And yet another title from the Rockstar Games stable cracks the $100 million mark. At number 6 we have the moody noir action drama Max Payne 3, which rung up a bill of $105 000 000, according to industry analysts. By this point we're getting a bit blasé about a figure like $105 million, so let's give it some context: if you were to spend all of that on Big Macs, and pile them one on top of another, the pile would stretch up, well, bloody high. Let's not get bogged down by the details. It's a lot of money, that's the point. It's also important that we remember where figures and estimates like these come from. For a total like Max Payne 3's $105 mill, an analyst would take the number of staff on the development team, multiply it by the average annual income per developer, and then multiply that by the (close enough to) 5.25 years it took to make the game. In other words, there is guesswork here it's not an exact science. Still, whether that estimate is 5 or even 10 million off the mark, we're still talking about a considerable price tag for Mr. Payne's latest outing. Rockstar would have felt it too, knowing that to break even they would have to sell around 4 million copies. Which they did, but only a year later. Not quite the propane-fuelled sales explosion we're used to seeing from something with a Rockstar logo on the box. It's understandable though - five years was a long time to wait for a game series which, before the third title arrived, hadn't sold far more than around 7 million copies overall.
Game-obsessed since the moment I could twiddle both thumbs independently. Equally enthralled by all the genres of music that your parents warned you about.
