Video game development budgets are becoming increasingly vast, as we already know. And now we have some information showing just how big those budgets are getting in the form of Gears of War: E-Day.
According to Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming, on the latest episode of the Insider Gaming podcast, he has heard that Gears of War: E-Day’s development budget is upwards of $400 million dollars.
Gears of War’s budget is insane. Like, I’ve heard upwards of $400 million dollars. That budget is absolutely insane for Gears.
Now, there are some caveats to this report: it’s unclear if that development budget contains things such as marketing, bonuses for staff or the studio, or anything else.
Regardless, that’s an incredible amount of money to throw at the next Gears of War game, which is reported to have a 14-hour campaign. And that means the game will have to sell millions upon millions of copies to even break even. In fact, some very quick and dirty math suggests roughly 5.7 million copies would have to be sold at $70 just to break even, which is a huge ask when Game Pass is available. Of course, the existence of Game Pass also means Microsoft uses varying metrics to measure success that we are not privy to.
That level of sales is a big ask for a franchise that isn’t as relevant as it once was, which pains me to say because I’m a huge Gears fan. And it’s going to be an even bigger ask now that it isn’t coming to PS5 anymore.
