That makes my total over $300m to date, that's without paid actor costs, outsourcing for music, which they do, equipment, studio running costs.....
Making a game like this is expensive.
Indeed. Maybe CIG have a few tens of millions in the bank in reserve.
It leads on to the question of how much more money CIG need to take from backers (or investors) before they can release a product.... or since CIG like to handwave "what is release anyway?" and "what do you mean 1.0? We have 3.0 coming out soon!" let me say releasable product. One they can say to the public, its ready to play and we don't need you to buy spaceships for real money anymore.
This is a really important question for backers and CIG.
What is needed for release?
Well, for SQ42 that is clear, at least Chapter 1 in a good working condition with a few tens of hours of quality gameplay (if not, it will tank and damage faith in SC... although i'm sure the faithful will say "Well, i didn't back for SQ42, i'm only interested in SC so it doesn't matter if SQ42 is rubbish")
For SC its a trickier question. Stability of game and servers of course. More game loops is pretty much required. More systems. All of that's going to take some time.
But even then, that's not really all, because CIG sold a lot of things to backers on the understanding those things would be in on launch. Especially the systems, all 110 of them.
Maybe you recall the upset that was generated when CIG dared to suggest that there would only be 5-7 systems available on launch? That was a few years ago. They had to walk back on that one quickly and say what they actually meant was 5-7 systems when most of the core elements are ready, but of course they till will add all systems by launch.
I wonder what the sentiment would be these days if CIG said the same again? How far are the faithful willing to bargain themselves down regarding the released product?
And as i've said on many occasions before, whatever they do call a release, they it will be measured against claims made, promises, budget, and time.
Considering CIG to date have created an alpha that is still a long way off what it needs for release and its taken more time and money that just about every other quality game out there, much more time and money, its going to be hard to convince the wider public that the time and money spent were worth it.
How much more time and money do CIG need?
Another 2-3 years? SC has always been 2-3 years away from release... maybe 5-10 is more realistic?
Current burn rate of 50 million per year? And they are still growing and taking on more contractors via Turbulent? Oh, and renting out an impressive building in Germany? And server meshing... if they do it, will increase server costs. 60-70 million next year?
Maybe they still need another 400-500 million to get out of alpha.
The world's first almost billion dollar alpha.
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