Crytek has let the details about Crysis 3′s budget slip and I’m blown away by how much money they spent on it. Crysis cost the company $22 million to develop. For a big AAA project that doesn’t seem to outrageous to me, but Crysis 3′s budget is insane.
Crytek has confirmed that Crysis 3 has cost them three times the budget of the original game thus giving it a $66 million price tag. I can’t see any scenario where this is justifiable. I suppose Crytek knows what they’re doing and even if I have no interest in Crysis 3 as a whole I hope they make a good profit on the game. Part of this budget increase must be due to the fact that the original Crysis was developed only for PC and this installment is being made for even more platforms.
But game budgets have gotten out of control in recent years. Projects get more complicated to design and then you need even more staff. I understand this, but something needs to be done to fix this inflating budgets. I believe most developers, even AAA developers should aim for less than $30 million for a large scale project.
Perhaps games will need shorter development cycles, maybe loads of people will need to be fired or relocated if they can’t get a good job done in a smaller time frame. I just can’t see the gaming industry booming with creative new IPs like during past generations if big budget console games are going to cost in excess of $40 million.
I can’t imagine how much budgets will increase when game consoles support 4K resolutions in a decade.
Crysis 3 cost $66 million to make,
