Japanese mobile developers spend from $3.5 to $9 million to create one game. These costs do not include marketing and other items of expenditure.
The analytical online publication Kantan Games provides open data on the costs of creating one title of three large Japanese mobile game development companies.
According to the report, DeNA studio (which created Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes together with Nintendo) spends about $4.5 million on the production of the game.
The developer of Modern War and Dragon Soul, GREE company, spends from $4.5 to $9 million when creating one title.
Vice president of the GREE social games division, Eiji Araki, added that in the future development costs will only increase, even if studios plan to save on ready-made engines and content from other projects.
The most economical developers turned out to be Ateam, a developer of mobile role-playing games Unison League and Valkyrie Connect. According to their report, the studio spends about $3.5 million on the development of the title.
Ateam CEO Takao Hayashi clarified that along with the promotion of the game to the international market, its value increases several times and approaches $ 9 million.
According to the author of the study, Serkan Toto, the increase in the cost of development is due to the constantly improving characteristics of mobile devices that allow the introduction of advanced 3D graphics and growing user requests.
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