GoW cheaper to make than Lost Planet; Award scoop

Xboxic: "It shocked many that Lost Planet cost $20 million dollars to make when the announcement was made last week, with the quality being brought into question among other things. Gears’ quality isn’t in doubt, so it will come as a surprise to hear that Gears of War cost half of what Lost Planet did.

In a recent interview with Wired.com, Mark Rein, Epic’s Vice President, explicitly stated that Gears of War cost less than $10 million dollars to make. Quite an achievement when you consider how brilliant the game looks, how well it plays and how well the online works (yes there is host advantage, but that’s a whole different matter).

WiredNews: Have you figured out what percentage of next-gen games in development use Unreal Engine 3?

Mark Rein: No. It’s probably very small; a lot of people do all kinds of games with all kinds of technology. We’re a small player there, but hopefully it’ll be the good games, the games that are profitable, and that’ll bring us repeat business. We spent less than $10 million to make Gears of War. Somewhere between nine and ten million dollars. People are always saying that making next-generation games is really expensive, and we’re saying, you should license our technology. Because we have really great tools for buildin"