The Old Republic has had more than 300 million dollars invested into it...

[Mkilbride]

And is set to fail, according to Industry specialists. Yes, more expensive than Avatar. You saw the videos? They said 2/3rds of that was spent on SOUND! ON SOUND! Now someone is pocketing that money, I believe...

http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/ea-artist-soon-to-be-laid-off-burns-ea-management-1903

 

[-Origin]

Goddamn John Williams.

 

[Spunky]

I read the article, was highly skeptical. I read the comments, immediately laughed at the article.

 

[Sicron]

300 Million? I call bull****. The last game that had an enormous budget was the Godfather, with a budget of...70-ish million and most of that was spent on the license. Now this game would do that fourfold? It will undoubtly cost a lot, but nowhere close to a 300 million dollars.

 

[Spunky]

Before now, GTA IV was the most expensively produced videogame in history, with a $100,000,000 budget.

Given the amount of voice actors they contracted to work on The Old Republic, I wouldn't be surprised if they had pockets that deep. They've been talking about the game's amazing voiceover work since it was announced, with one developer even going as far as calling it "... the largest voiceover project in entertainment history."[1] If that's actually true, they'll probably surpass $300,000,000 before development finishes. I for one am excited, as this is the first fully voiced MMO in history. They've scored major points for the immersion factor.

 

[Z Power]

I'd rather have them spend that much on designing innovative gameplay. While i like actually listening to mission briefings before embarking on a quest, once the combat starts, all the immersion would start to fall apart. Although too early to say anything, i have my dibs on Guild Wars 2 for doing something different from the gameplay perspective. We'll see how it turns out.

 

[Mkilbride]

Guild Wars 2 man, yeah. Good gameplay, good graphics, awesome story. Nothing bad coming from it, as far as I can see.

I was hoping TOR would be good, honestly, kinda like Jedi Academy / Battlefront style, but online, with an epic story. It's out-dated mechanics hold no appeal to me.

And 300 million for what we saw in the preview videos? Gah, that's insane. Think about it, they'll have to charge 100$ a copy, and 30$ a month, or else they'll not make the money back. Could spell the end for BioWare if this fails. They have a good track record, but ANY 300 million dollars failure could wreck most companies.

 

[Spunky]

Really? Remember when GTA IV was released? Rockstar earned more than triple their investment in sales gross within the first 24 hours after the game's release. This is a cash machine for BioWare, they'll make their money back. Speculating at this point as to whether it'll happen fast is pointless.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/146018/gta_iv_sales_set_guinness_record.html