10 Most Expensive Video Games Of All Time

3. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - $200 Million

As regular as Christmas, every year we get a new Call Of Duty title, every year we fall over ourselves trying to ram it in our consoles as quickly as humanly possible, and every year Activision suits sit smugly in the boardroom, counting their money and celebrating yet another sales record broken. Most copies sold; fastest selling of all time; most cumulative hours spent online; least innovative multiplayer - the list goes on. They say you have to spend money to make money, which makes it odd then to see that only one Call Of Duty titles makes it onto this Top 10 list. Because they're clearly making money... but somehow not always spending it in a proportionate fashion? Either it doesn't cost as much to drape yet another "worldwide warfare" setting over the same tired gameplay, or Activision is just more cagey than most when it comes to revealing their figures. Still, what we do know is that 2009's mega-selling Modern Warfare 2 cost the publisher a fat pile of cash. Infinity Ward got their share, don't worry - development costs here supposedly ran up to around $50 million. And fair play to them, as this was probably the most enduring and enthralling of the Modern Warfare titles to come before or since. But it's the marketing and launch budget that hurls this shooter into third spot on the list: a whopping $150 million was allocated to getting the word out, to firing up that hype machine, and to getting the game into as many hands as possible. That may sound like an exorbitant budget for marketing and launch, but it all makes sense when you look at the sales figure headlines that flooded the internet within days of the game landing in stores. First day sales of $310 million in the US and UK. And that was just day one. Infinity Ward's Mark Rubin put total worldwide sales in the 28-29 million area overall in an interview with The Guardian, so while Modern Warfare 2 is clearly one of the most expensive games ever made, it's also one of the biggest selling of all time.