RSS
According to this Times interview with Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies, GTA IV may be the most expensive game production of all time.
“It’s like making a theatre production, a few movies and an album all to fit into one package,” he says. He hasn’t a clue how much GTA IV has cost to make but hazards a guess at $100m. About 1,000 people have had a hand in developing it. The perfectionism Houser and Benzies demand of their teams is astonishing.
If true, that means the game was more expensice to create than Yu Suzuki’s Dreamcast opus Shenmue, which rolled in at a hilarious $70 million.
This is the second piece the Times has done on the Benzies interview: you can find the first one here.
Viewing 7 responses
pjmaybe said:
$100 million to make, and it made an estimated $340 million on its first day of sales.
I’d call that a win.
patlike said:
Yep. Can’t really argue with it. I’m going to buy it today, I think. I can’t stand not owning it.
pjmaybe said:
I think even if I’d got a preview copy I’d have still bought it on another format just to see it doing well. Very well deserved sales records, and hopefully a game that’ll set the bar so bloody high for this gen that quite a few other teams will reassess some of the crap they’re churning out this year.
patlike said:
I think it’s going to make a lot of people bringing out games in the third and fourth quarters this year shit themselves, frankly. There’s an awful lot of “next gen” stuff this autumn which really isn’t going to look so clever now.
Blerk said:
You didn’t buy it, Pat? Oh dear! Pat am fail! At least I had an excuse!
pjmaybe said:
“I think it’s going to make a lot of people bringing out games in the third and fourth quarters this year shit themselves, frankly. There’s an awful lot of “next gen” stuff this autumn which really isn’t going to look so clever now.”
Who’d be Volition, Sierra or the 50 cent bozos
Not I.
Blerk said:
There’s an awful lot of “next gen” stuff this autumn which didn’t really look too clever *before*.