Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 budget was $40-50 million @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on November 19, 2009

News: You gotta spend money to make money.

Another interesting tidbit has emerged from the Los Angeles Times article about the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. According to the article, not did Modern Warfare 2 have an unprecedented launch, but it also took a nearly unprecedented budget to make it:

Call of Duty cost $40 million to $50 million to produce, people close to the project said, about as much as a mid-size film. Including marketing expenses and the cost of producing and distributing discs, the launch budget was $200 million, on par with a summer popcorn movie -- and extremely high for a video game.

Modern Warfare 2 has been compared to a major movie opening a lot in the last week, but with a budget like that it appears that was Activision's goal all along.

"My goal was to create a launch that would compare very favorably to the biggest box offices of all time," Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Bobby Kotick said.

While that is incredibly high for a video game budget, Infinity Ward's community manager, Robert Bowling, told Develop that the game's initial budget was even more ridiculous. "We are pretty tight on our budgets. Early on Ц when we decided to make a sequel Ц Activision estimated out a ridiculous budget. And we were like: СNo, we don't need that.'", said Bowling.

If $40-50 million is what they spent, how high was the "ridiculous" budget they turned down?

While video game budget statistics are hard to come by, if Modern Warfare 2 is the current king, it won't hold the crown for long. Polyphony Digital's Kazunori Yamauchi recently revealed that Gran Turismo 5 will have a budget close to $60 million.

We'll have more on all things Call of Duty soon.