That's all I gotta say.

Activision isn't betting lightly on Destiny. It just dawned on me how ridiculously ballsy this whole thing is.

Normal AAA game budgets can be in the range of a few tens of millions of dollars. For instance, Uncharted 2 officially had a budget of $20M. Sometimes big ones run higher, every once in a while several times higher.

Destiny is being developed by a studio of 350 people over the course of several years. That alone means we're easily looking at upper tens of millions. Once everything else that happens in the development of a AAA game is taken into account, including contracting other studios, a final development budget of well over $100M would not be shocking. If so, Destiny would be very close to the top of the list of most expensive game development projects ever.

And Destiny is not an established name.

And it's a game that nobody seems quite sure how to even categorize.

And Activision and Bungie have laid out a 10-year plan for it.

I have no idea what Destiny is, but the ambition of the project is mind-blowing. There's a reason Bungie talked about being bigger than Halo in that vidoc: they're trying to capture a ton of lightnings in their bottles, and at some level they sort of have to.

But my 'whoa' had more to do with the existence and layout of DBO.

But what you said too.

- No text -

It gives me hope that more publishers will drop money and take risks on new IPs.

Must have been one hell of a presentation Bungie gave Activation to get the project rolling.

- No text -

Must have been one hell of a presentation Bungie gave Activation to get the project rolling.

Either that or this guy:

I would imagine that creating one of the most successful modern gaming franchises helps.

?

Ok, I'll bite, who is he?

Whoever he is, he prepares for battles with aliens by dressing up in beat-up metal plating. So there's that.

Looks like Sergeant Lehto.

- No text -

"Hi, we made Halo. We're making a new thing. If you want a cut, now is the time to invest."

End of presentation.

To do some spitballing:

10 years of development
x350 staff
-----
3500 man-years
x $70 000 (WAG) average pay+benefits/man-year
-----
$245 million

That's just payroll; that doesn't include marketing, infrastructure costs, profits for Bungie LLC, studio rental, outside talent (voice actors, orchestra, etc), or other stuff.

Assuming this doesn't get cancelled, Activision's betting huge on Destiny.

-- Steve thinks it's a good bet, but still the numbers are mind-boggling.