Firemint: Real Racing 2 Took $2M Budget, 18 Months Development

The mobile app space is widely touted as a high-growth area because of its relatively short dev cycles and budgets that tend to be more accessible than other platforms, but that's not always the case: Firemint has revealed its Real Racing 2 took 18 months to build -- with a not-so-modest $2 million budget. Firemint's best known for its successful iOS game Flight Control, which as of the beginning of this year had sold 3.9 million units on the App Store (it has since passed 4 million units). But Firemint began creation of 2009's original Real Racing first, beginning in May 2008. The company's Logan Booker told Pocket Full of Megabytes that the team intended the franchise to be "premium" from the start, and that Real Racing 2 aimed to go even further. "Real Racing 2 expanded significantly on visuals, handling and content of the first game, and specific optimizations for iPhone 4 and its retina display," Booker says. Although the $2 million budget and 18-month dev cycle was only discussed in the context of the iPhone version of the game, the Australian developer recently launched an iPad version of Real Racing 2 that implemented optimizations specific to that device. "We’ve gone all out for this version of the game, adding anti-aliasing, enhanced reflections and high-detail objects and surfaces," says Booker.