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For a second, I thought Rare was making an Avengers game or something.
It's not out of the realm. Rdr2 probably had one. 1000 people at 100k a year for 5 years
I'm pretty sure this day in age the total cost per employee(wage, insurance, office space, and work space expenses like electrical and rent) is over 125k per year at this point.
For halo assuming average cost per employee I's 100k and assuming 5 year dev time
300 people=150 million budget
400 people= 200 million budget
500 people =250 million budget
600 people = 300 million
700 people =350 million
So I would guess the development budget is 250 millionish. At least 200 million. I think 100k is lowballing it for total employee expenses. Between 343 and skybox labs I'm guessing a little under 500 people working on the game from start to finish. If the number was only around 200 people at the start I think it will even out because it appears the amount of people on it now is approaching 600.
Cheers but it doesn't appear to be available in my country, ah well.
If they managed to find talent in Mediterranean or Eastern countries, not at all. In countries like Spain and Italy, most Senior Designers are being payed as much as 35-40k a year. Senior. Also, office expenses & resources would also be cheaper, and cities like Barcelona and Milan offer awesome tech hubs and overall environment.
I guess it's more about control and having studios closer, so for them it's easier to travel within the US and to UK rather than having to visit 6 different countries.
It's pretty simple math. Just got to know the amount of people on the game to get a rough idea of the budget.
Exactly.
It's about time MS stopped looking at this as hubs and instead as a big worldwide family of studios
Maybe try Australia or New Zealand? though seems never heard any good studios in these 2 countries.
Off the top of my head
AU team cherry (hollow knight)
NZ Aurora44 (ashen)
Team Bondi who made LA Noire. But they're gone now sadly.
2k Australia did borderlands: pre sequel I believe. But also they don't exist anymore unfortunately. Wages are way too high in Australia. It makes little sense to open a studio here when you can do it cheaper elsewhere.
Standarized paid for MS does not mean an engineer with the same skills is getting paid the same in Portugal and in the US. (I think, correct me if wrong)
its a bit more complex than that, but again only 343 will know the real cost.
the 125k per employee you came up with is not pretty simple math though.
Marketing makes up a huge portion of game budgets nowadays. Consider that a large scale YouTube campaign could be $250k per day , a super bowl ad being $5million and a TV as during the appropriate timing will be 10's of thousands each time it is shown.
Now imagine you need to do that in multiple countries.
In the UK for example, if you want to do all the advertising expected for say, washing powder or nappies they won't spend less than 30million otherwise the effectiveness is reduced to being almost a whisper.
This is why AAA gaming is open to nobody but the biggest publishers nowadays, who have income from services besides just the game they are selling.
Pandemic, who did The Saboteur also had an office here in Aus... but they're gone too, sadly.
De Blob was made here too, but they closed down too.
It's a shame, we've got a decent national pool of really talented folks, but they end up making mobile games.
I was roaming around at Artstation and found several concept arts related to the early development of Crackdown 3. I didn't even know that Jeremy Cook (previously art director at 343 and now working at Blizzard) was also involved in the project.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/A92vZz
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/A92vZz
Games marketing is cheaper today, because TV ads are not that important anymore.
It's content creators and press articles, you get for "basically free"
If your game is good streamer will play it for free and you don't have to pay them.
E3 is "free marketing" if you consider the costs to run the should would be there anyway.
Microsofts marketing strategy shifted a lot during the last few years.
They don't even spend stupid money on third party deals anymore.
(US only)
Sea of Thieves panel at EGX, starts at 2:10:36. They talk about the anniversary update, they let some details and impressions from the media event slip along the way. The most interesting detail being that Tall Tales exceed a lot of the journalists expectations, they got lots of cool comments (2:20:03.) Christopher Dring (The interviewer, GamesIndustry.Biz) was at Rare this week and said he was surprised by the production values, apparently they are using professional voice actors rather than the studio staff this time.
Wow. I don't even see Oculus or King ads. Granted, I don't watch much TV nowadays.Games marketing is cheaper today, because TV ads are not that important anymore.
It's content creators and press articles, you get for "basically free"
If your game is good streamer will play it for free and you don't have to pay them.
E3 is "free marketing" if you consider the costs to run the should would be there anyway.
Microsofts marketing strategy shifted a lot during the last few years.
They don't even spend stupid money on third party deals anymore.
(US only)
Games marketing is cheaper today, because TV ads are not that important anymore.
It's content creators and press articles, you get for "basically free"
If your game is good streamer will play it for free and you don't have to pay them.
E3 is "free marketing" if you consider the costs to run the should would be there anyway.
Microsofts marketing strategy shifted a lot during the last few years.
They don't even spend stupid money on third party deals anymore.
(US only)
interesting
Cool interview. Joe says its about a 50% split between sales/gamepass.
Microsoft announced over five million players back in July. Since then its contined to see popularity spikes.
Which means SOT has probably sold around 3 million?
Kinda is total expenses for a US employee is usually 20-30% over there wages. That's for insurance and workman's comp, etc. that doesn't include costs for putting them in an office space and building costs like rent and what not.
So if the average 343 employee is in the 70-80k range total expenses per employee should be a bit over 100k a year.
To be honest I expect the game to have many more players than 6 Mio by now. That 5 Mio is almost one year old. The game keeps being in the top 5 of Game Pass titles and - as you said - saw many popularity spikes. I expect the game getting closer to 10 Mio players every day, with the Anniversary Update just another big boost towards that number.
Eh, few games double their populations post launch. I don't know if Sea of Thieves is one of them, even with the boon of Game pass.
I agree. But reaching 7 or 8m would probably warrent a press release.
Shrouded Spoils probably gave the game a decent boost. My guess at this points SOT is well north of 6m players.
Which means 3.5m game sales is probably the best estimate atm.
Yea, that sounds about right. It would really surprise me if the game wouldn't hit 10 Mio this year with the Anniversary Update, Arena and so on.
If it was at 8m, that seems like something Microsoft would announce publicly.
It's incredible that Sea of Thieves has a good chance at reaching the upper echelon of best-selling Rare games. Goldeneye or DKC will be hard to reach, but beating DKR, DKC2 and DK64's 5 million units is far from impossible. It could even beat Kinect Sports and become Rare's best selling Xbox title ever.
Maybe they're holding off on announcing updated player numbers until the Anniversary update hits.
I don't think so. They aren't doing these updates with FH4 neither every month - and I think we both can agree this game will have MUCH higher numbers by now than last announced.
Maybe we get an update on the Anniversary trailer - or at E3. I think it makes sense to announce 10 Mio - but announcing numbers for every full million at random times seems ... Senseless.
It makes sense to announce the player base at E3, because they're going to announce next DLC.
Ya I'm really impressed with SOT's performance. Rare really stuck with the game, give them major props.
If they shift MP to be free, I can see xCloud access taking its place.
A lot of games do today. Many even quadruple, quintuple and more, because they're made for continued engagement and snowball.
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