God Of War III Cost $44 Million To Make News

It's been roughly three years since God of War II was released on the PS2; three years that you can safely assume have been filled developing God of War III at Sony's Santa Monica Studio, and three years that have set Sony back a whopping $44 million (£29 million).

"We are stamping discs now; we're effectively done - just got a couple of countries that we're finishing up on this week, and we've spent $44 million to make God of War III," The game's Director of Product Development, John Hight told GiantBomb. "Believe it or not, that's right within budget."

Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 5, on the other hand, has set Sony back $60 million in development costs so far according to Kazunori Yamauchi (having been in development for roughly five years). And then there's the biggest fish of them all, GTA IV, which reputedly had $100 million spent on it by Rockstar.

The biggest reason behind God of War III's lofty costs is a studio that has seemingly doubled in size with each iteration in the God of War trilogy, starting with less than 30 developers during the first game, which increased to 60 with God of War II, and now stands at a lofty 132 employees.

"We finished up God of War II with roughly 60 people in the studio, which was more than double for God of War I," said Hight. "Now we've finished off God of War III with 132 people. The biggest area that we grew was graphics, on the art side. Doing things in higher-res, all the movies - everything is done using the same graphic assets, so it's super high quality, all real-time, and that required a fairly significant investment in artists."

There you go. If you're an unemployed artist then it might be worth sending off your CV to Sony Santa Monica. Either that or you could just go back to busking caricatures... your call. If, on the other hand, you're not an unemployed artist, then you could just read our God of War III review to find out how well spent that $44 million was.