Horizon Forbidden West and TLOU2 cost Sony $200+million (each) to develop!

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/poorly-redacted-sony-docs-reveal-last-of-us-and-horizon-sequels-cost-200m/

One document published on Wednesday discusses the huge sums required to develop major first-party games at Sony Interactive Entertainment, redacting key figures such as team sizes, budgets and development time.

However, as discovered by journalist Tom Warren, the redacted information appears to have been done so with a pen, and then scanned in by lawyers, meaning that the numbers were still clearly visible. Shortly after this discovery, the docs were pulled.

Revealed in the documents is:

• Horizon Forbidden West cost some $212 million to make and was worked on by around 300 employees for five years.
• The Last of Us Part 2 cost some $220 million to make and was worked on by around 200 people for over fives years.

It was already known that modern triple-A games cost over $100 million to create, but this is the first time the full scale of SIE’s budgets has been revealed. And it’s likely these figures don’t include non-development costs such as marketing.

Speaking in 2020, former PlayStation Americas boss Shawn Layden – who oversaw the development of The Last of Us Part 2 – discussed what he viewed to be the “unsustainable” costs of creating modern blockbusters.

Layden referred to a common theory that development costs had doubled with every new console generation, and claimed that last-gen games had reached between $80m and $150m for most AAA games.

“The problem with that model is it’s just not sustainable,” he said. “I don’t think that, in the next generation, you can take those numbers and multiply them by two and think that you can grow.”

He added: “I think the industry as a whole needs to sit back and go, ‘Alright, what are we building? What’s the audience expectation? What is the best way to get our story across, and say what we need to say?’”

The former PlayStation exec, who left Sony in 2019 after a three-decade career, suggested that shorter games could help control development costs on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Wow, do you believe, this SW? No wonder Sony wants $70 for their games lol.

No wonder they went multiplatform. 😎

@Pedro: Indeed. Games are incredibly expensive to make these days. Locking them to a singular device makes little sense.

So Starfield should be on PS5, then?

@SolidGame_basic: Sure. Why not?

No wonder the attention to detail that went into both games is something Microsoft can't even dream of having. The animations from TLOU2 will be better than Microsoft's 10th gen systems.😅

😂 Pedro gonna have a meltdown with this one

@SolidGame_basic: Why?

@hardwenzen: MSFS shits all over anything Sony has ever done.

We should stick giant corporations into courtrooms more often. Never mind the verdicts or whatever, these juicy and/or entertaining tidbits are worth it alone.

Are you people so needed of attention that you have to create a thread every time anyone farts? Why not just dump all the new info on the FTC thread?

I agree with this.

Starfield is on PC and Xbox. 😎

Costs about as much as an MCU film.

Not sure why. Sony fannies believe that other people playing the same games on other platform negatively affects their experience. It is a Sony fanny thing.😂

I would ask wtf MSFS is, but i know for a fact nothing from MS is even remotely close to the production quality TLOU2 has. MS themselves were jelly af, and wanted to make their TLOU. Reason why there's still no games like it? Lack of talent, obviously.

While Sony is spending $200M+ per game, Nintendo has never spent more than 3M😁No wonder their animations, visuals and voice acting is exactly what you had on your N64 back in 98🤡

Pedro, like MS, wants Sony stopped at all costs!

😄 good point

@Pedro: Yeah, it strikes as a very odd mentality to have. A game’s exclusivity status has no bearing on my enjoyment level of a game.

I have these Sony fannies paranoid.🤭

@SolidGame_basic: Can’t say I ever got that impression from him myself.

@SolidGame_basic: How many copies did the Last of Us 2 sell?

You are experiencing the Starfield effect.😎

According to Wikipedia, 10 million as of June 2022

@SolidGame_basic: So if we make a rough estimate that each game sold for $40, how much is 10 million times 40?

How much of that $200 million is marketing?

I can't believe--like, literally cannot believe--a game actually costs $200 million to develop. There has to be a shitload of bloat that goes into that, including things like marketing, needless middle- and upper-management, corruption, and so on and so forth.

Maybe it cost a lot of money to do Abby’s love scene?

Time to bring them to PC.

Asset creation is insanely taxing. Most gamers take for granted the level of work needed to create this highly detailed scenes.

Imagine dropping more money developing halo infinite than both of these gems combined.

@SolidGame_basic: I see you replied to someone else after my post. You know where this is going, and you don't like it, lol.

Sony had no other reason to raise the price other than greed because when you double your money, you're doing more than fine.

There’s been rumours that Grand Theft Auto VI may close in on the $1 billion mark after all is said and done.

I didn’t reply because what you’re saying is speculative 😎

Which Sony is scared to do on a day one PC releases.

I'm sorry but did I trigger you with the information that TLoU2 costs as much as it did to make Captain Marvel?

@mrbojangles25:

As I understand it, that $200 million is *before* marketing, just like Hollywood budgets you often see floating around.

These days, there is a lot of overlap between what goes into making a Hollywood blockbuster and a AAA game. CGI and video game asset creation and animation use broadly the same skills. Sound design and music composition are now very similar. Extensive use of mocap are now akin to shooting a movie scene. No, game developers don't have to build sets (yet?), but they still have to code a lot of scripts and databases, which does take a lot of manpower.

So no, I'm not surprised by that $200 million figure at all.

More manpower is needed for creating the virtual sets than coding.

@Pedro:

True. Just saying, coding is still not an insignificant amount of work.

@SolidGame_basic: Nah you didn't. Sony has more than doubled their money on this game, and this game released at $60, so. again it was greed for Sony to raise its prices to $70.

Oh and you make "speculative" threads every day here, doesn't seem to bother you then 🤣

Its a high profile game, i know. You don't have, nor will ever have this kind of high profile titles on the Switch. Instead, they will release some archaic looking third person adventure games with a toy or two😅They really are trolling you, jaydan🤦‍♂️

Just take a look at the credits in a AAA game these days. They’re freaking massive.

If you know what budget does to craft: the bigger the budget the worse the creation is. Just look at movies. Can you look at most 200 million dollar budget movies with a straight face and say they're of quality? No. Bottomless budgets serve a lack of discipline to the creatives for truly accomplishing a goal that's not deeply pocketed in some corporate profiteering. Just throw more money and let it get more bloated.

More constrained mid to lower budgets tend to get better results for a reason. Less room for bullshit and more focus on delivering what's good.

These inflated budgets do more harm than good, and then in the event they flop these company executives will be out for blood.

Look at how Hollywood is crashing now. For the last decade or two the execs normalized these absurd budget numbers in the name of corporate greed and plastic factory production lines. Now look in 2023 how Hollywood is eating shit sandwich after shit sandwich and people are not giving the money back that Hollywood needs. I can tell you with certainty that Hollywood is in panic mode right now. It is not sustainable in the long-term and it's going to catch up to gaming eventually too if they continue to follow the movie industry template; but we can reverse any crash from happening as long as we don't normalize absurdly high budgets that really don't define what makes a good game.

Your "big budget=bad game cuz movies are usually like that" doesn't apply here. TLOU2 is an amazing game from its gameplay, to story and the best acting seen in a video game. Hollywood and the gaming industry have little in common, so i am not too sure why you're comparing the two, especially when its Sony singleplayer titles that cost a lot to produce, but don't even have any kind of mtx or bullshit season passes. Like, who else does this? Sony are the only ones.

A flight Sim? Lmao! No it really doesn't . Regardless that game is actually made by an independent developer not Microsoft.

Anyone else like to let the credits roll when you beat the game lol I like the music

@hardwenzen: You're just saying what all the comic book shills said when they enjoyed the high life. "It's dominating now so what could go wrong?" Well--people tend to look at benefits in the short-term, and look how the same comic book shills are eating dirt now.

I don't mind a 200 million dollar budget here and there; but for godsakes, let's not normalize it.

You know that's not true, so don't bother throwing in the same bucket to make a point. TLOU2 is an awesome game, and that's that.

HZD, tho, even tho impressive on A LOT of levels, is a shit game.

@SolidGame_basic: I always watch the entire credits whenever I finish a game, for the first time at least. It’s better when you have music you enjoy during the credit roll of course. Recently finished Spider-Man Remastered and really liked the post credits portion they did for that. Typical Marvel movie stuff.

Like I mentioned, people tend to look at things in the short-term. You're talking about two games that have been out for a while now. I'm talking about the long-term that it's not going to be sustainable in the long-run.

I'm not arguing that the games in the OP aren't successful, I'm saying it will not be sustainable if 200+million budgets become normal practice.

Yeah some may succeed, then others will fail ten times harder than a flop with a normal budget. Execs will be out for blood and studios will get shut down and everyone goes "boohoo, what went wrong?"

If you add the marketing budget, then TLOU2 and HFW could've cost around $300M each.

In terms of sales revenue, TLOU2 and HFW grossed just over $300M each.

In other words, it's questionable whether TLOU2 and HFW broke even, let alone made a profit.