Modern PS5 games like God of War: Ragnarok can cost up to $200 million to make

[Raigor]

Big interview, but this might be interesting.

Things have become more difficult for game developers in the 25+ years that Yoshida has been working in the industry. Development costs have skyrocketed: 2010's God of War III, an extremely expensive game for its time, cost $44m to make. Modern PlayStation 5 games, such as God of War: Ragnarok can cost around $200m. At the other end of the scale, independent developers are coming out with better games on smaller budgets, meaning getting noticed is harder.

Click to shrink...

The face of PlayStation: Shuhei Yoshida on the joy and future of video games

He’s been at PlayStation since the beginning, and seen the games industry transform beyond recognition. He talks unlikely successes, AI, and gaming’s future

www.theguardian.com

 

[Rodrigues solitaire]

Unsustainable.

 

[Dust]

So basically for these massive games you are either a success or ... they are not even entertaining anything else.

 

[APizzaPie]

Dear God...

 

[Raigor]

Unsustainable.

Click to shrink...

Indeed, and this explains the huge push for GAAS coming from Sony.

Spending $200 million on a big AAA game and with the risk of not selling enough copies just to break even is just too much.

 

[lobdale]

It's an industry flush with cash for some and devoid of it for others, which is why we're seeing the bottom fall out of anything that's not a 200MM slam dunk production or a 200K take a gamble one.

 

[oty]

would very much be interested to see the whole spectrum being put into discussion. GoW : R cost 200mil but generated 700m + in revenue? in less than 6 months?

 

[Raigor]

So basically for these massive games you are either a success or ... they are not even entertaining anything else.

Click to shrink...

You either sell 3-4 million copies at launch to break even or you are done.

 

[tiebreaker]

Does that number include marketing budget?

That's a shit ton of money for a sequel. Creating a new AAA IP from scratch must be really expensive.

 

[Viewt]

It's obviously going to hit a cliff at some point, just by virtue of economics, but this is something we've been seeing/reading for like 20 years now. Game budgets were ballooning during the PS2/GC/XBX years compared to the SNES/Genesis days. Then the HD era that followed exponentially increased costs across the board. And every generation, it becomes more pronounced.

 

[Cow Mengde]

I can't wait for PS6 games costing 1 billion to make.

 

[Toumari]

He never said this. The author said it.

 

[Desfrog]

I can't wait for PS6 games costing 1 billion to make.

Click to shrink...

GTA 6 is probably already there.

 

[Mecha Meister]

AAA games cost a ton to make, I wonder what is in the top 5 right now?

 

[Tsunami561]

Isn't that the author making a guess? It's not a direct quote as the title implies

 

[jett]

This thread title is a mistake. That's not a quote from Yoshida.

 

[quail_lad]

How would the author know what the budget was? Couldn't they just be guessing at a number?

 

[Tarnished]

All this to be played one time, be on buzz a month (two if running for GOTY) and thats it.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

Indeed, and this explains the huge push for GAAS coming from Sony.

Spending $200 million on a big AAA game and with the risk of not selling enough copies just to break even is just too much.

Click to shrink...

That the same for GaaS games the big difference is ROI .
But still we have seen many of both types of games died in a hurry .

 

[YozoraXV]

Indeed, and this explains the huge push for GAAS coming from Sony.

Spending $200 million on a big AAA game and with the risk of not selling enough copies just to break even is just too much.

Click to shrink...

GaaS games cost even more since it's on-going. The only benefit its you can continue to make money from them.

At this rate we will probably see another price increase in game prices especially with the PS5 dominating so much.

 

[Napalm_Frank]

It's that weird situation where people say it's unsustainable but... these are the games that hit 10+ million sales with huge amount of it being 70€/$ digital sales.

 

[Pankratous]

Shouldn't game development budgets drastically decrease as engines become more intuitive and automated? For instance the new tech in UE 5.2 that effectively makes facial capture and animation instantaneous via a phone camera and the animation can be applied to multiple avatars without having to be hand crafted?

 

[platocplx]

Shu didnt say this. The article Implies that it costs that much.

 

[Rndom Grenadez]

We've been at this point for a while now, which makes it all the more evident that there was a reason why Sony was fighting the ABK acquisition as hard as they were. Smart of them to really try to push hard into GaaS.

 

[Jake2byFour]

Shuhei never said that.

 

[bitcloudrzr]

Indeed, and this explains the huge push for GAAS coming from Sony.

Spending $200 million on a big AAA game and with the risk of not selling enough copies just to break even is just too much.

Click to shrink...

Shu did not say that, the author put that number to Ragnarok.

 

[Ovvv]

GaaS games cost even more since it's on-going. The only benefit its you can continue to make money from them.

At this rate we will probably see another price increase in game prices especially with the PS5 dominating so much.

Click to shrink...

We won't see a game price increase this gen.

 

[ToddBonzalez]

All this to be played one time, be on buzz a month (two if running for GOTY) and thats it.

Click to shrink...

Well Sony's also got a lot of GAAS in development.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

Also this not info from Yoshida ( would be surprise if he give that sort info )

 

[Gay Bowser]

Unsustainable.

Click to shrink...

Is it? If anything, gaming is just following the trend Hollywood has been on for well over a decade now: a smaller and smaller number of bigger and bigger budget, but "safe," projects. The entire Activision half of AB is basically Call of Duty Inc. at this point.

It's an industry flush with cash for some and devoid of it for others, which is why we're seeing the bottom fall out of anything that's not a 200MM slam dunk production or a 200K take a gamble one.

Click to shrink...

Right, exactly like Hollywood. People have been lamenting the eroding "middle" in Hollywood for years too. You're either a four-quadrant comic book movie that can play globally or you're a small-budget prestige or indie film. Entire genres, like the adult-focused thriller, are basically gone as far as feature films are concerned.

 

[oty]

i know these numbers seem high, but considering these games are meant to sell 10m + copies, the cost does seem to follow. Your average Marvel movie costs probably more than that, and we've seen quite a few of not reaching 1bil on box office

 

[Kemono]

Wtf Shu never said that.

 

[JMS]

It's crazy how GTA 5 cost half a billion nearly a decade ago

 

[Jedi2016]

Isn't that the author making a guess? It's not a direct quote as the title implies

Click to shrink...

Yeah, looks like he didn't actually say that.

Still, the estimate does explain why they feel like big games have to sell crazy numbers just to break even. Meanwhile, smaller games that are just as good, but without the "AAA" production values, only need to sell like 50-100K copies to be a success.

 

[Angie]

The game already tripled that ammount in sales, just 3 weeks in.

That is not what unsustainable is

 

[zanna]

not the least bit interested in these cinematic experiences that play themselves but wow that seems unsustainable

 

[elenarie]

Shouldn't game development budgets drastically decrease as engines become more intuitive and automated? For instance the new tech in UE 5.2 that effectively makes facial capture and animation instantaneous via a phone camera and the animation can be applied to multiple avatars without having to be hand crafted?

Click to shrink...

Higher salaries and benefits, more staff, more expensive tech, and so on.

These demos you see in the public about tech are all fandy and all, but still require tons of work behind the scenes to make the end product playable.

 

[LightKiosk]

GaaS games cost even more since it's on-going. The only benefit its you can continue to make money from them.

At this rate we will probably see another price increase in game prices especially with the PS5 dominating so much.

Click to shrink...

What does the PS5 dominating have to do with game prices increasing?

 

[BoredLemon]

Budgets are not bestowed on projects by all-powerful videogame gods, they are decided based on sales expectations. Game costs have not "skyrocketed", game publishers raised it because market research showed they could recoup it and make a good return.

would very much be interested to see the whole spectrum being put into discussion. GoW : R cost 200mil but generated 700m + in revenue? in less than 6 months?

Click to shrink...

Uh-oh.

 

[MonadoX]

That doesn't sound sustainable.

 

[platocplx]

Also 200 million doesnt even make any sense. Esp when the game was building on everything from the first game. Its more than likely less than half that amount to make a sequel.

Additionally if you even broke down just if this was pure labor alone. It would be 400 people making 100k a year for 5 years straight and that doesnt make remotely any sense.

 

[Raigor]

i already asked for a title change, got baited by this twitter post :/


View: https://twitter.com/DomsPlaying/status/1650533670086746115

 

[bitcloudrzr]

It's crazy how GTA 5 cost half a billion nearly a decade ago

Click to shrink...

The dev budget was $266 million not half a billion.

 

[Deleted member 35509]

Made its money back easily but regardless, no way it cost 200 million

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

Yep,
$200 million sounds about right. Which means they likely aren't breaking even until they've sold at least 5 million copies or so.

Of course, Sony's strategy worked incredibly well. They let games gestate for upwards of 7 years for their blockbusters in the PS4 era, and outside of Dreams, pretty much every game that they gave lots of time to develop seems to have done incredibly well, generally selling between 10-20 million copies?

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 10 years. Surely remakes like Demon's Souls and the Last of Us Part 1 are cheaper to make and faster to produce. I could certainly see them going further in that direction alongside new IP, sequels, and live service games.

 

[kadotsu]

I don't have the slightest idea how development scales at those budgets, but my knee-jerk reaction is that a strategy of doing 4x $50M titles would give you a better shot at creating the next surprise hit.

Meanwhile you could burn a lot of money with a super high budget title because the culture just moved on in the 6+ years those games take to make.

 

[ToddBonzalez]

not the least bit interested in these cinematic experiences that play themselves but wow that seems unsustainable

Click to shrink...

If that $200m number is to be believed, Ragnarok made more than that in its first week based on the sales numbers they released.

 

[Angie]

i already asked for a title change, got baited by this twitter post :/


View: https://twitter.com/DomsPlaying/status/1650533670086746115

Click to shrink...

Change to what? If the article is just doing a educated guess

 

[bitcloudrzr]

Yep,
$200 million sounds about right. Which means they likely aren't breaking even until they've sold at least 5 million copies or so.

Click to shrink...

No this does not sound about right when the tweet is based off of the author giving that number, not Shu.

 

[Jawmuncher]

Locking this thread as it's unclear where the 200M number is coming. So any conversation on that aspect is unable to be clearly elaborated on.

Feel free to make another thread about the interview itself that forego's focusing on that.