If that's the amount, I hope it was for a spending made so far

$100 million is like a ton of money and it's just nuts, a whole lot of nuts.

Why don't game publishers disclose this information? I always know what movie budgets are unless the director funds it out of pocket.

@Royal Swan - It could be for any number of reasons. Defaulting to the most cynical tells us all you've no real idea of what you're talking about.

The header image makes me want to dig out Dunk Hunt 2. Yeah it was pretty easy all around, but I always had a good time with it, from start to finish.

And yes, I know the first one's supposed to be fantastic, but I never got my hands on a copy of it.

NO It's UNCLE SCROOGE Donald Ducks uncle :/ geez Kids today.

@ SBC Slam, I was talking game industry in general I wasn't attacking Blizzard directly. In regards to what I stated I'm not sure if that's the main reason, I'm sorry for coming off so cynical. All I know is from what I see outside the industry.

We constantly hear from devs/pubs that games cost to much. To fix this they need to raise prices. We rarely see $ figures outside of revenue to confirm their claim. We do know games cost more to buy. We do know game companies are making record profits. Shouldn't the new cost to purchase balance out the cost to make? This is one of the main reasons for why I chose as a consumer to purchase second hand only this generation.

@Royal Swan - Hey, man, no need to apologize. I can be a cynical fuck-stick at times, too.

The fact is, though, that it honestly could be any number of things. They could have purchased resources at a drastically reduced price, and part of their contract with the supplier is that they aren't allowed to actually state what the monetary terms of their exchange were.

It could, in fact, be that they prefer the advantage that it affords them with their customers left in the dark, however there are glaring issues with this opinion. First, Blizzard isn't charging an arm and a leg for the game. It's a pretty standard $50-60 price on it, so letting consumers know how much it cost to develop would be a positive action to take, from a marketing point of view. I mean, the game clearly cost a great deal to make, and telling your customers that you spent X million on a game that you're then charging the standard rate for would certainly bolster public opinion.

Then again, Blizzard could charge $70-80 dollars for the game and people would still buy it. In this second scenario, telling us what it cost to develop could still have a positive spin placed on it, appealing to the greater rationale of the consumer, and proving that price reflects cost, but threat they are also getting "more" for their money.

A wide variety of producers take one of these two actions, particularly as it applies to games and movies, and so it's no surprise that you asked about them.

The fact is that most of the time, companies really aren't trying to stick their large, made-out-of-cash-and-diamonds dicks in our asses. ;-)

Well, like a lot of time to make the game so sure is not that cheap, still, normally people that doesn't actualize on games info thinks that some game of some company is made with assloads of money, WoW is still Blizzard's strongest trump and all the server things and expansions are like you put a dollar in a jar, day by day, first you got nothing, and POOF, in 5 or 6 months your jar is going to explode, and seeing how usually Blizzard updates WoW, well, there you go, still, I do belive that they spended, like a HELL OF A LOT on Starcraft II, but not that much

@Royal Swan - That's an OK opinion to have. I didn't say you're not allowed to think that. I simply offered a counter argument. I agree with you that it's hard not to see it that way, but we all need to concede that we don't have a complete picture where THIS sort of thing is concerned.

Simply put, we don't really know why they aren't telling us how much it cost.

$100 million for WoW could be cumulative, which includes bandwidth, development on the expansions, GM payroll, etc. The game has been rolling for a long time now so I have no trouble believing this.

Starcraft2, however... If you take out advertising, I'd expect costs to be around 15 mil. Over 25 mil would be ridiculously expensive, considering the cheap-to-make nature of RTS'.

if it didn't cost the 100 million to develop WOW it would be the scam of the century- they have profited far far in excess of that 100 million so if they were to somehow be able to develop a project that is profit with little to no expenditures everyone needs to take a real close look at their business model to learn something