$265M was an estimate for both development and marketing, the estimate for the development alone was a bit over half, at $140M. So SC should already be over GTA V in terms of funding for development, as long as they're not forced to refund what they raised [1].
And that's just the engine. Gta IV already had a framework in place for "telling gta stories" so, even if they had a off the shelf game engine, se would still be making a "game" from scratch. Gta v probably tweaked most everything from iv beyond recognition - but they kinda started from a working game, and made another game.
SC has a framework in place for "telling Space Sim stories". There is nothing new there and Roberts has experience with that. I don't see how this would justify those "delays" and failures at all.
That is not entirely correct. The current version of Lumberyard contains only remnants of CryEngine. Most everything has been scrapped and rewritten in favor of non-horrifying code.
Why would Amazon put that much effort into this? Amazon doesn't particularly have much of a marketshare in videogame sales, unlike say Google Play, Steam and others.
SC will likely rank (easily) as one of the most expensive video games of all time should a completed version ship.
Elsewhere they boast of a dev team of well over 400 members and 5 international studios... hard not to argue that's AAA studio development sized like a product from EA or Activision.
They were referring to their marketing/launch budget, which is what the recent investment was for. At $46 million, it's substantial, but less than some tentpole games have gotten.
Robert is an industry veteran. And his business hired most of Crytek staff in Europe, did you play Crysis series? Do you really believe its developers lack "experience"?
GTA involves a completely different kind of game play experience. Look one direction, then look behind you, then look back and what you see may be completely different and regenerated. Star Citizen uses various methods to implement a virtual generated world so that what you see is what is there and you can carry around, drop, pick up, and trade items. The Star Citizen simulated world is far more detailed and consistent than anything in GTA.
The quoted number is actually the entire budget, including marketing.
> Media analyst Arvind Bhatia estimated the game's development budget exceeded US$137 million,[7] and The Scotsman reporter Marty McLaughlin estimated that the combined development and marketing efforts exceeded GB£170 million (US$265 million), making it the most expensive video game ever made at its time
[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne5n7b/star-citiz...