Ambitious Open-World “This Is Vegas” Game Is Probably Canceled [After $43 Million Spend In Development Costs, Warner Brother Games Cancels The Open-World Game We've Been Waiting For Since 2008]

Posted on TFTS by Kevin Schram on Tuesday, 24. August 2010 under: Computer/Console Gaming

Bummer for everybody who was looking forward to “This Is Vegas” (all three of you). The highly ambitious open-world game has been (allegedly) canned by WB Games, who acquired it from the carcass of Midway Games when they purchased the majority of the assets from that bankrupt company.

“This Is Vegas” was set to be an open-world game like the “Grand Theft Auto” franchise and would of allowed players to cruise Las Vegas, gamble, go dancing, race cars – etc. As I’ve already mentioned, it was a highly ambitious project. If you combine everything that was promised, along with the attractive graphics, I’m not ashamed to admit that I was looking forward to it.

What’s really interesting about this story is how much money was spent on development. According to a source who spoke to website CVG – Midway had spend a whopping $43 million on the game when they pitched their assets overboard to WB Games. The source figures that Surreal Software (the developer of the game) was hemmorgaging some $250,000 a month. Overall, it looks like $50,000,000 was spent on the games development.

$50 million is certainly a lot of money – even in the rising world of video game development budgets. CVG’s headline asks the question: “Is this gaming’s biggest ever waste of money?”

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