We already expect Rockstar North to hit it big with Grand Theft Auto 4 (Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3), but it's not a well known fact how much money it cost developing the behemoth of open-world games across three and a half years. Interesting enough, GTA 4 could very well be the most expensive video game to make in history.

Leslie Benzies, Rockstar North president and producer of Grand Theft Auto 4, reportedly made a wild guess saying it took around US$ 100 million to build the next-gen Liberty City. “It's like making a theatre production, a few movies and an album all to fit into one package," he said.

Some 1,000 people were allegedly involved in Grand Theft Auto 4's production, with 220 settled in Rockstar North's Scotland HQ. It didn't take less than 100,000 photographs of New York just to capture the rain's intensity, a thousand pages of script served as the game's backbone, and countless 12-hour days at work were spent by key members.

If it is true that U$ 100 million were spent, Rockstar could safely nudge Silicon Knights' Too Human and Sega's Shenmue off stage since both are known to have fallen a few million short of a hundred. Whether or not GTA 4 sets records, Rockstar can still live off the US$ 50 million Microsoft paid for exclusive DLC and the piles of money its upcoming surefire hit will generate.

Buy: [ GTA IV (PS3) ]
Buy: [ GTA IV (Xbox 360) ]