "marketing and development budget". I'm guessing $100M+ of that budget is marketing. Meanwhile, EA spent $200 million on The Old Republic in development costs. So until I see a breakdown of how Rockstar spent that money, I'm going to continue to assume that Old Republic is the most expensive game ever made.

I would LOVE to have another Bully, or a proper Warriors remake.

A new Bully would be great!

They had to spend all that RDR money on something....

man, I haven't been this hyped for a game in a minute. All the forum talk about GTA 5 and all the commercials are so awesome to experience.

I would imagin that's not counting the ongoing budget of WoW and other MMOs in the race.

265M is pretty insane though. I wonder if that includes the marketing budget. If not I'm sure you could easily add 50 to 150M on top of that.

No, but as a publisher, this is why games like Bioshock Infinite, X-COM, or Spec Ops gets made. They got dat GTA money.

Not surprised. Making a GTA game is not risky at all and it makes truckloads of money. That money will come in handy when the next Red Dead is ready to be developed.

That's almost as much as Activision paid for their E3 floor space!

That's why copy 'n' paste media is awesome. Only 9 more days before I can move into my brandnew 265,000,000$ home. Love you - Rockstar!

Seriously man, The Matrix can't come soon enough. Copy 'n' paste a nice little stretch of coastline at the Côte d'Azur with a matching mansion, populate it with sexbots and virtual virtual nougat, and I'll be in heaven.

Even the bunnies are happy...

I hope the money was well spent though I'm not especially worried since it's Rockstar.

Thank you for the good laugh.

That's a crazy amount of money. According to Wiki, The Avengers was $220 million so if that includes marketing and stuff, this game cost more then The Avengers. That's fucking nuts. Either way, I'm super pumped for this game. 9 more days!

Marketing? I'm in NY and the most I've seen are a poster or two on subway (train) entrances, posters at Gamestop and ads on the internet. Granted I don't watch television live but I asked people that do and they said they haven't seen one commercial. Of course there has to be commercials out there but none that I know of. On top of that, Rockstar doesn't bring their games to shows like E3, Gamescom, etc. so I think a lot of that budget is for the game.

@seppli said:

That's why copy 'n' paste media is awesome. Only 9 more days before I can move into my brandnew 265,000,000$ home. Love you - Rockstar!

Seriously man, The Matrix can't come soon enough. Copy 'n' paste a nice little stretch of coastline at the Côte d'Azur with a matching mansion, populate it with sexbots and virtual virtual nougat, and I'll be in heaven.

wait wut

@awesomeusername:

Marketing is usually not included in production cost. Marketing is handled by local affiliates of the publisher in question, and has little to do with the development costs.

How many people does it take to program the game and write it, organize it, record it, etc.? Not counting the "creators" "exec producers" "product director/director" who probably make a million... but the average middle class Rockstar worker building the game: I bet like 200 proper salaried employees have their hands on it, maybe more. Say 200, times 50,000 a year, times five years since gta4. That's 50 million bucks. Add celebrities, outside contractors like foley work and middleware, the non famous voice cast, play testers, executives big salaries, licensed music and artwork, and you can see 150 million before marketing

You're the most expensive game ever made.

Wait. Are you replying to what I said to the other guy, when I said "wait wut" to you or my Avengers comment? Either way, I know this. The link to the article says that this $265 mil is marketing and development.

It looks like money, so yeah.

I mean, good chance its going to make its mark cause like beyond call of duty and madden the other game casual gamers gravitate to is GTA. Going to be interesting to see how it is received.

That is cool to know. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out, it's actually quite exciting knowing how expensive it was to develop.

GTA IV made around 500 millions in it's first week 5 years ago and something like 300 millions on the first day alone. On one hand this is the largest budget of all time for a game and at the same time has zero risks involved.

Truth.

Plus I think they have to have a different DLC plan this time around that should be more profitable for them... though maybe the IV expansion deals ended up being pretty profitable in the long run.

If GTA Online takes off they could do a lot of DLC for that as well.

At $60 a copy that's already $150mil in pre-orders. I think they are going to be OK :)

If this is correct, I hope it doesn't explode in Rockstar's "face". The market is different than what it was 5 years ago where GTA 5 could be the best game they've made and it still doesn't hit as large.

What is different about the demand for GTA?

Rockstar sold 12 million copies of Red Dead Redemption and even 5 million of LA Noire, an adventure game. They are fine. This game being profitable is seriously a lock.

@awesomeusername: Murals like this don't come cheap:

@greggd: badass

@greggd: That's clean right there.....

Imagine the number of movie plots they can rip off wholesale with that kind of budget!

@greggd: Look at all of that M for Mature content. Look at it!

@ollyoxenfree: That's million bucks of Mature

@ollyoxenfree: Why the hell don't they have that in NY?! This is pure greed from Take 2. PURE GREED

But holy fuck that's HUGE

I wouldn't doubt most of the money went into licensing music and hiring over paid hollywood actors for cameos etc. Well i hope the game doesn't suck, but even if it does people will like it and it will still sell well anyway.