That number makes zero sense for Uncharted 4.
We know from the LA Times profile that they had 200 internal employees on Uncharted 4:
http://www.latimes.com/business/tec...ty-dog-uncharted-20160523-snap-htmlstory.html
The game had a 3 year dev cycle.
Per employee, you need to pay for their salary, benefits, office space, and hardware/software. This works out to an industry average of $10,000 per month for a AAA employee even at a company as low profile as Double Fine, and can go up to $20,000 a month in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Let's assume Naughty Dog pays very poorly for their stature and location, has a bad office, and gives the team old tools, so we stick with the $10,000 a month estimate.
$120,000 per year * 3 years * 200 employees = $72 million
That's before we even start to account for outsourcing, bonuses, or the fact that a studio like Naughty Dog nigh assuredly pays their staff quite well and gives them great resources and hardware. It was very likely at least $90-$100+ million
Don't take this the wrong way but what you just said simply isn't true. I get that that this is dirty math but that's not how dev cycles work.
You can't take the total amount of employees time X to reach an approximation of the budget when you're dealing with a studio with multiple concurrent projects.Forget having multiple ongoing projects, Even with singular projects you still have to account for the shifts in team size due to DEV (pre-production, production, crunch, ongoing post release support).
At the time of that article is it possible that it was crunch time and even other teams were also involved? Absolutely!
The LA time article is saying that the entirety of the 200 person studio is involved in a semi semi flat hierarchic structure with many people wearing multiple hats, and at the time they were focused on one game. Not that the entire studio is only working on and budgeted on Uncharted 4 for 3 straight years.
To show why the claim that Uncharted 4 has been in dev via (as the LA Times article says) all of Naughty Dog for 3 straight years can't possibly be true, let's take a look at the last few years of their output.
So Uncharted 4 was released on May 10, 2016 and, taking what you said at face value, was in development for 3 years.
That would mean by it was in development from May 10, 2013 to May 10 2016
May 10, 2013
UNCHARTED 4 BEGINS DEVELOPMENT
June 14, 2013
The Last of Us PS3 Edition completed and released
Ongoing support for The Last of Us (DLC, MP, Content, updates)
Last of Us PS4 Edition begins development following int completion of PS3 version -
https://gamerant.com/the-last-of-us-ps4-development-dates/
The Last of Us Part II begins development -
https://gearnuke.com/the-last-of-us-part-2-production-info-e3-demo-downgrade/
"Production on The Last of Us sequel started once they were done with the work on the original game. However, Uncharted 4 was also in active development so the small team that was working on The Last of Us sequel was taken back to Uncharted 4.
This repeated again with The Lost Legacy but once they were done with it, all hands were on deck for The Last of Us Part 2."
Meaning that TLOUII Team only came on the Uncharted 4 and LL (which itself was a separate team, started dev after Uncharted 4 and was made during the development of The Last of Us Part II) during crunch time for the project.
On November 14, 2013
Teaser trailer for Uncharted 4 is shown - With voice work and graphics on display. It should be noted that at Naughty Dog they start development and creative development concurrently. Meaning that
while TLOU II and TLOU PS4 were being made, Uncharted 4 was being worked on in story and dev.
July 29th 2014
The Last of Us PS4 Edition released
Ongoing support for PS4 edition (patches, tech revisions, DLC)
Dec 6, 2014
The Last of Us Part II is announced and a Trailer is shown -
https://youtu.be/W2Wnvvj33Wo
So just to Review, while Uncharted 4 was in development, Naughty Dog:
Released The Last of Us on PS3 - with ongoing content and support
Started work on The Last of Us Part II
Released The Last of Us on PS4 - with ongoing content and support
While TLOUII has been in development, Naughty Dog has
Released Uncharted 4 - with ongoing content and support
Released The Lost Legacy
So even then to take this a step further, you would not apply the same logic you just did to the development of The Last of Us Part II. There's no way that the estimated budget you put forward is accurate in methodology or result. We can take what's considered 'standard' in the industry when it comes to dev phases to arrive at a better number, but I think the point stands.
EDIT: Moved the big about outsourcing to another post.
Yeah, but that ruins the narrative that Sony first party games are developed much much cheaper than any other third party games.
It depends on the studios, but AAA IP multi-platform development (which is the norm) is typically more expensive these days due to the added overhead. I don't think that's a 'narrative'. What have you got that says otherwise? Anything?
