PopCap Spending $1 Million on Next Game

One of the dramatic differences between casual games and something like GTA is the amount of money spent on development. While reports put GTA IV’s budget at around $100 million, PopCap Games is making news for a new game costing over $1 million. This could quite possibly be a record in the casual industry, PopCap co-founder John Vechey revealed to CasualGaming.biz.

The reason for the large budget is mainly due to troubles in the game’s development cycle. Vechey explained, “It’s been in production for some time – we took a few wrong turns with the product and turned back to go in different directions. It’s really tough to get the simple gameplay out there, but we’re there.”

He wouldn’t actually reveal anything about the game; the name, its platform, or anything else. We do know it should be out this year, but that’s it.

“I actually think in comparison to the hardcore games space there is a lot more prototyping and a lot more iteration in that beginning part when it comes to core gameplay. That’s kind of sad – because I often wish that in the core games space those developers had time to do a little bit more iteration on their games at the start.

“We spend more time than anyone else in the casual games space on those things, sometimes over two years, and that tends to mean they cost over $500,000. In the core games space very few people are able to take that risk, except for rare cases like Valve or Blizzard.”

In the meantime, I’d like Peggle Nights to hold me over — I’ve already spent way, way too much time playing Deluxe and Extreme.

via Game|Life