https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvx2lohzs2j
Exact budgets of video-game productions can be tough to corroborate (more transparency from publishers would be nice!) but the numbers I've heard floating around AAA game dev these days are $300 million or more — sometimes much more! — which I think helps explain the current state of the industry
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvzh4g7qs2z
To address some frequently asked questions:
– These are US and Canada productions. If you're wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere
– These budgets are almost entirely dev salaries + overheard and have nothing to do with executive compensation (which is mostly stock)
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvxbxhank2u
If you sell a game at $70 and pocket $49 on every sale (30% goes to the store, assuming all sales are digital), you'd need to sell more than 6 million copies just to break even on a $300m budget, and that's before marketing
Posted by nolifebr
26 Comments
Hopefully AI breakthroughs in next decade will alleviate some of the ballooning budgets
This mf never drops good news on my timeline…
[deleted]
That’s believable. Epic Games, for example, had 4,000 employees. If each employee has a salary of $100k, which is on the low end, that’s $400M annually.
That’s exactly what the Insomniac leaks confirmed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/18ofju5/spiderman_2_300m_budget_in_detail/
> (30% goes to the store, assuming all sales are digital)
They wanted this. Don’t understand why they expect a pitty party.
Pay the people that make your games. Feed their families, buy them their homes. Make them feel safe.
US/canada game dev is pretty much dead in the water. It’s beyond unsustainable and that’s why the games we do get are so safe and homogenous.
This industry is going to implode if they don’t find a way to reduce these budgets.
of course.
That’s a lot right? Won’t be better to move studios out of the US?
It would be cheaper if they kept them around on the same team and they could produce more games quicker. Now, it like the movie industry, binge and purge. Everyone has to get their paycheck now because they won’t be working after they go gold.
I really don’t understand how the aaa game industry is even surviving at all in the US.
Increasing prices won’t fix the issue due to massive backlogs we’ve all built up and prices dropping super fast anyway.
Surely some level of AI is the only way to actually make these games affordable to make, thus ironically saving the industry?
Budgets shouldn’t be that high when so many games are released in such a terrible state.
That’s totally believable. I’m currently playing Spider Man 2 and am about half way through the game. Without spoiling too much there is a literal theme park built entirely for one specific mission that’s about 15-30 mins long depending on what you see and ride. You can literally ride a roller coaster in the game and it’s so cool. There’s so much care that’s been put into the game it’s mind boggling. At times I feel like I’m watching a movie. But then the game play starts.
You can interact and play like about 10 or so games. It’s like a whole game within a game filled with its own mini map, navigation system, etc. it’s just crazy how far games have come. I’ve never seen this level of detail in many games. And we wonder why budgets keep increasing. And why games take years to release.
I mean, they could try making smaller games. Do we really need quite so many “blockbuster” style games or bloated open worlds?
And then we have Sandfall Interactive who released Clair Obscur
>*If you sell a game at $70 and pocket $49 on every sale (30% goes to the store, assuming all sales are digital),*
They’ve been pushing this for years so dont expect some form of sympathy now cause of the 30% cut…
PS5 Pro doesnt even have a disc drive, if you want it, you gotta pay on top of the console.
Plus: it makes NO SENSE that games are more expensive digital compared to physical version…
PS store price for AAA titles at launch is 79,99 euros.
Physical is average speaking between 60-65 euros for day 1.
So they are just using milking the players.
The 6 million copies needs some nuance tho.
Almost every game these days has a Collectors/Gold/Deluxe edition, wich costs more than the 70 bucks.
And we didnt even start on Battlepass, MTX, Season passes etc…
So you need to sell a lot, but there is some nuance
We’re going to see massive layoffs after dev teams release highly anticipated releases whether they’re successful or not just because it costs so much to maintain them when they’re maintaining their new game or brainstorming a new project and they can get away with downsizing. Rockstar as a whole has been a giant exception to the mass layoff spree going rampant in the industry these last few years purely because they have been insulated by GTA VI hype. Once it comes out the portion of the team who actively worked on the single player component but is not so essential as to have actual creative control over its quality will definitely be on the chopping block we’re talking another 1000 people easily.
Also should be added that games take a long time as well because of development mismanagement and development hell scenarios.
We need smaller games… make more of them, but smaller. Shorter development times, lower budgets, less consequences when taking risks… This is how the games business worked 20 years ago.
So their teams are way too big. It’s not like you need a 300-500 million budget to make a good game.
When people say the gaming industry is in a bad spot, you have to specify: It’s the AAA industry in the US, particularly in California.
Gaming elsewhere is thriving because salaries are not insane like in California.
Once again Colin was right, and the internet hates it till Jason confirms it lol
Industry needs to reduce scope of AAA games, reduce the number of people needed to make them, make the timeline of development shorter than 5 years.
Players need to accept the diminishing returns being caused by bigger and bigger worlds which they demand to have more and more details, interactivity, graphical fidelity without increasing prices which result in these ballooned budgets. We were fine with small scale games for like 20 years it’s only in late PS3 and PS4 life this obsession with just make the game bigger add more people started.