A lot of children have experienced playing video games at one point or another in their lives. Some of these games are simple and cheap and require only a measly budget to produce. But some of these video games can be somewhat expensive because of the simple fact that production costs are sky high. This article will enumerate those games that were really expensive to produce.
The Top 5 Most Expensive Video Games as of 2012 are as follows:
#1 Grand Theft Auto 4
No game beats Grand Theft Auto 4 when it comes to production values, and creative features the game offers. Over 1,000 people worked on the game for over three and a half years: studying New York city with cameras that recorded city traffic for months, contacted over 2,000 people just to get the rights to the hundreds of music tracks that can be listened to in the game (while driving, of course). Price for each track ran at around $10,000 and that excludes the license and royalty fees. The content in the game is enough to keep the average gamer spend for at least 100 hours, yes 100 effing hours. GTA 4 is the most expensive video game ever made as of 2012 with a budget of $100 million.
#2 Gran Turismo 5
No wonder that what’s set to become the biggest and greatest racing game in history, Gran Turismo, has been in development for over 5 years now, and features over 1,000 cars, each painstakingly recreated for with extreme realism (and perfection) in mind. Its official budget as of mid 2008 was $60 million, and two years later when the game hits the stores, it reached a staggering $80 million, making it the second most expensive video game in the history of mankind.
#3 Shenmue
A game which held the record most expensive video game for nearly 10 years, Shenmue’s budget was unheard of at the time of its development — an unbelievably $70 million budget for a SEGA Dreamcast game. Shenmue offered a vast and explorable area, a complete weather system, and so many fine details and features that games even today don’t have. Given that, many people still failed to notice everything the game had to offer, the game ultimately dropped in sales. It isn’t even recognize unlike other console games though Shenmue is the top 3 most expensive video game ever made.
#4 Too Human
Game budgets, like movie budgets, tend to go over board and the final product ends up costing a lot more than originally planned. Too Human encountered many issues during its development time, chief of which was the long and expensive struggle between Epic Games and the Unreal Engine 3, where developer Silicon Knights abandoned the engine and started making their own — at a time when the game was almost complete. With a budget of $60 million plus, Too Human is the top 4 most expensive video game budget ever.
#5 Metal Gear Solid 4
The biggest, the most beautiful and most complex Metal Gear Solid game, one with hours and hours of cut scenes, amazing production values and one of the best visuals at its time, Metal Gear Solid 4 took four full years to create, at a price tag of $60 million, shared between Kojima Producitons and Sony. Metal Gear Solid ranks fairly as the top 5 most expensive video game budgets ever made.