[Kotaku] Bungie's 'Destiny' costs $500 million to make

[deathjester]

99 million development.

400 million marketing.

Rest pizza.

 

Bingo.

 

Biggest part of the budget is for IGN/Kotaku and all the other crappy console "game review sites"  to write an article every day before and after release. See Elder Scrolls Online and Titanfall for an example. IGN is still running a near daily piece on both games (LOL).  Let's play Elder Scrolls Online! Today we did a dungeon it was awesome, and it in no way was a copy/paste of another dungeon.

 

 

Supposedly ESO was like 200-300 million? Yeah I think we know where that money went. Other than huge deals with the "review sites", prob another 50 million for 11 dollar an hour astroturfers to flood the ign forums with "not on pc, pc sucks, this is the best game ever". I laughed pretty hard at all the new account creation upvotes on IGN review agreeing with posts like "Elder Scrolls Online is the best game ever".

 

Welcome to the modern big release game. BS reviews, astroturfers, mediocre games (because they can), while people buy the hell out of the title. Then the people say "I am not going to buy the next one" and they pre order the crap out of the next Dragon's Age, Mass Effect etc. after IGN pumps up the game to G.O.A.T. status.  

 

Indies...you are our only hope.

[Scionyde]

Completely different genre, SC is FPS and Destiny is an MMO.

 

Eh, last I checked, one of the main components of SC is a massively multiplayer persistent world - seems pretty MMO-y to me.

[Rmlk2ei]

I think Bungie's reputation precedes their work. Halo was amazing, the marathon series before that was pretty good as well. (Thou i didnt like halo reach, seemed to me like their "touch" to making great games was fading, lucky they moved on after reach)

Regarding the issues with PC, they did mention a possibility but unlikely, i would agree that a game designed for pc then ported would be better for the graphics as then it can be scaled down for the weaker hardware systems. 

500 million is quite an astronomical amount and with regards to marketing which i didnt see a bunch, i guess its either for majority of the game, or for the entire (10 year) development run, no specific details on that so not much to comment on.

I believe that Bungie will do a good job, i dont think it deserves to be put under the typical stereotype of COD triple AAA game money milking machine.
But then, i guess i'll see when it does come out, whether Bungie will continue making fantastic games or will they fall into the pit of COD etc.

[ShadowCaptain]

I hope this game fails spectacularly. 

 

That is harsh. Hoping for ANY game to fail is bad for the industry and for us gamers. We dont want people losing jobs, studios shutting, or for more bad games to be made.

 

Just because you dont like it doesnt mean that it shouldnt sell well. A lot of people have spent a lot of time and money on something

[deathjester]

That is harsh. Hoping for ANY game to fail is bad for the industry and for us gamers. We dont want people losing jobs, studios shutting, or for more bad games to be made.

 

Just because you dont like it doesnt mean that it shouldnt sell well. A lot of people have spent a lot of time and money on something

 

And? Those workers are probably underpaid, working insane deadlines and could make better games outside gigantic companies, or work for other companies that treat them better. People have left Naughtydog and Activision/Blizzard for Riot and I don't blame them at all. Riot is considered one of the best places to work at in the world.

 

Screw these giant studios who treat their workers like crap and these giant games with advertising up the wazoo, hype for months on end and BS high reviews for mediocre games.

 

If EA folded? I would do a dance and celebrate. If Activision folded? Hip thrusts. Bungie who keeps the game off the PC while putting it on the Xbox One? Give me a break. Titanfall sold like a whole 1.5 million copies on Xbox One. There are only 4 million of those machines in peoples homes and no one is buying that brick. It was kept off the PC for a reason, so the hell with Bungie. I hope the game fails and the company fails and the Xbox fails, and Sony continues to hemorrhage developers, writers and artists. 

 

Talented people will find work. These massive costing games are stupid. Bioware started as a small company and made fantastic games...until they got bought up by EA and sucked. Competition is good. These large studios have no competition and their releases are staggered with a month or more of hype. They just spend all their money on one big game, advertise it up the arse, and then when you don't like it? They pay Colin Moriarty at IGN to make a video calling you all entitled gamers when you call out the games flaws.  GOOD studios like Projekt Red tell their shareholders to kiss their arse and delay the game to make it better. These other studios? Put out sequels, and rushed crap, while talented people say the hell with it and leave. See Bioware as an example. Two producers who made Bioware what it is? Gone. Lead writer for KOTOR, Mass Effect 1 and co lead on 2? Gone. 

 

[ShadowCaptain]

SNIP

I agree with you to some extent, and perhaps on the whole it would improve things within the industry. There are some nasty devs out there that probably deserve what comes to them

 

But I still do not agree with the attitude, I am sorry, I still do not with for them to fail. I would rather see them turn things around and improve, for the sake of their employees, for the sake of themselves continuing to exist, and for us gamers to have some great experiences made by talented people. 

 

That is all I was trying to say.

[deathjester]

I agree with you to some extent, and perhaps on the whole it would improve things within the industry. There are some nasty devs out there that probably deserve what comes to them

 

But I still do not agree with the attitude, I am sorry, I still do not with for them to fail. I would rather see them turn things around and improve, for the sake of their employees, for the sake of themselves continuing to exist, and for us gamers to have some great experiences made by talented people. 

 

That is all I was trying to say.

 

Don't worry about them man. You think the people who left these massive companies for companies like Riot are crying?

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-25-tech-companies-to-work-at-in-2013-2013-7?tru=J6TXs#4-riot-games-is-the-place-to-be-if-you-want-to-work-in-the-gaming-industry-22

 

Bungie just fired the Halo composer. They could care less about these people. Maybe he got into a argument with Sir Paul freakin McCartney. Why the hell is Paul McCartney working on a video game soundtrack in the first place. I am going to laugh if it is "Live and Let Die" dubbed over dubstep. It is an MMO/shooter, you are going to be talking to people anyways. This is how stupid the budgets are getting on these games. Do you think the budgets are going to the company employees? Nope. 

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27053860

 

You know what is funny here? Police Quest 3 from the old company Sierra had the guy who made the Miami Vice Soundtrack work on their game. That was a PC exclusive in PC gamings infancy. It wasn't like this guy got paid a ton. Games got celebs to come to their game or voice act their game because those celebs were fans of good games. Not because they said here is a 10 million. Call of Duty has Snoop Dog and Kevin Spacey? Is Snoop Dog a big COD player? Kevin Spacey? These budgets are out of control, those budgets are passed on to the consumer with incomplete games and DLC up the @$^. I hope the whole industry collapses like it did in the past. Know what happened? PC never ran out of games. We had tons. Now those awesome developers have been killed off by companies like EA. 500 million dollar budget for a game? How are they going to get their money back. 4 million Xbox One's, 7 million PS4's. What is this game going to cost? 200 bucks with the DLC, and then another 15-30 a month through microtransactions, because they also have to pay for servers and bandwidth?

 

What is wrong with cheap voice actors? KOTOR was a much better game than Mass Effect 3. It didn't have celebrities in it, but that didn't matter. Half the time these celebs phone it in or just aren't that good at voice acting anyways. How about ESO spends less on a few a list celebs for the first 10 minutes of the game and gets 20 voice actors instead so that you don't hear the same 3 throughout the rest of the game? 

 

[JAKEBAB]

It's bungie they made halo which is some how a huge success so doubt this will be especially with all the halo fanboys personally not even going to bother getting it I know I'll hate it I hated halo I'm deff going to hate this.

[TopWargamer]

How can you spend 500 Million USDs on making a game which will be graphically shit?...

Current footage of Destiny shows otherwise. It looks very good. Plus, it's not all about the graphics.

[TopWargamer]

It's bungie they made halo which is some how a huge success so doubt this will be especially with all the halo fanboys personally not even going to bother getting it I know I'll hate it I hated halo I'm deff going to hate this.

So far Destiny is looking to be quite a bit different from Halo.

[TopWargamer]

I hope this game fails spectacularly.

Why?

[ShadowCaptain]

Current footage of Destiny shows otherwise. It looks very good. Plus, it's not all about the graphics.

 

 

So far Destiny is looking to be quite a bit different from Halo.

 

 

 

Agree, its actually one of few games I am quite looking forward to. I hope its as good as their ambitions

[TopWargamer]

Completely different genre, SC is FPS and Destiny is an MMO.

Destiny is not an MMO. It's not even being marketed as such. Bungie has said time and time again that Destiny is a 'shared world' shooter. Destiny is using the same multiplayer components that Journey used, which was that a few people can drop in and out of your game at any given time without the need for loading screens. That's what they mean by 'shared world.' I believe that Bungie said that the max amount of players at any given time is 8, or something like that.

[NInety]

Destiny is not an MMO. It's not even being marketed as such. Bungie has said time and time again that Destiny is a 'shared world' shooter. Destiny is using the same multiplayer components that Journey used, which was that a few people can drop in and out of your game at any given time without the need for loading screens. That's what they mean by 'shared world.' I believe that Bungie said that the max amount of players at any given time is 8, or something like that.

Eh, I guess I should stop believing everything I hear about games before they come out. 

[JAKEBAB]

So far Destiny is looking to be quite a bit different from Halo.

I know but i just know im not going to like it even if its different its still probs going to be targeting the halo audience and its futuristic i hate future games.

[ACatWithThumbs]

If it really costs that much it will be a huge fail.
New IPs always have bad sale numbers.
Titanfall as an example didn't even sell 1million copies yet and that game had huge hype and marketing.
They would need sales like Assassins Creed to even get any profit which they won't get.



 

[bac06]

500 millions and no pc version considering the xbone flop and the pc games making more money in 2014/2015?

 

 

lel

[MaverickPT]

and not even 1 million for a pc port... makes sense 

[AlexGoesHigh]

500 millions and no pc version considering the xbone flop and the pc games making more money in 2014/2015?

 

 

lel

well they were working on it, before both console got announced, so they didn't knew the xbone flop, also the project started in a very small form around the time they started with halo 3 (like concepts and such) and when they went full steam on it was in 2010, which by some was a semi stagnant year of pc gaming vs console, so by the time they started they didn't knew the massive reversal it happened in the last 4 years

[One Who Craves Souls]

They expect a lot for this game... not interested in a last gen game. <_<

[jmaster299]

They never dismissed a PC version. They just said that as of right now there won't be one, because they already have their studio split up into multiple teams to make 4 versions of the game. 

 

 

 

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-28-bungie-explains-why-theres-still-no-pc-version-of-destiny

 

There's still hope. 

Are you incapable of reading? My brother works for Bungie, has worked for Bungie for years. There will be no PC version of Destiny developed by Bungie, ever, period, end of story, stop hoping. Nothing pisses of the people at Bungie more than asking them about releasing Destiny on PC. They never did it for Halo, and it won't happen with Destiny. The 0.000001% exception is if Activision licenses another studio to do it for them, just like Halo 2 being released on PC (Vista only) via Games for Windows Live without help from Bungie. But, with Destiny requiring constant support and central servers, that will likely never happen. That plus Bungie still owns the rights to the Destiny property, unlike Halo.

[Misanthrope]

If it really costs that much it will be a huge fail.

New IPs always have bad sale numbers.

Titanfall as an example didn't even sell 1million copies yet and that game had huge hype and marketing.

They would need sales like Assassins Creed to even get any profit which they won't get.

 

Marketing goes a long way, specially when you have deep pockets to make it rain: See Titanfall.

[TopWargamer]

Are you incapable of reading? My brother works for Bungie, has worked for Bungie for years. There will be no PC version of Destiny developed by Bungie, ever, period, end of story, stop hoping. Nothing pisses of the people at Bungie more than asking them about releasing Destiny on PC. They never did it for Halo, and it won't happen with Destiny. The 0.000001% exception is if Activision licenses another studio to do it for them, just like Halo 2 being released on PC (Vista only) via Games for Windows Live without help from Bungie. But, with Destiny requiring constant support and central servers, that will likely never happen. That plus Bungie still owns the rights to the Destiny property, unlike Halo.

1) Bullshit.

2) I highly doubt that Bungie gets mad that people are asking for a PC version. They're more than likely glad that there's a large enough demand for their game to come to another platform.

3) They did do it with Halo...a couple of them.

http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Combat-Evolved-PC/dp/B00009TW6R/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399509203&sr=8-1&keywords=halo+combat+evolved+pc

http://www.amazon.com/Halo-2-PC/dp/B000NV8F58/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399509207&sr=8-1&keywords=halo+2+pc

4) Bungie is in a better position to do a PC version of Destiny because they're with Activision now. Activision is a multi-platform publisher, whereas Microsoft did publish some games to PC, but not nearly to the same extent that they did with Xbox games. Bungie use to be a Microsoft owned studio, and one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows, so of course Microsoft would more than likely limit Bungie to making Halo only for the Xbox.

5) You're too damn closed minded. It's not certain if it's coming to the PC or not yet. All Bungie said was that for now there won't be a PC version, but they never completely dismissed a PC version.

 

Here's that very relevant quote again:

"I wish it was that simple. It's pretty complicated. That doesn't mean it can't happen in the future, it just means it won't happen right now."

[TopWargamer]

also the project started in a very small form around the time they started with halo 3 (like concepts and such)

I heard it went back as far as the Halo 2 days, although only with Jason Jones thinking up some stuff. Just a rumor floating around that was backed up by some kind of proof. A video or something back from the Halo 2 days with Jason Jones wearing the Destiny logo, or something like that? I don't quite remember what the rumor was, but either way, Destiny has been in the works for a while. 

[jmaster299]

1) Bullshit.

2) I highly doubt that Bungie gets mad that people are asking for a PC version. They're more than likely glad that there's a large enough demand for their game to come to another platform.

3) They did do it with Halo...a couple of them.

http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Combat-Evolved-PC/dp/B00009TW6R/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399509203&sr=8-1&keywords=halo+combat+evolved+pc

http://www.amazon.com/Halo-2-PC/dp/B000NV8F58/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399509207&sr=8-1&keywords=halo+2+pc

4) Bungie is in a better position to do a PC version of Destiny because they're with Activision now. Activision is a multi-platform publisher, whereas Microsoft did publish some games to PC, but not nearly to the same extent that they did with Xbox games. Bungie use to be a Microsoft owned studio, and one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows, so of course Microsoft would more than likely limit Bungie to making Halo only for the Xbox.

5) You're too damn closed minded. It's not certain if it's coming to the PC or not yet. All Bungie said was that for now there won't be a PC version, but they never completely dismissed a PC version.

 

Here's that very relevant quote again:

1. It's a fact and I even provided Slick with the contact info of who to speak to at Bungie about doing a possible live Q&A for Destiny. I also got approval from Linus as well.

2. Yes, they do get pissed, I know this being related to one. When I spoke to my brother about the possible Q&A, he said that the PC question would be off limits as they consider it asked and answered.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/134083-Destiny-Wont-Launch-on-PC-Because-it-Would-be-Too-Much-Work

 

http://kotaku.com/sounds-like-destiny-probably-wont-be-coming-to-pc-1459143086

3. I already mentioned the Halo PC games, but they were NOT ported by Bungie. They were ported by Microsoft, like I said.

 

4. Activision has nothing to do with the actual development of the game, other than money. It is being being developed 100% in house by Bungie employees at their studio in Washington. Just like EA had nothing to do with the development of Titanfall, other than money.

5. I am not being closed minded. My statements are being made based on being related to a Bungie employee who has been working on Destiny for over 3 years now. Bungie's company policy as of right now is Destiny will not be ported to PC.