8 of the Most Expensive Games Ever Produced

Today we give you eight of the most expensive video games ever produced. No surprise that all eight of these games have quite the following. They’re all amazing in their own right. Heck, they paid enough for it.

Rockstar’s old timey masterpiece Red Dead Redemption was made for the tidy sum of $100 million. Mind you this still cost as much as five other games so it’s not a unique snowflake in terms of cost, although it is a unique snowflake in the sense that it’s an amazingly successful game – 12.5 million copies sold – that doesn’t feature much technology at all, which is a nice change from a lot of the games released these days.

Rockstar makes another appearance on this list with Grand Theft Auto IV, one more game that cost $100 million to create. Who knew that a game where you follow around immigrant would do so well, it made $500 million in its first week of release, so obviously the initial investment was worth it.

Disney’s Infinity cost $100 million to develop, it helps that they basically had to create a whole new peripheral for the user to interact with. You can see that the money was used correctly as the game is still going strong, and they keep adding characters for the system. This is like Skylanders, but if only they had a proven character base to pull from.

2012’s smash hit Max Payne comes from perennial money maker Rockstar. They spent $105 million to create this game. Maybe this is why Rockstar is such a success, they produce some of the best AAA games at a huge cost but in the end they’re making money. They wouldn’t make that money if they were making crap games and they’re not. They’re making some of the best games available.

1997’s Final Fantasy VII comes in at fourth on this list with a cost of $145 million. The funny part here is that the development cost $45 million and the marketing cost $100 million. The reason it’s got such a great reputation may be because they paid everyone to say that it’s one of the best games they’ve ever played. Money well spent as it paid off in the end as they’ve sold over 10 million copies, not a bad number.

Number three on the list is Star Wars: The Old Republic, with a production cost of $200 million,not really surprising for an MMO on this scale. This kind of budget makes more sense when you’re working with a world that is going to be holding thousands upon thousands of players. In the end the game looked fantastic, the graphics are a bit dated but you can’t avoid that in a world where technology changes every month.

Number two on the list is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, this epic FPS cost $250 million to make its way into your consoles. The actual development cost around $50 million and the rest was spent on marketing and distribution. Luckily for them the marketing paid off when they made $310 million in its first day of release. If only all games could be so lucky to have that much money for marketing, it also helped that it was a pretty solid game.

It’s no surprise that the most expensive game to produce on this list is a Rockstar game. Grand Theft Auto V cost $265 million to produce, a huge sum of money that created one of the largest sandbox games ever. In Rockstar’s defense it takes a hefty chunk of change to create a massive game with the amount of immersion that they offer. Here’s to future Rockstar games that will almost certainly be more expensive than this wonderful piece of genius.