It takes hundreds of people, thousands of hours, and millions of dollars to create the massive AAA games that we have today. The video game industry has come a long way from the days when a dozen or so people could create a fully-polished, top-of-the-line game in less than a year. When you consider how much cash a game like Super Mario Bros. raked in compared to the relatively little amount of actual money Ninte🎀ndo probably had to spend to develop it, the mind reels at those kinds of profit margins.
That being said, with what a best-selling game can bring on today, it's easy for a publisher to write checks in the tens of millions and still be able to turn a comfortable 🍎profit. The actual development costs of a modern AAA game, even just in terms of having to pay the salaries of those hundreds of people for sometimes several years of work, are staggering— and that's not even taking into account the massive marketing budgets of most of these games. Still, as you'll see in this list, it isn't only games made in this generation, or even the previous generation, that rank among the most expensive ever made.
Now, the figures on this list are based entirely on estimates given by developers and/or publishers, so we could only take them at their word. There are also probably other games that could've made this list, but if there weren't any numbers thrown out by anyone in regard to a particular game, we didn't include it. And finally, these numbers include development and marketing costs and are not adjusted for inflation.
30 Shenmue 💛($59 Million)
We don't bat an eye these days when we find out that a game cost dozens of millions of dollars to develop, but it made headlines in 1999 when it was revealed that Yu Suzuki's Shenmue racked up over $50 million in production costs.
Unfortunately, the gamble didn't end up paying off for the ambitious title, at least not in terms of retail performance. But Shenmue's legacy speaks for itself, and Shenmue 3 wouldn't have raised over $7 million in crowdfunding if people didn🐻't h🍃old the series in high regard.
29 🐎 Gran Turismo 5 ($60 Mi🦂llion)
The original Gran Turismo set a new standard for simulation racing games and remained the torchbearer for the genre for many years. And while Gran Turismo 5 might not be anyone's favorite installment and also marked the beginning of the franchise's🧸 gradual decline, it nonetheless remains the most expensive title in the franchise.
Considering that Gran Turismo 5 ended up becoming the best-selling PlayStation 3 exclusive of all time, it's♋ safe to say that Sony doesn't regret what they spent on it.
28 🎶 Gears Of War: Judgment ($60 Million)
It's almost as if they planned it this way: In 2013, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 pitted both of their signature GoW games— God of War and Gears of War, respectively— against each other in high-profile prequels. On the 360 side, that meant Gears of War: Judgment, the first ဣgame in the franchise not entirely developed in-house by Epic.
If there was one thing Judgment wasn't lacking, it was top-notch production values. As the last Gears game before the series jumped to Xbox One, Judgment definitely pushed the 360 to it🎐s limits as it wished the platform farewell.
27 Rift ($65 Million) ಞ
The problem with trying to enter the MMORPG space is that people who have already put hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours into their old standbys— be it World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, or whatever else— are tough t๊o convin꧟ce to take on another one.
Among the many "lesser-known" MMOs over the years, one of the better-received ones is Rift from developer Trion Worlds. In fact, Rift's publishe💃r reported that it only took about a year for the game to make back its initial development costs, and the game's servers remain active to this day, eight years later.
26 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier ($6🦩5 Million)
There had been video games based on Tom Clancy books going back to the 1980s, but it wasn't until 1996's Tom Clancy's SSN that games began to carry the author's name in their titles. The Tom Clancy's brand now consists not only of various standalone games but a handful of entirely separate franchises, one of the most prolific being Ghost Recon.
With 2012's Future Soldier, Ubisoft spend big bucks to finally make Ghost Recon a huge AAA franchise on the level of Call of Duty. And it's a good game, but certainly didn't sell like a Call of Duty.
25 Crysis 3 ($66 Mi♛llion) ꦚ
Every few years, a game is released that seems years ahead of everything else graphically. One such game was Crysis, made by the team that developed the original Far Cry before Ubisoft Montreal took it over beginning with Far Cry 2. In 2007, if you had a PC that could run Crysis as max settings, you knew you had yourself a top-of-🥀the-line gaming rig.
Unfortunately, Far Cry overtook Crysis in popularity over the years, even with EA spending EA-caliber money to make Crysis 3 a contender. Six years later without another Crysis means that investment didn't pay off.
24 Enter The Ma෴trix ($67 Million)
While now-defunct developer Shiny Entertainment started strong with Earthworm Jim and the groundbreaking MDK— often considered one of the pioneers of zoomable sniper scopes in video games— their 𒐪later output didn't live up 𒊎to those early years.
Shiny became infamous for releasing disappointing games after years of delays. So it probably wasn't the best move to pick a developer infamous for missing deadlines to have to get a AAA Matrix game finished in a very strict time frame. Enter the Matrix performed well 🌳financially, but was criticized by critics and gamers alike for still fe🌌eling unfinished and having game-breaking bugs.
23 𓄧 Watch Dogs ($68 Million)
Given that the Grand Theft Auto franchise is one of the most succes🌠sful media brands of all time— video games or otherwise— it's no big surprise that other companies have trie𒅌d to get in on that action with similar titles.
In 2014, Ubisoft entered Watch Dogs into that arena, sparing no expense in trying to make the game's version of Chicago as authentic as possible— taking place in a real city is something the GTA franchise hasn't gotten to claim since 1999's GTA: London 1961. Watch Dogs broke a lot of sales rౠecords for Ubisoft, meaning iꦉt was money well-spent.
22 Mass Effect: Andromeda𒊎 ($76 Million)
Even though it had only been five years since Mass Effect 3, a lot of people looked at Mass Effect: Andromeda like it was some major return to a franchise from a long time ago. EA knew a lot was riding on Andromeda, and spent accordingly to help ensure its success as the launꦿching point of a whole new series.
When Andromeda failed to live up to critical or commercial expectations, it began to look like Andromeda was just a forgettable one-off follow up rather than the start of a new chapter for Mass Effect.
21 ✱ Too Human ($80 Million)𝄹
Too Human was in development for so long, it was originally supposed to be a PlayStation 1 game. By the time it finally came ou🍸t for Xbox 360, there was little doubt that developer Silicon Knights must have poured a ton of money into it.
And that figure doesn't even include the millions Silicon Knights spent suing Epic Games over disputes related to the Unreal Engine, nor the multi-million dollar judgment Epic won against SK for breach of contract, nor the cost that SK had to incur when ordered to recall and destroy all unsold copies of Too Human.