10 Gaming Industry Secrets You Didn't Know
6. The Marketing Budget Can Be Several Times The Production Budget
You might know that it's common for gigantic Hollywood blockbusters such as the Avengers movies and Justice League to boast colossal promotional budgets, with studios spending almost as much on marketing as they do producing the sheer movie itself.
But in the world of video games, the ratio from production to marketing costs is completely different, with the actual production budget of video games often being just a fraction of what publishers spend on promotion.
Take the most expensive video game of all time to date, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. While produced for $50 million - a relatively modest price tag for a AAA title - Activision spent a stonking $200 million on manufacturing and marketing the game worldwide.
Given that it made over $1 billion in revenue within a few months of its release, it was clearly money well spent.
But it's not just the big-hitters which spend substantially more on selling the game than they do making it - Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain was produced for approximately $20 million, while marketing costs were reportedly more than double that.
This model obviously doesn't apply for all games - especially smaller indies with just a few team members - but the financial disparity between making art and selling it is, frankly, shocking.