"The development of Red Dead Redemption 2, an action-adventure game, began after Red Dead Redemption's release in May 2010. Rockstar Games published Red Dead Redemption 2 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 26, 2018, and for Microsoft Windows on November 5, 2019. Rockstar co-opted all of its studios into one large team to facilitate development among 1,600 people."
"Originally due for release in the second half of 2017, the game was delayed twice: first to Q1/Q2 2018,[36] and later to October 26, 2018.[37] According to Rockstar, the game required extra development time for "polish"."
"And as far as I'm aware Rockstar is nowhere near as inefficent as wasteful as these guys."
So the company who had all the resources from the get go spending 8 years on a single player game is is more efficient than the one who started from zero built up the whole company on the fly and working on an MMO and a single player game and spent the same time in development with less manpower?
simplified view just for you:
RDR2: established company, all resources ready from the get go, 1600 devs, singleplayer - 8 years Efficient for you
SC+SQ42: Starting with 10 guys in a basement need to build up the whole company, teams, infrastructure, 500 devs just now but much less in early years, MMO+single player - 8 years so far Not efficient.
You really have some problems with your logic man.
"Around 3 or maybe 4 years is probably much closer to the normal amount of time that most developers of AAA games get."
3-4 years it takes to create copy paste games like CoD or AC. For CoD they have separate studios working on teh titles in staggered development that's why they can push them out so quickly.
"Of course they'd start spending all that money on all kinds of bullshit like building 5 separate companies, whatever they'd need those for."
Yeah because the studios where the devs working are totally unnecessary.
"So how many "normal" AAA games would other studies have developed in all that times?"
I don't know lets check Cyberpunk which was announced the same time as SC...again singleplayer, and made by an established company. It's not out yet, more than 8 years in development.
Let's cut it short:
You are very uninformed not just in the SC topic but overall in game development and development times in general, you have a false agenda based on your lack of knowledge and you go to full denial of facts and logic just to push your agenda instead of doing some research.
I'd say go educate yourself on the topic from your comments you look like an intelligent guy, so do the intelligent thing and get smart in the topic before getting in an argument.
@Atzenkiller: I'm not making up anything man just telling facts to you. You're the one who's making up conspiracy theories and assumptions based on nothing. :0
From the original Kickstarter the plan and promise was that backers can access the alpha, basically playtesting it. For that they need to push out somewhat polished versions so it's at least somewhat playable otherwise there would be no testing and no feedback. Even like this people are bashing them all the time why is it so buggy why is the performance not better etc.
As for tech, devs always work for the future...RDR2 took 8 years did it look dated when it came out,no it looked amazing. Devs know that developing games takes 5-6-8 years (not talking about copy paste COD, AC and such) so they try to predict how much more advanced hardware will be in 5 years or so.
"But please, show me one other game that is not GTA or RDR that comes anywhere close to this game's budget."
I see you totally didn't read what i wrote. 286 million take of the building up of 5 studios all the license fees, etc, etc, then divide the rest by 2 as it's 2 games, and you end up around 100 million, not that extraordinary compared to other big games.
As for the rest..you only assume things without any facts so i'm not gonna argue on those. But it surely looks like you have an agenda in your head against the devs
@Atzenkiller: they didn't put in any polishing in the normal sense, that comes at the end of the development as you said so. They just working on game systems which allows them to run the game at a playable state. Like the original Cryengine didn't have support for million km maps so it worked with everything in the memory all the time...you were on a planet and the game still calculated players 58million kms away. The devs modified this so the game now only calculates the things close to you and as you move stream in things...that basically doubled the FPS,,but that's not polishing just working on the core game.
But you seem to jump around quite a lot to bash them First you say people just hoping for it to be playable, when i told you it is playable you bash the devs to only put in work to attract customers.
Intentions: They obviously working towards a release because they patch the game every 3 months and put in new things (although the focus is now on the single player campaign, which should be in beta in a year or so.
As for not drawing a line, they already did long time ago. They haven't put any new things in the plans for years now, just working on what was planned, and they stated the game will start with 5-10 star systems and they will add the rest later.
They have a 30 days refund period. You don't get that on steam on anywhere else.
Also these whole article about a free fly event, when anyone can try it out for free without spending a dime...not much game does that.
They are making single player campaign as well which is basically Wing Commander on steroids. They have a several thousand pages long script for that and hollywood actor cast.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VppjX4to9s4
One thing i agree with you..anyone who drops several hundreds or thousands on a game is not thinking clearly
@letsgame82: Well maybe if you'd be informed you'd think differently just need to put it into perspective:
The money isn't just for one game. It paid/pays for the build up of 5 studios and the development of 2 games...if you look at facts suddenly it doesn't cost more than a usual game development costs.
@Atzenkiller: This is the most uninformed comment ever man.
1. They have free flight usually at every bigger patch release
2. The game is playable as it is, it runs about the same FPS for me as RDR2 does which is not bad from an unoptimized alpha ( 40-80 FPS at 2560x1440p max )
3. Their financials are open, and the money goes into the development, it costs a lot to keep up 5 studios and pay 500+ devs
@jyml8582: Yeah single player games made by established companies are totally the same as a startup where they need to build up the studios, teams, infrastructure first making an MMO + a single player simultaneously.
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