Ghostbusters cost $15-20 million, devs would love to revisit franchise

by Alexander Sliwinski on Jul 21st 2009 5:50PM

Ghostbusters: The Video Game has allegedly sold over one million copies -- after costing $15-20 million to produce. The figures were revealed in a feature about developer Terminal Reality in the Star-Telegram of Texas. Although the price tag may seem high, it's not unusual for next-gen development. Remember, Ken Levine revealed BioShock cost about $15 million in fancy 2007 dollars.

Terminal Reality's co-founder, Mark Randel, says he's heard the game's success has sparked interest in a third movie and, if that happens, he'd love for the company to handle development of the obligatory tie-in game. Let's see if we got this straight: the next game would be based on the third Ghostbusters movie, spawned by the success of the video game, created to tie in with the 25th anniversary of the first movie and, of course, the game was written as if it were the third movie. We got that right?

Ghostbusters (360/PS3/PC)

[Via Edge]

Source

Tags: Action, atari, DS, ghostbusters, Ghostbusters-The-Video-Game, Mark-Randel, Microsoft, Nintendo, Red-Fly, Red-Fly-Studios, sony, terminal-reality, vivendi, Wii, Xbox-360, Zen-Studios

Reader Comments (55)

thats actually a good amount of profit. say they get 30 bucks for each copy sold, then they made 30 million on a 15-20 million dollar game. and thats a low estimate. of course they would want to make a sequel

Hey you guys forgot to include the PC ta.....oh who the hell cares......

the PC version is supposedly pretty shitty, what with its lack of multiplayer and such

"the PC version is supposedly pretty shitty"

Have you seen the PS3 VERSION???

And they still included those copies in the sales figures...

These devs need to learn how to develop GPU-style... Get some GPU-fu.

Moptimus,

Actually, there are two differences between the PC and console ports; while the PC port lacks multiplayer, it's also $30 cheaper. Furthermore, it's not an incredibly resource intensive game; if you have an HD 4850 or Gefore 9800 GTX+ (or equivalent), there's no reason you couldn't run the game up to 2500x1600 without dipping below a minimum of 30 FPS. The HD 4770 runs it fine at 1920x1200, but the narrow memory bus prevents it from being a 4 mega pixel rendering option. The game does not support AA or AF, but that's an unfortunate product of using deferred rendering; hardware AA and texture filtering simply doesn't work the way it's intended to.

Hello jackal, I've noticed your posts are extremely well detailed and technical and enjoyable to read, from where did you get all this technical know-how? I feel quite confident calling you a PC guru!

I have no where near the technical know-how as you do. Is there a way to enable AA in a game that doesn't support it in the control panel for ATI and Nvidia GPUs? I believe I saw such an option in the Nvidia control panel for my GTX 285.

I believe the PC port of Ghostbusters was quite well, save for the lack of multiplayer altogether, but at least its retail is $30 vs. $50 for a normal PC game vs. $60 for consoles games and console versions of Ghostbusters.

I didn't know Ghostbusters used deferred rendering....=o. But anyway, indeed, AA will not work with deferred rendering because MRT (multiple render targets) do not support it on current hardware. You can do it by using multiple passes instead but that has a heavy performance hit directly proportionaly to scene complexity. I would assume Ghostbusters uses some edge detection to blur edges for a softer look anyway. Shame they didn't include any SSAO.

At least the PS3 version runs. You can't even INSTALL the PC version if you try to do a custom install.

Papa Midnight,

A few games have had the same issues as of late. For whatever reason, the monkeys responsible for porting the game apparently don't realize that some people actually want to install it to a different partition or drive other than the default C:\. This issue is normally crushed with a patch, but I'll agree that it shouldn't even be a problem in the first place.

they made a decent profit.

Ghostbusters stands the test of time again.

STILL not sick of that theme song.

I did hate the song barely shows its face on the game, tho. And where's that dancing scene from the trailer? :S

I'm confused.

Was this any good, rental maybe? i havent really heard to many actual gamers opinions and i dont trust websites reviews

Ghostbusters was good. For those that consider this a "Gears of War lite" this is probably a rental. But for me, I play games slowly and this is not my normal genre. So, it's fun for me.

Not for the PS3... Play the demo on PSN, and that should give you an idea.

If you really liked the movie, it may be worth a rent.

I got it for the PC and was very pleased. Not quite sure where the comment about it being a "best moments of" game comes from. Yeah, it starts with you going after Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow man, but pretty much everything from then on is new and very much in keeping with the feel of the franchise. It really does feel like you're going through the movie.
Now there is a downside to that, and that's length. It isn't a long game by any means. The story is fairly straightforward and easy to follow, which also means it resolves itself fairly quickly. Having paid only $30 for it on Steam I don't have a problem with that, but I can see how one might be annoyed at the length after putting down $60 for one of the console versions. Also, since I was really getting it for the story content I went through on easy the first time, and have found some reaplayability in going through it again on higher difficulties and trying to catch everything I missed the first time through.

If you're a fan of the films, by all means, buy it. If not, it may make for a good rental.

The 360 demo was pretty lame. Can't say I'd even rent it at this point, and I was raised on movies like this and Blues Brothers...

If you have a ps3 do not get it, terminal reality completely ballsed it on the ps3, don't waste your hard earned cash on the crap..

I seriously hope terminal reality have nothing to do with the game if there is another sequel made..

i enjoyed this game. i played it on the 360. i must admit, it is difficult to get into at first. but, once you get the hang of it and learn to deal with its nuances, it isn't bad. i enjoyed the last half of the game way more than the first. also, i wouldn't consider this anything close to gears of war. terminator salvation steals way more gears of war elements than ghostbusters does. it's definitely worth a rental and a couple playthroughs if you have the time (to get the artifacts and professional achievements).

and a little bit more on topic. if there ever will be another ghostbusters game, i wouldn't mind terminal reality dev'ing it. i just hope they don't rehash the current one with a different story. i'd like to feel as if i'm really shooting a proton pack. for some reason, when you shoot, it doesn't seem like you are really doing anything. you just watch the little meter on the ghost and wait till it gets red while dodging the ghost's attacks. then you trap it or it explodes. also, i'd like better visibility of the traps.

I quite enjoyed the PSN demo, once i got over the graphical issues.
Sometimes you just have to turn your internal reviewer off and enjoy the "feel" of a game, and Ghostbusters stuff always tickles the inner child in me.

It was just fun more then anything. If you were part of the craze as a kid (I admit I had the action figures, proton pack and jumpsuit) you'll probably like it.

Pretty solid game, good story, funny dialogue. Froze up my PS3 once or twice though, that could just be me though I've got one of the old 60 GB ones.

Something that I've yet to see mention is the few moments of creepiness. I know I was not looking forward to exploring the childrens wing of the library lol

I can see the price tag here being higher than other similar games given the Hollywood ties that it has. I would imagine that there's a considerable jump in cost versus no name voice actors and well known Hollywood actors.

From what I played it was just a fanboy circle jerk "best of" mish-mash of moments from the first two films. *nudge nudge wink wink*

If there's any actual original content you must have to get pretty far in to reach it.

Makes me think of the Lego: Harry Potter game...

It'll be a game, based on the toys, based on the movies, based on the books...

Based on the fail.

I have to disagree with all the haters I have this for the PS3 and I think its a great game! Story mode was short but pretty fun. I can definitely see why they considered it the third movie.. Multiplayer is a whole lot of fun that you can play for hours! They just need to fix some of the bugs and some DLC and its a solid game to go along with the classic movie!

yeah i agree with you! and if your a ghostbusters fan cartoon and movie no matter what it's a must get it's fun as hell!! i pre order mine and i got DLC one pre order at gamestop and the other was gold proton pack from my friend he actually give me the slip and sold it on ebay lol

but this game is a true ghostbuster game come true even if it has bug's and all that un fix BS!

need DLC tho's was thinking of a map and fighting outside the firehouse ghostbusters HQ be awesome map!!

Exactly!! The only thing holding this game back is the technical problems.. which is a shame but they are easily fixable if they took the time to come out with a patch. Its pathetic the graphics are not as good as on the 360, but honestly you cant even tell while your playing.

New maps are a MUST.. there are not nearly enough. Outside the Ghostbusters HQ would be awesome! Actually inside would be too! What about on Liberty Island with the Statue of Liberty missing, or under the streets with the river of slime.. so many possibilities!

lol like sony is going to let that happen

I was about to jump in here and make a wacky comment about the game being more expensive than the 1984 original theatrical release, but it turns out it isn't true.

:(

So can someone please tell me how Crackdown "only broke even" at 1.5 million copies sold?

Realtime Worlds must leak development money like a sieve.

3rd party? Maybe they just broke even, but their publisher made out like bandits?

Typically they would be paid a base contract amount and maybe a percentage of sales...I'm sure someone made a lot of money with that game (Microsoft). If they "barely broke even" that might explain their reticence to push off the godawful looking APB for Crackdown 2 (which they certainly could have done, since APB didn't even have a publisher at the time).

He-Man > Ghostbusters

they should have spent some of that money on making trophies that werent glitched so people could actually platinum this game.

lol the trophies were probably the least of their worries.

I sometimes don't understand how games like these cost MILLIONS.

Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Erinie Hudson, Annie Potts, William Atherton...
Yeah why did it cost so much? Oh yeah.

The Ps3 version pwn'd the xbox 2.5 version

The XBOX 360 version pwn'd the blueray player version

I'm actually enjoying Ghostbusters quite a bit on the ps3, while the renders may not be perfect, they aren't so bad that it's unbearable,(infact in a lot of the places the graphics are pretty decent). Mind you I am playing this on a promo disc, that i am borrowing from a friend who did his work experience at sony, and I am on the last level after a few days so I reckon people should rent the game, because of this.
Still its a good game nonetheless

Man I cant believe development costs are so expensive these days. And this game wasnt even an AAA title. Dev costs for games will prolly be more than hollywood movies in 10 years.

I think the majority of the cost of making a game is just paying your 150 person development team over the 1-3 year course of development though.

New movie must have Rick Morranis.

I rented the Wii version this past weekend and it was great. A little short, which is why I rented it in the first place, but the cartoon style on the Wii was fantastic. Hopefully they make another, only longer.

The XBOX 360 version pwn'd the blueray player version

damn that was aimed to the guy above, anyway 15/20 is pretty expensive Gears of Wars cost only 4millions rite? id love a sequel tho and a 3rd movie. this game was great.

got wii version i think ill get 360 one next week the demo was fun made me want moar

The devs are hacks, if they can't figure out how to get the PS3 version to look as good as the 360, they don't deserve to be making games.

Heck, the graphics are so poor many people say just play the Wii version over either HD console version.

By all means, make another Ghostbusters game. But this time, let another studio handle the development. Ghostbusters is OK, but it could've been so, so much better...

And mind you, I'm not talking voiceacting, writing or anything like that, all of those are great... what lacks is the game itself, specially concerning graphics and overall performance.

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Ghostbusters cost $15-20 million, devs would love to revisit franchise

Ghostbusters (360/PS3/PC)

Reader Comments (55)

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