Bear in mind that in contrast to the guy who wrote the original article, I'm denominating everything in dollars and including marketing costs as part of the cost of production (though of course they aren't the same thing). Interestingly, Sony spent more on marketing and distribution than they did on the game. I think that makes sense. If one is trying to sell people on a concept, you need to make them aware of it. With sequels/familiar concepts one can just kind of ship a game and let the fanbase mobilize itself, but with original games marketing and the developers (who have to explain their game to anyone willing to listen) have to do some heavy lifting.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-19-heavy-rain-cost-16-7-million-to-make-and-made-sony-more-than-100-million
Quantic Dream's Guillaume de Fondaumiere revealed to a Digital Dragons audience in Poland today that PlayStation 3 exclusive Heavy Rain cost just 16.7 million to make - even with all those emotional polygons stuffed in.
With Sony's marketing and distribution on top, the total spend looked something like 40 million. But, Fondaumiere said, "Sony earned more than 100 million with this game. It's very profitable."
As for my take on Heavy Rain, I will quote a recent post. Also, I thought the VR tech (seen below) was really cool.
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I loved Heavy Rain though I recognize its imperfections (really hated the walking controls and the VA was pretty bad in spots). There were just too many great moments. A non-spoilerly favorite for me was the moment when Ethan was alone with his remaining son. You had a to do list, but you could do stuff out of order, ignore the list completely, or do other things, and your kid had his own routine he would go through unless you pushed him to do stuff like his homework or made dinner for him.
Critically, David Cage is a guy who is willing to take risks, but he's also willing to listen to criticism. His next game (Two Souls) seems to have been informed by criticism of Heavy Rain the same way Heavy Rain reflected criticsim of Omikron (Heavy Rain had its problems but it didn't replicate Nomad Soul's mistakes).
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