I thought it might be fun to see what people think it cost to make games these days. Maybe the devs will get a laugh out of it  

Here is my take on it:

assumptions:

-A game developer in a first world country cost $10,000 per month, all things considered (salary, equipment, training cost, rent for the building, conferences, etc)(based on hearing some game devs talk about this as a ballpark number)

-game has been in development for ~2.5 years from start to launch.

-team size has on average been 15 people.

-support staff (QA, HR, PR, janitor, etc) has been on average 20 people, these cost half of what a dev cost (5,000/month)(cost less primarily because they are not full time on galciv)

if you multiply those numbers, you end up with a budget of 7.5 million dollars.

next assumption: the game will sell for 25 dollars on average. More during pre-order/launch, less in sales and when time goes on. Steam takes 30% of that so 17,50 goes to stardock.

This would mean they would have to sell 425,000 copies before they make a profit. (ignoring factoring in future DLC/expansions which have a higher return on investment)

Anyone else care to take a guess? Do you feel the numbers make sense? to high or low guesstimates? 425,000 feels like a bit high to me but the business plan also relies on DLC and expansions.