Top 30 Most Expensive Video Games Ever Made

Released during the “Call of Duty” franchise's heyday, this iteration of the “Battlefield” franchise was going to need a lot of money in order to compete. With a budget of around $100 million, the game was praised for it’s fantastic multiplayer mode. Sadly its high budget wasn’t enough to beat its long time rival, with only 7 million copies sold compared to “Call of Duty: Ghost’s” absolutely insane 19 million.

This $100 million beat em’ up featuring the Merc with a Mouth lacked the type of gameplay you might expect from such an expensive title. Wade Wilson’s typically vulgar, fourth wall-breaking humor was abundant however, even poking fun at the developers and the shortcomings of the game. As much as Deadpool mocks gaming clichés, it doesn’t hide the fact that many of those same tropes are present in almost every lifeless level. This all stemmed from a notably tumultuous existence: High Moon Studios employees were fired during development and the game was pulled from online services after release, perhaps Deadpool really was in charge all along.

Containing the potential to crossover Disney, Marvel and Star Wars properties, a $100 million investment in this toys-to-life title seemed like a venture destined to succeed. Early on things were going swimmingly: reviews were positive, $500 million revenue had been made and it was overwhelmingly outselling its main competitor, Skylanders. Two sequels later, the series was cancelled in a hot mess of corporate interference and gross overestimation of what they could sell. Astonishingly, it was still top of its genre at the time of cancellation, leading many to theorize that the budget for the sequels must have been even more extortionate than the first game.

Square Enix had an ambitious list of targets for their $100 million reboot of gaming’s favorite British adventurer: sell 6 million units in a month, be profitable in the same period and achieve hugely positive critical reaction – no pressure for developers Crystal Dynamics then. Praise was heaped upon its graphical detail and narrative depth from the outset, but it took a while before their other criteria were satisfied. Selling 3.4 million copies in a month was impressive, but it took eight months after release for them to finally reach profitability. Lara’s new, untested look eventually led to sales of 11 million, the best ever for an IP that many thought was best left in the annals of gaming history.

When this game was first revealed back in 2019, it suffered a lot of backlash due to its various similarities with the “Breath of the wild'', and with an incredibly high budget of $100 million, it was going to need to do something big to break out of that bad stigma. Luckily for the developers at miHoYo, “Genshin Impact” has been an astronomical success, with its gacha system grossing over $1 billion by the end of March 2021. This has made it one of the highest grossing mobile games of all time, and it has shown no sign of slowing down.

Early trailers had this game from UK developers Realtime Worlds looking like a GTA-esque MMO, the end product, however, barely fulfilled 10% of that promise. Key shooting and driving mechanics were blatantly unfinished, leaving players bemused as to where the $105 million budget had gone. They got their answer when, with barely anyone playing their game, Realtime closed shop two months after APB’s release, allowing unpaid ex-staff the freedom to reveal all. They say the enormous budget made key executives complacent, resulting in a lack of direction during a meandering five-year development cycle the fledgling company was ill equipped to cope with.

There was considerable pressure on Rockstar to deliver a game that would not only live up to Remedy’s previous two third-person shooters but also be a commercial success. By pumping $105 million into the project that was meant to be released way back in 2009, they ensured the series carried on in it’s exceptionally dark tone but left themselves needing to sell 4 million copies just to break even. While an aggressive marketing strategy eventually allowed them to hit that mark, Rockstar greatly overestimated the game’s sales projections, resulting in a lot of unsold copies of the game ending up in bargain bins everywhere.

For the final entry in Lara Croft’s origin trilogy, Eidos-Montréal and Square Enix needed to pull out all of the stops, resulting in an even greater budget than the first game. Estimated at around $110 to $135 million, the game initially suffered from much slower sales compared to its predecessors. Despite this, the game received positive reviews and would go on to ship a healthy four million copies worldwide.

Bungie struck gold with the original “Halo: Combat Evolved” and with an estimated five million copies sold, Microsoft knew they had a hit on their hands. For the incredibly anticipated sequel, the game received a sizable $120 million dollar budget, making it the most expensive video game ever at the time. Luckily this gamble paid off as not only is it considered one of the greatest video games of all time, but it sold at least 6.3 million copies, making it the best selling game on the original Xbox console.

Despite being critically acclaimed, the original “Dead Space” was a modest success, selling around one million copies worldwide. So it’s incredibly surprising that its follow up is one of the most expensive video games of all time, with a sizable $120 million dollar budget. “Dead Space 2” would ship around two million copies in its first week, and although it initially had strong sales, Electronic Arts would consider the game financially disappointing. Sadly its developer Visceral Games would shut down in 2017, following even more poor sales for “Dead Space 3”.

Poor “Immortals of Aveum”. The game simply wasn’t given a fair chance to shine as some players found the technical performance to be too unstable. An understandable complaint, and it begs to ask if enough money could have ironed out such a hiccup. Besides, EA spent a pretty penny on “Immortals of Aveum” as the game’s budget was an estimated sum of one hundred twenty-five million dollars. Considering layoffs occurred at developer Ascendant Studios less than a month after launch, it’s safe to assume that “Immortals of Aveum” probably didn’t even make half of its budget back.

Being the creators of one of the most successful video game franchises on the planet, it’s absolutely no surprise that Activision pumped as much money as possible into Bungie's first ever game since moving on from Halo. With an estimated total cost of around 140 million, Destiny desperately needed to be a success. Luckily for them it sold over $325 million in the first five days, making it the most successful brand new franchise launch of all time. Not bad for a game that received polarizing reviews at launch!

The legacy left by this legendary title is still felt by contemporary gamers but it didn’t come cheap: around $45 million went on development and $100 million was allocated for marketing an RPG that was one of the first to convincingly penetrate the North American market. Square’s move to 3D and the elevation of production values was lapped up around the world as 2.3 million copies were sold in just three days. Surprisingly for a game regularly labeled as the best ever, the developers were forced to leave out several planned elements to meet a tight release date. Those exclusions apparently made no difference to fans and it went on to sell 12.8 million units.

“Starfield” spent an incredibly long time in development, having started production sometime right before “Fallout 4’s” launch in 2015. When it was finally released in 2023, it did manage to please some fans with its scope, environments, and RPG mechanics. Although, its Day One release on Xbox Game Pass has caused some to wonder if the game made any money. Just before the game launched, it was revealed that “Starfield” had a production budget of roughly two hundred million dollars, and the marketing budget tacked on another two hundred mil. It’s hard to say if Xbox and Bethesda are expecting free updates to recoup costs, if there are even any left over – neither company has talked about sales numbers at the time of this video.

What was supposed to be the spiritual successor to “Dead Space” quickly became one last fart in the wind for 2022. “The Callisto Protocol” came and went with very little praise as most players couldn’t get past the wonky controls and awful camera, both of which caused many, many cheap deaths. Given that this was a new game from the creator of “Dead Space”, publisher Krafton had given developer Striking Distance Studios a massive budget nearing one hundred seventy million bucks! Unfortunately, “Callisto Protocol” did not meet sales expectations in Krafton’s short timeframe.

Considering its movie counterparts are some of the highest grossing films of all time, it’s no surprise to anyone that this video game adaption of Marvel Comics’ premier team came with a hefty budget. With a price tag of $170 million and counting, Square Enix fully intends to keep adding more and more money to this live service game. Even with all this money being pumped into it, the game has still yet to turn in a profit, and coupled with a less than stellar reception, things are looking pretty bleak for earth's mightiest heroes.

The reason “Hyenas” is so low on this list is for the simple fact that the game was never released. While “Shenmue” was one of SEGA’s most expensive projects ever once upon a time, whatever inflated budgets came after that were completely trumped by “Hyenas”. With Creative Assembly beginning development in 2017, “Hyenas” was planned to be SEGA’s big live service shooter with the publisher going so far as to call it their “Super Game”. How much SEGA spent is anyone’s guess, but after the game was canned, former staff revealed that SEGA planned to spend nearly nine hundred million dollars on “Hyenas”! As soon as the playtests and alphas closed with negative reception to the game, SEGA pulled the plug before things got even more costly.

Whereas SEGA quit on whatever “Hyenas” was supposed to be, Warner Bros figured their single-player studio in Rocksteady should really develop an online multiplayer live service title. What came out was “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League”, a game that nobody wanted. Players hated the generic look and feel of the game, and even Rocksteady staff members began a gradual exodus as development had progressed. Roughly a month after launch, Warner Bros reported their financials and stated that “Suicide Squad” was the main reason why the company lost two hundred million dollars. At the time of this video, a skeleton crew of a dozen or so people now work at Rocksteady to wrap up “Suicide Squad’s” post-launch support and to work on a port of “Hogwarts Legacy”.

BioWare had already proved they could handle one of the greatest media properties ever when they released the Knights of the Old Republic in 2003 and so were trusted with $200 million of EA investment for this subscription-based MMORPG. They created a game of immense scale and depth – it contained 1,600 hours of story content - yet still faced some criticism for getting muddled between an MMORPG and a Mass Effect-style experience. Although it required the move to a free-to-play model to reinvigorate interest in the game, it has been regularly expanded and in 2014 was still earning $165 million a year.

After departing from Sony in 2019, former PlayStation Studios CEO Shawn Layden began talking about the AAA gaming industry facing unsustainable budgets ranging into hundreds of millions of dollars. The public did not get a look at what Layden was talking about until June 2023. In the FTC’s trial against Microsoft during the conglomerate’s attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard King, Sony had submitted a rather awfully redacted document, which revealed the budgets of two major games. “Horizon Forbidden West” was one of them, and it had cost Sony a pretty penny of two hundred twenty-one million dollars. And what about the other game?

Yes, this was the other game Sony had accidentally spilled the beans on. It’s no surprise that a project like “The Last of Us: Part II” would get a slightly higher budget than “Horizon”. It is arguably PlayStation’s biggest IP alongside “God of War”, which would be enough reason to give Naughty Dog a whopping two hundred fifty million dollars. And since the game became the fastest-selling PS4 game in the platform’s history, it’s safe to assume that “The Last of Us: Part II” enjoyed a healthy, wealthy amount of revenue, which is not something that every PlayStation game can say.

Following the first Modern Warfare title selling 17 million copies, Activision could happily throw money at the sequel without worry of it ever being a failure. The development costs were relatively modest at just $40-50 million but they put a staggering $200 million into marketing this FPS titan around the world. Featuring a refined, almost flawless online multiplayer and new spec ops mode, five million copies were sold in a day and it went past $1 billion in sales in just a few months. The series has grown tired since this juggernaut’s success but where can it really go when near perfection has already been achieved?

This open-world title offers limitless possibilities – especially if you’re running a mod or two – and so was inevitably going to leave a sizable hole in Rockstar’s pockets. With a reported cost of $265 million, it dwarfed the $100 million budget of its older sibling and similarly obliterated it in pretty much every statistic you can think of. Benefiting from releases over two generations of consoles, 145 million copies have been shipped and although free DLC likely eats into their $2 billion revenue, the online mode is a constant money making machine. Its numbers are often compared to that of Hollywood’s biggest projects and rightly so, its carnage frequently outdoes a blockbuster hit.

Yeah, 2023 was a bit of a messy year for Sony as the leaks kept pouring out even after Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King. Shortly after the successful launch of “Spider-Man 2”, Insomniac Games suffered a major leak that revealed a buffet of details about the developer’s games, future projects, internal data across PlayStation as a whole, and of course, budgets. Aside from unannounced games, the budget for “Spider-Man 2” was perhaps the biggest eyebrow raiser of all. According to the leaked data, “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” had cost Sony three hundred fifteen million dollars to develop! Considering this sequel reuses a lot of assets from its 2018 predecessor, we have to wonder how much of that money was Disney charging for the license and how much of it was in making new stuff for the game.

The hype was immense for this hotly anticipated CD Projekt Red title and equally so was its budget. With a cost of $316 million and a lengthy development time, many were expecting perfection. When it came to release, despite having a good reception, the game was absolutely riddled with game breaking bugs and glitches. None of this would matter though as the game would go on to sell over 13 million copies worldwide by the end of the year.