Infinity Ward offered a "rediculous" budget for MW2

Develop posted an interview with Infinity Ward "front man" Robert Bowling Monday on their website. The interview covers a lot of the cheesecake questions we've heard answered before, but doesn't even go Half-Keighley with the guy and ask about anything that hasn't already been covered before. Before you go crazy and wish cancer on the interviewer or interviewee, know that the question and answer was held before the advent of news like IWNET and the great dedicated server debate.

Anyways, one interesting bit does come out of it all:

I guess Hans Zimmer doesn’t come cheap and I imagine the development budget for a game of this magnitude is pretty high. How has the budget helped development?
We are pretty tight on our budgets. Early on – when we decided to make a sequel – Activision estimated out a ridiculous budget. And we were like: ‘No, we don’t need that.’
Much like we don’t let ourselves get distracted by hype, if you have excess you feel like you should use excess. So we said ‘let us design a game the way we’d always design a game. And let us focus on that.’ So we didn’t let the budget affect our mentality. We would only put stuff in the game that is right for the game, and not because we can.
Of course though, it does afford us certain luxuries. With Hans though, it wasn’t so much about the money. He has the same mentality as us, in that he does projects because he is passionate about them. It is something he has never done before and it was a challenge. You have to score a game in a totally different way to a film. So he took it on because he was intrigued by it and he liked the story. Not because we had a cheque book.

Isn't it nice to hear that the CoD boys have kept their hard hats on? Personally, I'm very happy for the success Infinity Ward has found in their franchise. There's no questions that they do an amazing job when they set themselves on a project.

For a title as big as Modern Warfare 2, it's certainly hard to believe the team hasn't grown into the triple figures, but that speaks even further volumes to their work ethic. I can't help but think that IW is making this all look a little too easy.

I'm more excited than ever for MW2, and I can't wait to see what's in store. It's even captured the attention of my "bromance" (as Jenna would put it) and gotten me talking about what me and my buddies will be playing together first. Tonight, I'll probably wind up watching The Dark Knight in anticipation of Zimmer's soundtrack support for MW2.