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These numbers make sense. Kind of hard to read, but if it is around the 200-220 million range, then it probably is correct. Amount of employees * amount of years * amount of outsourcing (not mentioned here) * physical location of most regular employees / main studio.
$212 million for Horizon, $220 million for Part 2. From what I can tell.
For those who couldn't make it out (and even I struggled and tbh may still be wrong here):
Horizon Forbidden West - $212 million
The Last of Us: Part 2 - $220 million
Horizon Forbidden West - $212 million
The Last of Us: Part 2 - $220 million
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Someone messed up the redactions in Sony’s documents.
A new exhibit has just dropped and it’s full of important financial data that has been marked out with a black pen. Unfortunately that doesn’t keep it secret once you scan it in, and oops everything is no longer secret. More here.
www.theverge.com
If this is without marketing the effective budget should be an extra 100-150m right?
Pretty insane. I would be okay dubbing games at this budget scale "AAAA," despite sounding completely absurd. It's clearly a difference from other AAA games. Rockstar would be in this tier as well.
Pretty sure it does. Shawn Layden said in a 2020 article that their PS4 gen games had costs around 100 Million dollars to make
Hot take but maybe we should have been more upset about paying $50 for games in the 90's than paying $70 for games now.
Looks like many of us were off the mark when it came to game budgets. They "prestige" titles have ballooned a lot it seems.
Red Dead Redemption 2 cost at least double these numbers.
It honestly sounds insane. Guess we haven't really seen development numbers that high, just people suggesting that they were that high.
The risks of releasing and launching a AAA game continue to grow as budgets, scope and time to make these games increase.
People shouldn't be surprised by these numbers.
It's only going up from now on and that's partially why Sony is pivoting to GAAS as well.
They made profits but after selling a couple of millions to break even first.
Like, at least 3-4 million units at full price to break even and maybe even more if marketing costs are crazy.
It's only going up from now on and that's partially why Sony is pivoting to GAAS as well.
They made profits but after selling a couple of millions to break even first.
Like, at least 3-4 million units at full price to break even and maybe even more if marketing costs are crazy.
That's without taking into account physical production/sale cost, marketing etc.
Its probably closer to 3.5 million - 4 million to safely break even. There are CC fees Sony in particular would have to account for so take like 1-2% off that $70. And that is assuming that every copy of their game is sold digitally which is not true.
And yeah, as pointed above, marketing needs to be factored in too. So might be north of 4 million to safely do it.
also that looks to just dev, no marketing costs, and you also need to factor in the percentage going to stores for physical bought copies
after like 3-4m copies, yes
TLOU Part II basically broke even on day 1
That's just development costs, it doesn't include marketing, which is likely even higher. This isn't surprising personally but it explains a lot on why they're now releasing the games on PC and trying to pivot to GAAS in order to keep making these types of games.
Significantly more than that as there are other costs involved. These are without advertising, without retailer cuts or costs to print and deliver discs, or to provide the payment services through the store and the digital files.
TLOU Part 2 sold over 4 million copies in its first 3 days. If we ignore special editions and only use a baseline of $60 USD per game, that's 240 million dollars in revenue in just that time.
We don't have a similar 3 day breakdown for Horizon FW, but we only the game was sitting at 8.4 million units sold after about a year. It's safe to say both games would've made a profit, even factoring in marketing costs.
Even more than that for retail.
Stores and distribution costs take up quite a bit.