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Originally Posted by ACE-OF-ACES
Not sure what this cost comparison is suppose to prove? All I know is this data can be 'looked at' in different ways to prove different things..
As it is, this data can be very misleading..
For example, a bigger software team can do more in less amount of time. So for this data to really be useful you would have to take into account how many worked on it and how long it took to develop those 'games' you listed. Ill bet that none of them took 6 years like CoD has.
Also note that and a lot of those games are spending a lot of money 'creating' worlds that don't exist, the neat thing about WWII flight sims is they only have to worry about 'copying' a world that already exists. 
And as you noted marketing is included in those numbers, marketing can be a very big chunk of the pie!
With that in mind, when I look at this data, I see it as 'proof' of how small the flight sim market is in the rest of the gaming world, and not much else. |
Yeah, in many ways I agree with you. As you say, bigger teams equals less develoment time. (Usually.) And yeah, those are numbers I just got from a google search. I don't know how accurate they are, but it's the best I could do.
Where I disagree is the bolded part. Developers making up their own universe have a much easier time of it than developers faithfully recreating something.
Think of all the research that goes into a simulator, not only visual, but what goes on on the inside, like CEM, bullet physics, flight models etc.
The devs for say, Halo have none of that to worry about. They can make it up as they go, and don't have to worry about it being realistic.