17 Most Expensive Video Games Ever Created

As the video game industry is growing and growing so is the cost of developing video games as gamers expectations increase and here are the top 17 most expensive video games to develop to date.

[Hardiman]

Yeah in most of the cases we know the marketing budget trumps the development costs. Modern Warefare 2's was $200 million in marketing compared to $50 million to develop. That's insane!

[Zero_Suit_Samus]

That’s crazy.

Star Wars: The Old Republic was the most expensive game ever made since the actual development cost was $200 million. No numbers on the additional marketing cost.

[BenPhillips99]

Yep lol

[bluefox755]

Yeah, this list includes marketing, which may be a bit misleading to some. Based purely on development costs, Star Wars: The Old Republic is #1, at $200 million. Second most expensive is currently the unfinished Star Citizen at over $170 million, and 3rd place is GTA5 at $137 million.

[Kleptic]

It's hard to use crowd funding in this example, imo at least.

When 'real' publishers front a budget for a game pitch, there are rules involved...not crazy unheard of rules, just, in most cases, something concrete has to be made available in the form of milestones of development or something.

All i'm getting at is that 170 million and rising for Star Citizen still hasn't net an actual game. When the publisher is just 'people with money', and the rights, licensing, user agreements, etc., are just made up on the fly as you go along...it's more of an example of how to waste money, than actually applying a given budget to the development of a game that will make a profit.

Not sure of how star citizen works; do backers get the finished game for free eventually? Or are these investors required to buy the 'real' game in the future when it happens? Either way, guaranteed star citizen went to crowd sourcing when given publishers gave a 'yeah right' at some point...and so far they've been proven correct in the business sense.

[Imalwaysright]

And then some developers have the nerve to tell us, gamers, that they need to feed their families and ask us to be ok with MTs/loot boxes. If they want more money then they need to take it up to their publishers.

[fenome]

It's sad when they're spending 4x the amount of money trying to convince people to buy it than they're spending on actually creating it. That pretty much sums up a lot about the industry right now. It's all about that quick buck, make the trailers flashy and cool and then just patch in the gameplay later. No heart, no passion, it's all just big business.

[Marcello]

Shenmue didnt cost 70, it was 47. This has been stated by Yu Suzuki himself.

[bluefox755]

Sega said it cost $70, Yu said $47. Maybe Sega was including marking and Yu was not?

[Concertoine]

I think the 70 million figure also includes Shenmue 2

[InMyOpinion]

Horizon Zero Dawn was probably also pretty costly to develop. And GT Sport, considering how many years it took to get released.

[CyberSentinel]

Imagine what the last guardian, must of cost.

[Seraphim]

the difference is that Team Ico is relatively small. There's a big difference between that and a larger team. Payroll alone would be much smaller even though it took significantly longer.

[CyberSentinel]

@Seraphim

I wasn’t aware of that, thanks for the info.

[InMyOpinion]

Lol. Why the downvotes?

[franwex]

Rockstar games cost a lot. They spare no expense. I understand for GTA, but overv$100 million even on Max Payne, and Red Dead?

[BenPhillips99]

Yep marketing included

[Seraphim]

yeah, because marketing is included this is incredibly misleading. I mean they probably spent a good 30-50 million on each game just in marketing.

[dreamoner]

New Vegas - $9 million to development - $45 million to marketing.