As we reported earliet this week, the budget for Marathon has finally been revealed. Forbes’ Paul Tassi has confirmed that the game cost around $200 million to $250 million to make over the course of eight years. Why did the game cost so much to make?
To put this into further perspective, the budget for Grand Theft Auto V was $265 million. If we go for the higher estimate for Marathon, that is only a $15 million difference between the two games.
Let’s breakdown what Grand Theft Auto V features and why is cost so much. First of all, Grand Theft Auto V has TONS of licensed music, and royalties must be paid for all of the artists that are featured in the game. I cannot remember every artist in the game, but I do remember it featuring Britney Spears and Fergie. Those two artists don’t come cheap.
Another reason Grand Theft Auto V is so expensive is because it’s an open-world video game with lots of details. Rockstar Games has to design lots of buildings, shops, countryside, mountains, houses, an airport, different cars, the sea, some underwater content, planes, helicopters, pedestrians, and much more. There’s lots of details packed in and the whole map is explorable.
GTA V also has a story mode with lots of dialogue, so the voice actors have to be paid a good amount of money. This does not even include other dialogue that some of the citizens of Los Santos have to say in the game either.
I can go on forever, but the last thing I can think about is all of the different animations that have to be done for this game. The game has third-person shooting, driving, flying, golf, tennis, yoga, swimming, and lots of other types of activities. This isn’t just a one genre game with one type of animation.
Now we get onto Marathon and that game has none of the content I mentioned above. There’s no story campaign, there’s not much dialogue, the game has no cool cutscenes, the game only features first-person shooting mechanics, plus the game has only launched with four small maps. Marathon’s maps are much smaller than other live services games.
The only reason I can think of that Marathon cost so much is redesigning the game’s art assets and improving its graphics. People who played the Alpha said the graphics looked underwhelming, so Bungie went back to the drawing board and improved the graphics just before launch. The studio also delayed the game’s launch by six months.
The art assets of the game had to be removed because a Bungie artist was caught plagiarising. Again. Bungie resdesigned the game from scratch and paid the original artist royalties after getting in trouble stealing the art in the first place.
Other than that, I don’t know any other reasons why a live service shooter with small maps and no campaign cost so much money. It’s the same as Concord which cost over $200 million to make as well and took eight years to develop, too.
It will be interesting to know more BTS details of Marathon’s development in order to breakdown its true cost. I still cannot believe the game cost as much as GTA V!
