DOW3 ... not such a disaster ?

Dawn of War III has $3,5 million budget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000:_Dawn_of_War_III

It's not a budget of AAA class game but a budget of kickstarter game, such like Planetary Annihilation 2013 - $2,23 million.

For comparisson not the best looking (as for me) Supreme Commander had $10 million budget.

So, all the limitations and strange (stupid) game design dessisions are the consequences of a low budget production. Sega has given not enough money for full value siquel. I believe even if relic went to crowdfunding for new DOW3 game they would recieve more money from W40K players. But Sega owns the franchise and owns relic. So there is no hope in this perpective.

Good news for thom who like it and bad for thom who dont like it -
Dawn of War III is commertially succesful game with 270,000 copies sold.
Incounting that the averange worldwide price is about $35 (in the worst case) income be at least $9 million, IDK about tax rates but I'm sure it's more than twice or more of budget after paying all the taxes.

In this case people who believe that Relic is about to making COH3 is extremely naive, because it's absolutely unnessesary, they can milking DOW3 for years.


Edit : article has been removed from wikipedia I think after lelic's claim

"The budget for the game might to have been within 3.5 million USD according to the Sammy-SEGA annual earnings report page 7."
And source: http://www.segasammy.co.jp/english/ir/library/pdf/printing_annual/2016/2.%20ar2016_e.pdf

That would explain the horrible state of the game and the horribleness of the game itself.

I don't get it, where does it actually say the budget was $3.5 million?

Could you post the page where the document states that?

Also, I think you may be confused because the document, as far as I can tell, uses the American version of "," and "." where "thirty five thousand" would be written as "35,000," instead of the European "35.000"

The fact that it had a low budget instantly forgives in full the fact that the game sucks. Kappa.

EDIT: To be fair, I've never actualy played the game but it seems to be the overwhelming consensus that it's really bad.

2+2=1??

thats basically the tl;dr from the op

the amount of NDAs Relic produces leads me to believe Relic spend 3.5 million on legal services alone

any game released by a big studio tends to sell a lot of copies .
And even though the game definitely paid for its costs, relic will have a hard time making further money from the game, few ppl will buy DLC and even fewer ppl will get interested in any future game installment .

In this case people who believe that Relic is about to making COH3 is extremely naive, because it's absolutely unnessesary, they can milking DOW3 for years.

It doesn't matter how many copies the game sold, its dead. You can find more female F1 drivers in Saudi Arabia than you can find people playing that terrible terrible pos game.

Could you post the page where the document states that?

Also, I think you may be confused because the document, as far as I can tell, uses the American version of "," and "." where "thirty five thousand" would be written as "35,000," instead of the European "35.000"

it's on the page 7 of the Sega annual business report, or page 4 of the pdf linked in my thread.
The amount of money spent is in Yen on the report. 3 500 000 USD is around 100 times more in Yen, so 350 000 000 Yen.

There is not mistake with "," and "."

Anyway, we all saw how rushed has been this game : the beta was short, the graphics and animation are cartoon style (less expensive to make), very few content (only one game mode), etc ...
No need business report to understand Sega didn't spend a shit load of money on DOW3.

Among many Sega is known to not invest much in projects. Its been almost a model for success for them. Not a bad thing at all, its actually rather impressive what they accomplish with very little. Look at Alpha Protocol for example, for the budget, that game is really amazing for what they did.

Edit : i believe too that it is only for the game development, the marketing is not included.

Compare and contrast the first 4 months

CoH2:



Dow3:




Game is booty buttcheeks, doesn't matter how much money they spent on it.

Man that's some indepth analysis on their financial reports. To be able to tell how much is spent on a single game despite them only reporting the entirety of their development on all consumer and arcade games is amazing.

BTW. Numbers in that report are in million yen, so that RD budget for 2016 listed as 39,222 = 39.2 billion yen = around 350 million USD.

it's on the page 7 of the Sega annual business report, or page 4 of the pdf linked in my thread.
The amount of money spent is in Yen on the report. 3 500 000 USD is around 100 times more in Yen, so 350 000 000 Yen.

There is not mistake with "," and "."

Anyway, we all saw how rushed has been this game : the beta was short, the graphics and animation are cartoon style (less expensive to make), very few content (only one game mode), etc ...
No need business report to understand Sega didn't spend a shit load of money on DOW3.

Among many Sega is known to not invest much in projects. Its been almost a model for success for them. Not a bad thing at all, its actually rather impressive what they accomplish with very little. Look at Alpha Protocol for example, for the budget, that game is really amazing for what they did.

Edit : i believe too that it is only for the game development, the marketing is not included.

You misread the report, as Cruzz points out. It's in million yen.

Can't really dispute what you're saying about DoW3. Except I think financially it's probably also a disaster.

$3.5 million seems like wiki bogus without any credible source and/or Relic using cheap labor.
DoW3 (not including THQs "project Atlas" mention in recent Relic DoW3 documentary) has been in development since at least 2014. None of this is included in the report nor wiki.

GamesBeat: How many years have you been working on this now?

Philippe Boulle: I’ve been on the project two-and-a-half years. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to finally be able to talk about it.

https://venturebeat.com/2016/06/13/warhammer-40000-dawn-of-war-iiis-creator-promises-the-return-of-spectacular-real-time-strategy-battles/

In the same time period (2014-2017), Relic grew to almost 200 devs. Vancouver living expenses are high especially real estate. This means their salaries have to be considerably higher than other cities to attract new talent outside Vancouver.
Relic has openly said this was their biggest RTS to date and they recruited many new devs based on that premise and future AAA games.

Hehehe I guess we know saucisson's steam account know :')

http://steamcommunity.com/app/285190/discussions/0/1471967529576021157/

To keep things in perspective:

A few games from Relics former publisher THQ - year 2011;
How Much Does It Cost to Make a Video Game?
https://www.techspot.com/article/771-cost-of-making-a-game/

Warhammer 40k: Dark Millenium Online - $30 million - Former THQ executive Danny Bilson told Eurogamer last year the publisher spent around $30 million on this licensed MMO before the title was cancelled.

Homefront - $50 million - THQ's attempt to take on Call of Duty had a $50 million development budget, according to former Kaos Studios producer Dex Smither (Update: Link to his CV removed at his request; he subsequently confirmed the $50 million budget figure to Kotaku directly).

RTS games - year 2001:
Black & White $5.7 million - Peter Molyneux's Game Developer postmortem for the game said the god game cost $5.7 million to develop.

RTS games - year 2006;
Anno 1701 - €8 million - A press release from developer Sunflowers pegged development costs of the strategy game at eight million euros.

Empire Earth III - $10 million - A former Mad Doc Software producer said the strategy sequel cost $10 million to develop.

Thursday Jan 24, 2013
Notice of SEGA’s Acquisition of Relic Entertainment and Some IPs Owned by THQ Inc.
http://blogs.sega.com/2013/01/24/notice-of-segas-acquisition-of-relic-entertainment-and-some-ips-owned-by-thq-inc/

As a series Warhammer 40k Dawn of War has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, whilst the “Company of Heroes” series, a real time strategy game based on the modern history of warfare from World War II and after, has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide.

In comparison to COH, DoW1 had some pretty big esport sponsors with World Cyber Games.
https://www.esportsearnings.com/search?search=dawn+of+war&type=tournament
2006-10-18 - 2006-10-22 World Cyber Games 2006 (Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War) $43,000.00
2005-11-16 - 2005-11-20 World Cyber Games 2005 (Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War) $35,000.00


If Relic was planning for DoW3 to become an eSport game they needed a larger playerbase than COH2 to justify further investment post-launch from SEGA.

I came back from work, opened Steam and saw a coupon for a 50% discount on the purchase of DoW3. No Relic you can't force to buy me this... Make a new material for CoH (I'm ready to buy Italians)

I came back from work, opened Steam and saw a coupon for a 50% discount on the purchase of DoW3. No Relic you can't force to buy me this... Make a new material for CoH (I'm ready to buy Italians)

+1

I came back from work, opened Steam and saw a coupon for a 50% discount on the purchase of DoW3. No Relic you can't force to buy me this... Make a new material for CoH (I'm ready to buy Italians)

Half of current steam price is what DoW3 should have costed on release, actually. Even if it was much better than it is.

I came back from work, opened Steam and saw a coupon for a 50% discount on the purchase of DoW3. No Relic you can't force to buy me this... Make a new material for CoH (I'm ready to buy Italians)

Good words.

How much does Relic Entertainment in Canada pay?
https://ca.indeed.com/cmp/Relic-Entertainment/salaries

The average Relic Entertainment salary ranges from approximately $89,101 per year for Data Analyst to $136,400 per year for Senior Designer.
Salary information comes from 78 data points collected directly from employees, users, and past and present job advertisements on Indeed in the past 12 months.
Please note that all salary figures are approximations based upon third party submissions to Indeed. These figures are given to the Indeed users for the purpose of generalized comparison only. Minimum wage may differ by jurisdiction and you should consult the employer for actual salary figures.

Just do some simple math. Relic currently is around 200 devs. Let's assume they had DoW3 in full production for at least a year with 100-120 devs.
Salaries alone for DoW3 would be well above $10 million dollars.

Interview with DoW3 Game Director March 9, 2017
http://www.dualshockers.com/warhammer-dawn-of-war-iii-interview/

Azario Lopez: What significance would you say the multiplayer feature plays in the Dawn of War series?

Phillip Boule: It’s hard to overstate the importance, Dawn of War sort of stands on two legs: one is a propelling campaign, they other is compelling multiplayer. This could be the reason that people still play Dawn of War twelve years after its release and Dawn of War II six years later. With any luck, five years from now we’ll be talking about how people are still playing the Dawn of War III multiplayer.

DoW3 Memorial Day 2018-April 27:
We will forget

With some quality feedback (that don't go to waste), even our own community members such as Generals gentlemen could easily have prevented many of the mistakes that were made with DoW3 to preserve its longevity. Relic only has themselves to blame for this lost in the woods project. The blind leading the blind?. DoW3 leadership on a collision course with SEGA?

In his final interview as Sega Europe COO, Post talks about the publisher's transformation

"The games is where the love of the community starts, then secondly for the studio, and thirdly there is the publisher. So at some point, the success of the studios will start to reflect on Sega."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-05-24-jurgen-post-the-sega-brand-will-come-back-and-start-to-flourish-again

Now I know some of the business analysts in SEGA Europe (that report to top SEGA leadership) are a fan of Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple Inc). So I'll post these quotes from Steve Jobs as a reminder to everyone why Phillip was fired (most likely):






Now as long Relic fail with transparency that keeps fans in the dark, the rumor mill (mostly toxic towards relic) will just keep on going.
I heard from last MS AoE stream that the new Relic community manager did not even know what game he would be working on before joining. Why all the secrecy? It's not like Blizzard even care to compete with Relic RTS, rather the opposite.
Logic;
Ok cool, I put blind trust in Relic and jumping into the void. I'll quit my current job and move to Vancouver (very expensive) based on a vague job description. I might get a chance working on something cool or perhaps not. I will roll the dice