Yes. Yes it is.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying the intro cost 10 mil. But cutscenes are EXTREMELY expensive.

Best cut seens are for blizzard games! even the old diablo game has great one.

I do miss it in games. Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft have them and they were great.

That's a bit hilarious when you win the 10 or more hours struggle and all you get is static picture with 'Victory, 45 points' info:( 

Yes it was depressing getting that at the end of along Sins game.

I don't see why cut scenes should cost so much either.. A lot of the times you don't even have to use the engine to make them.  No AI to put in, ragdoll effects etc.

Cutscenes really don't do it for me.   SC2 had a few good ones, but nothing that I couldn't do without.  I like metrics rather than pretty, both are even better.

Major milestone cutscenes/graphics and end game metrics.  I do like the end of open ended rpg's where they do the drawings/static images with the voiceover giving the decisive fallout - i.e. i saved town x, now town x is thriving.  Better yet, my goody two shoes saved town x, which then went on to become the local tyrant and enslave everyone in the area...oops.

My opinion is that time and money are limited resources in the production of any game.  If a large chunk of both goes towards making something I will watch maybe once and then hit escape to skip ever after... well that's a waste of both and I wish they had put that time and money into making the game (mechanics, replay value, complexity, stability, etc...) better instead.

I think warcraft 3 had it just right. Use the videos for the truly epic moments, those events that really changed everything. Even if I just watch it once, I'll never forget it.

To the OP, in addition, civ V has 'cinematic' of of world leaders in diplomatic screen, which is movie based rather than real time polygons.