In the run-up to therelease this September, Activision's Bobby Kotick has said that his company plans to spend around $500 million developing and marketing the game.As reported by Reuters, Kotick put forward the figure at the Milken conference in Los Angeles last week, stating, "If you're making a $500 million bet you can't take that chance with someone else's IP. The stakes for us are getting bigger."An Activision spokesperson later clarified that it included marketing, packaging, infrastructure support, and royalties, as well as other costs.This would potentially makethe most expensive video game to date. For the sake of comparison,is estimated to have cost around $260 million to develop, produce and market.A rep told Reuters that initial engine and backend infrastructure costs "are upfront expenditures that should reduce future product development costs."Analysts believe that the game will need to sell more than 15 million copies to break even, although they did not account for any potential DLC or microtransactions that Activision may sell for the game.