Why Ghostbusters: The Video Game was so Expensive to Develop

Ghostbusters: The Video Game came out on June 16, 2009 on the PC, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, PSP, Playstation 2, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. It is one of the biggest releases of the year so far. The high-profile game is also quite expensive, costing at least $15 million to develop. So how did Ghostbusters: The Video Game ended up being so expensive? Let's examine several contribution factors.

Ghostbusters License
Of course, you can't just develop any video game based on movies. You first need to acquire the licensing rights for it. For an intellectual property as popular as Ghostbusters, the price is probably really expensive to develop and publish a Ghostbusters video game.

Furthermore, Ghostbusters: The Video Game went the extra mile with the license. Numerous members that were responsible for the Ghostbusters movies had a hand in the project. The main characters in the films (Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis) returned to lend their voice to Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Furthermore, the original writers also came back to help with the game's script. Essentially, Ghostbusters: The Video Game is Ghostbusters III, at least when it comes to effort and costs.

Multiplatform Development
After acquiring the rights to the Ghostbusters video game, one would think that publisher Atari would milk it as much as possible. As a result, Ghostbusters: The Video Game was released on seven platforms: PC, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, PSP, Playstation 2, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Costs on multiplatform games can rise quickly. This is because multiple developers are involved. Terminal Reality and Threewave Software are responsible of developing the main SKU for Ghostbusters: The Video Game on the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Meanwhile, Red Fly Studio handled the Nintendo Wii, PSP and Playstation 2 version. Finally, Zen Studios developed the Nintendo DS iteration. With four developers working on Ghostbusters: The Video Game, you could easily see why the game is so expensive to develop.

Change of Publishers
Finally, Ghostbusters: The Video Game ran into some troubles during development, which ended up costing a lot of money. During the middle of development, Activision brought out the original publisher of the game, Sierra Entertainment. The biggest third-party publisher in the gaming industry then decided to drop support for Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Therefore, development of the game was halted. Eventually, Ghostbusters: The Video Game would be picked up by Atari. Unfortunately, the damage was already done in terms of costs.

The good news for Atari and the developers is that Ghostbusters: The Video Game sold pretty well on the marketplace so far. The expensive game is well on its way to recouping the costs.