1. Grand Theft Auto IV, $100,000,000: Only just
recently obtaining the No. 1 spot – knocking Shenmue from its lofty
perch – by being released at the end of April earlier this year, GTAIV
is now officially the game that has been the most expensive to make.
This controversial crime sandbox took 1000 people over three and a half
years to complete!
2. Shenmue, $70,000,000: Released on the Dreamcast back in ‘99/’00, this game most definitely made a dent in the savings
and has been the most expensive game ever for the past 8 years. It must
have seemed pure insanity to attempt to make a game with a budget like
this! Not only that, but it took 7 years to make! Disappointingly, it
undersold vastly, only selling 1.2 million copies worldwide. Despite
being one of the few Dreamcast titles to sell more than a million
copies, gaming website IGN states that every single Dreamcast owner
would have needed to buy two copies of the game in order for creators
Sega to have even thought of turning a profit!
3. Too Human, $80-$100,000,000: While the budget of
this tale of genetically enhanced humans trying to thwart a machine
menace is only rumored, developers Silicon Knights have had to scrap
plans to use Epic Games’ Unreal 3 Engine and have had to build their
own game engine from the ground up, further adding to the cost of
creating the game.
4. Metal Gear Solid 4, $50-$70,000,000: No exact
figure has been found, but anything between $50 and $70 million has
been thrown about. When bundled with the PS3 on its debut, the game
helped increased the sales of PS3 units from around 10,000 to up to
77,000! As of August, this tactical espionage action game has shifted
almost 4 million copies worldwide!
5. Halo 3, $60,000,000: This highly anticipated
installment of the famous first-person shooter franchise reputedly cost
just over $30 million, but due to the epic scale of the
marketing/advertizing (real-time cinematics, pre-rendered CGI, even a
live-action film were all made purely to advertize the game), this
added a further $30 million onto the production costs. Luckily,
first-day sales in the US reached astounding figures of around $170
million!
6. APB MMO, $50,000,000: This is an upcoming
Massively Multiplayer Online game for Windows that will feature two
opposing playable sides: Enforcement and Criminals, both competing
head-to-head to complete various objectives. Set to be released some
time in 2009, but a beta-test is said to be “very close” with some
registrations already having taken place.
7. Tom Clancy MMO, $50,000,000: Pretty much
anything with “Tom Clancy” in front of it is destined to be a big
seller, and I imagine the developers of this $50 million online game
are hoping the same. Not much else is known besides it being a Clancy
MMO with a large budget, as that is all the CEO of developers Ubisoft,
Yves Guillemot, had to say when he announced the game was in
development.
8. Killzone 2, $40,000,000: Set for a Feb 2009
release, this is the third in the franchise, believe it or not, having
been preceded by Killzone: Liberation on the PSP and with the original
Killzone on the PS2 before that. Originally announced at 2005’s E3 with
a trailer, fans are eager to experience the HD features of Killzone 2,
which will be locked at a reasonable 30 frames per second at 720p.
9. Final Fantasy XII, $40,000,000: The eagerly
anticipated latest installment in arguably Japan’s most popular gaming
franchise managed to sell over 1.7 million copies in its first week in
Japan alone. The game also sold over 1.5 million units in its first
week of release in the US, and with 5 years of development time, it
seems the wait was worth it, making it the tenth best-selling game on
the PS2.
10. Final Fantasy IX, $40,000,000: Released in
‘00/’01 for the PS1, FF9 has since become Japanese gaming magazine
Famitsu’s 4th fastest-selling game of all time, going on to sell over 5
million copies worldwide, with around 2.8 million of those copies being
sold in Japan alone. With the pre-sales of the game topping record
highs even before it had been released, the immense budget and the hype
were seemingly justified!
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