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Horizon Forbidden West cost 110 Million to produce according to Dutch Documentary

Gaiff

Gold Member
It's not bigger. They are about the same. HFW has a bigger open world, that's it. SSM put a lot of work into their side content, cinematics, and bosses/enemy variety. They are both big games.
How long to Beat says 88 hours for Forbidden West and 52 hours for GOWR. That's an enormous difference. I also played both and got the platinum in GOWR Ragnarok much faster. Still didn't get the one in HFW because there are too many sidequests that take too long.
 
How long to Beat says 88 hours for Forbidden West and 52 hours for GOWR. That's an enormous difference. I also played both and got the platinum in GOWR Ragnarok much faster. Still didn't get the one in HFW because there are too many sidequests that take too long.

My playtime is less in HFW. It has more filler copy/paste side content
 

Gaiff

Gold Member
The budget of games like Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok or The Last of Us are way higher than the Cyberpunk 2077 one.
Are you sure about that?

https://www.barrons.com/news/cyberp...-acclaim-despite-seizure-warnings-01607594103

Apparently, Cyberpunk cost $328M to make and considering that it was in development for like 10 years with one of the largest marketing campaigns ever seen and the biggest hype this side of GTA V's release, I seriously doubt Sony ever made a game as expensive.
First because the salaries, office costs etc. in California, Amsterdam, etc. are way more expensive than in Poland. And second because a top publisher like Sony spends way more money on corporate and marketing than CD Projekt.

$80-100M was the cost of that PS3-PS4 crossgen AAA games like Watchdogs 1 had. They are way more expensive now.
You literally have this article telling you HFW cost $110M and it's one of the biggest AAA games on the market. Most AAA games aren't as expensive as this. It's among the very top, only surpassed by bigger games like Spider-Man, GTA, or perhaps Starfield. The likes of Elden Ring don't come close.

$80-100M is likely the ballpark of most AAA games. Only the absolute biggest break this figure and this is without marketing costs which can easily double.
 
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It felt about as high budget as anything else. But, man, gaming budgets are getting out of control.

Videogames have been about wowing us compared to what came before since the beginning. It can't keep going like this. The amount it will cost to keep doing so is becoming too risky and I fear it backfiring badly at some point on the industry as a whole.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
How long to Beat says 88 hours for Forbidden West and 52 hours for GOWR. That's an enormous difference. I also played both and got the platinum in GOWR Ragnarok much faster. Still didn't get the one in HFW because there are too many sidequests that take too long.
HFW is definitely the longer game but in terms of dev time, what takes longer? creating copy paste content and areas or carefully crafting dungeons and tweaking enemy encounters? I really dont think it matters how long a game is as long as the dev time and number of devs are the same. Thats one thing about game development. There is no robert downey jr. taking $75 million per movie or christopher nolan taking $100 million from backend profits, the cost is more or less how much it costs to run a studio every year and how long it took them to ship the game.

SSM took 4.5 years. GG took 5 years. 4.5 years if you start from when they shipped the DLC. GG always had more devs but it seems SSM has caught up. Id say both budgets are roughly the same with Horizon probably costing more since it took longer with more devs for a longer period during development.

Naughty Dog shipped TLOU2 in just under 3 years. And that was mostly due to the hack and then delayed after going gold due to covid related supply chain issues. They couldve shipped that game in 2.5 years. Another 300-400 person studio over at Sony. We can now assume that it cost half of what Horizon cost. Add an extra 10% if we count the cost of living in LA vs Amsterdam.

It all comes down to number of years + number of devs. These are not 1000 person studios or like Rockstar 3,000 people across 7 studios working on one game for 5 years. THAT is your $270-300 million game. Not your GOW, TLOU or Horizon.
 

Gaiff

Gold Member
My playtime is less in HFW. It has more filler copy/paste side content
Whatever the case I think we both agree that budgets are out of control and that publishers have only themselves to blame. I honestly don't know where the heck all that money is going when games now aren't even that much better than 15 years ago when the budgets were only a fraction of what they are.

I see publishers all the time going "We gotta sell 10M copies to break even" and all I tell myself is "Who the fuck told you to spend $200M on the game and another $200M in marketing? And worse yet, the game isn't even good.
 

yurinka

Member
Are you sure about that?

https://www.barrons.com/news/cyberp...-acclaim-despite-seizure-warnings-01607594103

Apparently, Cyberpunk cost $328M to make and considering that it was in development for like 10 years with one of the largest marketing campaigns ever seen and the biggest hype this side of GTA V's release, I seriously doubt Sony ever made a game as expensive.
Pretty good estimation, Cyberpunk 2077 had a budget of $316M.

But yes, Rockstar or Sony marketing budgets are way higher than the CD Projekt ones. I mean, things like covering important metro stations with game ads, ads in the superbowl and tv, massive internet campaigns with digital ads everywhere, etc. Not PR stuff like releasing screenshots or a new trailer or quote every few months.

You literally have this article telling you HFW cost $110M and it's one of the biggest AAA games on the market. Most AAA games aren't as expensive as this. It's among the very top, only surpassed by bigger games like Spider-Man, GTA, or perhaps Starfield. The likes of Elden Ring don't come close.

$80-100M is likely the ballpark of most AAA games. Only the absolute biggest break this figure and this is without marketing costs which can easily double.
What article?

I asked for the source of the 110M and didn't see it. The OP shows a reddit comment where someone shows the IMDB page (a public wiki that anyone can edit) that mentions the 120M number without providing any source. In the video I saw they mentioned it's the most expensive media project ever made in the Netherlands but I didn't see there.

Many AAA games have budgets of $200M, 300M+ or even more. Known cases are recent CoD games, RDR2, GTAV, Star Wars TOR, Star Citizen to name some of them.

HFW is definitely the longer game but in terms of dev time, what takes longer? creating copy paste content and areas or carefully crafting dungeons and tweaking enemy encounters? I really dont think it matters how long a game is as long as the dev time and number of devs are the same. Thats one thing about game development. There is no robert downey jr. taking $75 million per movie or christopher nolan taking $100 million from backend profits, the cost is more or less how much it costs to run a studio every year and how long it took them to ship the game.

SSM took 4.5 years. GG took 5 years. 4.5 years if you start from when they shipped the DLC. GG always had more devs but it seems SSM has caught up. Id say both budgets are roughly the same with Horizon probably costing more since it took longer with more devs for a longer period during development.

Naughty Dog shipped TLOU2 in just under 3 years. And that was mostly due to the hack and then delayed after going gold due to covid related supply chain issues. They couldve shipped that game in 2.5 years. Another 300-400 person studio over at Sony. We can now assume that it cost half of what Horizon cost. Add an extra 10% if we count the cost of living in LA vs Amsterdam.

It all comes down to number of years + number of devs. These are not 1000 person studios or like Rockstar 3,000 people across 7 studios working on one game for 5 years. THAT is your $270-300 million game. Not your GOW, TLOU or Horizon.
According to their game credits in mobygames.com (still don't have the GoWR credits):
TLOU2 2335 people in the game credits (167 of them under 'thanks')
HFW 3445 people in the game credits (79 of them under 'thanks')
GTAV(360) 3772 people (84 of them under 'thanks')
GTAV (PC, I assume a more recent build with remastered and several years of GTA Online content) 4870 people (96 of them under 'thanks')

All this people doesn't work for free. So in addition to the amount of people, the years of development also affects to the budget. And well, the biggest cost in most of these pharaonic projects it's the marketing budget, which often is as big or even more than the development budget.
 
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Gaiff

Gold Member
Pretty good estimation, Cyberpunk 2077 had a budget of $316M.

But yes, Rockstar or Sony marketing budgets are way higher than the CD Projekt ones. I mean, things like covering important metro stations with game ads, ads in the superbowl and tv, massive internet campaigns with digital ads everywhere, etc. Not PR stuff like releasing screenshots or a new trailer or quote every few months.
I did see Cyberpunk plastered in the metro stations here and with the Keanu Reeves thing and massive ad campaigns, I'd be surprised if its budget wasn't massive as well. Also, the game reportedly cost in excess of $300M, it's doubtful that it didn't get the marketing budget to match.
Many AAA games have budgets of $200M, 300M+ or even more. Known cases are recent CoD games, RDR2, GTAV, Star Wars TOR, Star Citizen to name some of them.
But this isn't most AAA games, this is the cream of the crop, the absolute best-sellers. Most AAA games are games like Forspoken, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy (which I bet has a higher budget than HFW), Ratchet & Clank, Forza, Nintendo's entire catalog, Resident Evil, and many others. COD, RDR2, and GTA V are 20M+ sellers, this isn't the case for most AAA games.
 
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yurinka

Member
I did see Cyberpunk plastered in the metro stations here and with the Keanu Reeves thing and massive ad campaigns, I'd be surprised if its budget wasn't massive as well. Also, the game reportedly cost in excess of $300M, it's doubtful that it didn't get the marketing budget to match.
Cyberpunk had a total budget -which means including marketing and everything else- of $316M according to CD Projekt. I included the link above.

But this isn't most AAA games, this is the cream of the crop, the absolute best-sellers. Most AAA games are games like Forspoken, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy (which I bet has a higher budget than HFW), Ratchet & Clank, Forza, Nintendo's entire catalog, Resident Evil, and many others. COD, RDR2, and GTA V are 20M+ sellers, this isn't the case for most AAA games.
Yes, Cyberpunk, Horizon games, GoW 2018, GoWR, TLOU, TLOU2, Spider-Man, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, many Nintendo games, CoD, RDR2, FIFA, Assassin's Creed or GTAV are 20M+ sellers material and have/had insane marketing budgets. Only a few games more sell like that, but we're talking about these type of game.

Games like Ratchet, Forza, RE, Forspoken are also AAA games but in a lower scale.
 
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Corndog

Banned
I disagree here. Also remember that Covid slowed down development of the game. But the side quests were actually decent. Not Witcher 3 great, but also better than the first Horizon game.
That’s not saying much. It’s like saying a crap sandwich is better than raw hamburger.
 

Ronin_7

Banned
Where were sane takes like this in the PS3 era? It was chock full of people bashing 10-12 hour games that were fantastic. It's the reason why games are bloated crap these days.
Don't you know gamers? They contradict themselves all the time.
 

Darius87

Member
I'm dissapointed with FW and even more considering 110$ million cost, playing at the moment and i'm more then halfway through in total progress and i'm having hard time enjoying it imo it feels like game was rushed to release and it lacked time to polish, i know it may sound bit like a rant but i just wan't to adress issues it has and it has really annoying bugs/issues like:
Button prompt sometimes doesn't work and it requires you to restart a game and it's inacurate.
Weapons, armor could be more diverse now only difference is it's status.
Lightning at brief moments sometimes looks way to bright i don't know is that some glitch or that suppose to happen.
Grapling hook mechanics could be better you can go down when you suppose to go up with grapling hook while climbing.
Climbing mechanics could be better, more responsive specially when alloy suddenly decides to climb in middle of the fight and it doesn't wan't to let go.
AI is like in the most games is dumb.
Machines in game world is cramped together and it's really annoying when every 5 seconds everyone attacks you like in the first game.
Facial animations are inconsistent sometimes it really looks good and sometimes is bad.
Focus sometimes doesn't show everything you can climb on but that's rare occasion but frustating one.
Item looting could be better, i just looting everyone and don't even try to look at items i've got because there's to much of it and i know i won't run out of anything items feels insignificant i'm playing on normal and i've already maxed out my puoches without have to kill any animal, don't even try to fully upgrade my gear because why? i've no trouble dealling with machines.
Voice over for alloy is to much she shouldn't constalnty speak about mundane things i do in world i mean i'm nitpicking but it could get annoying.
Melee combat is bad like in first game it could be way better if it had lock on target and these melle pit chellenges are stupid and unnecessary who's is trying to remember these moves? i mean it's not tekken, simplicity should be the key here.
Soundtrack doesn't need to play same track over and over it should play once it drive me crazy when these sad strings plays over and over or battle music plays even there's nothing to fight with i know i could mute it but then you miss good tracks which btw zero dawn have way better OST.
So far i prefer Ragnarok, Demon Souls or even Rift apart over FW.
 

Spaceman292

Banned
I can only imagine how much it would‘ve cost them if they were actually creating a game that‘s fun to play.
I love how quickly this thread turned savage. Maybe they should have given more money to Ashley Birch so that she wouldn't speak in a bored monotone for the entire game.
 

Robb

Gold Member
That’s a lot of dough, and for a last-gen game at that. Makes you wonder what a current gen installment would cost.
Fairly Oddparents Burn GIF
 
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Go_Ly_Dow

Member
So if a game costs $150mil total budget, how many units will they need to sell at full price ($70) for break even? Does anyone know? This would be subtracting the retailer/publisher and platform holder cut from the $70.

I find it kinda baffling in 2023 and so much coverage of the games industry this is still hard to find out.
 

fermcr

Member
Not surprising. Like I said in the Saints Row thread, an average AAA game nowadays costs 100+ million to develop. Marketing is another X million.
 

hemo memo

Gold Member
So if a game costs $150mil total budget, how many units will they need to sell at full price ($70) for break even? Does anyone know? This would be subtracting the retailer/publisher and platform holder cut from the $70.

I find it kinda baffling in 2023 and so much coverage of the games industry this is still hard to find out.
When subscription services get adopted more and Sony offer PS+ for PC and players finally realize that they probably have more games that can last them a lifetime and that they are in unlimited supply and guaranteed to get discounted or hit a subscription service, things will come crashing down. It is not a cinema experience that you can’t easily replicate and will be out in just couple of weeks. Not an item that will be out of stock or limited release. Or clothes that will be out of fashion. It is the same exact product guaranteed to get discontinued in 2 or 3 months.

I don’t understand pre-order or day 1 culture anymore. PC players figured it out with Steam a long time ago.
 

Godot25

Banned
Where were sane takes like this in the PS3 era? It was chock full of people bashing 10-12 hour games that were fantastic. It's the reason why games are bloated crap these days.
So reaction to one extreme is going to other extreme?

I never seen anybody complaining about length of The Last of Us. And yet, Naughty Dog made a sequel that was almost double of it's size.
 
Where were sane takes like this in the PS3 era? It was chock full of people bashing 10-12 hour games that were fantastic. It's the reason why games are bloated crap these days.
Even now people want to pay a dollar per hour and if a game is 10-15 hours they start complaining. There were couple posters here in the HL thread complaining that the game is not long enough.
Focused games within a contained area is getting bashed, everything must have diverse biomes thousands of hours of useless item gathering, everything must be open world.
 
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Ronin_7

Banned
Ragnarok is already closing 1B in Revenues, if we count bundles then probably 2B.

Forbidden West hasn't been as successful for sure but I'm pretty sure it has made some millions in profit.
 

MHubert

Member
None of you know how much these games end up costing because nobody who knows is releasing those figures so all this vs bullshit is embarrassing.
Certain people here have made it their life mission to prove that charging 10$ more for AAA titles is morally wrong and a crime against their mom. Please understand.
 
Honestly, I expected the game to have costed much more, like 200 million or something.That's the impression Sony gave when they said that games are getting prohibitive expensive.
I think that 100ish million is just the development cost. The marketing would double that number
 
It will be interesting to see the GOW dev costs given your cost of living info. GOW was done in 4.5 years. HFW took longer. SSM was a much smaller studio than GG up until very recently, and Cory had his own team working on the new IP the entire time. Cory alone probably costs a million a year. I think they both probably cost $100 million.
We just don't know and probably never will. Thinking just about studio size is useless, games like GoW see the collaboration of a lot of support studios and people in the credists are a four digit number
 

Fake

Member
Ouch. Thats to damn much for what sales can archieve.

Could be more. Who knows.
 
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Oof85

Member
Ragnarok is already closing 1B in Revenues, if we count bundles then probably 2B.

Forbidden West hasn't been as successful for sure but I'm pretty sure it has made some millions in profit.
How so if Pokemon SV is literally at double the units Ragnarok sold and it just passed a billion in revenue?

Math ain't mathing for me.
 
Five years to develop a safe sequel is nuts. they wouldve halved the costs if they had limited the scope and shipped it in 2.5 years like most of these sequels used to take.
With most of today's AAA titles being on PC now, publishers need to change they technical target to high end PC hardware if they're going to have us waiting for 5 fucking years for a sequel, that's ridiculous; Build higher quality assets and lock it across different hardware then downscale everything else i.e lighting systems ect.

I'm not paying $70 to wait 5 years for a publisher to artificially cap they retail games technically.
 

Fake

Member
God of War franchise is probably what Sony best can offer right now in terms of sales x costs.

Most of the others devs don't feel confortable about showing their game cost + PR cost.

Maybe this cost can explain why Sony is in pursuut with HZD remake too damn soon?
 
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Mr.Phoenix

Member
Honestly, I expected the game to have costed much more, like 200 million or something.That's the impression Sony gave when they said that games are getting prohibitive expensive.
$100M for a game...

IS prohibitively expensive.

Some perspective? RE2 on tePS1 cost around $1M to make. Built by like 50 people. MGSV cost around $80M, and that made Konami decide game development has become too expensive.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
Five years to develop a safe sequel is nuts. they wouldve halved the costs if they had limited the scope and shipped it in 2.5 years like most of these sequels used to take.

I have no idea why the game had almost a hundred forgettable side quests featuring fully mocapped dialogues trees. For something that takes 5 years, i wouldve expected a ground up reboot like GOW 2018.

Sony studios need to go back to 15 hour campaigns with maybe another 15 hours of additional content. 50 hour campaigns with another 50 hours of meandering content is not the way to go. Financially its simply not sustainable. Their best studios simply cant take 5 years to make one game. thats one game per gen.
Best fucking take in a long time. Stop pandering to unemployed teens bitching they cannot play your $70 game for 3 months straight. Main campaign being more than 12-15 hours can GTFO.
 
Where were sane takes like this in the PS3 era? It was chock full of people bashing 10-12 hour games that were fantastic. It's the reason why games are bloated crap these days.
Blame retail model. You can't blame individual people or reviewers. Think more broadly and systemically. Retail is expensive and people will not buy a game they can beat in 2 days for $70.
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
Who knows if we will ever get real data on GoWR but I think it's more expensive than HFW. I don't think SSM was much smaller, and I doubt Cory's team was big until Ragnarok wrapped up.
The average annual salary for a team of 10 developers with an average salary of $90k/year is around $1M in the states. About half that in japan. But for simplicity's sake lets just stick with the $1M.

100 devs, that's $10M/year. 200 devs, $20M/year. ~4yrs dev time, $80M. You can add another $50 for marketing and stuff. So everything ends up being around $120-$130M. It is not that expensive in some countries, and not everyone would spend that kinda money on marketing. But yeah, $80-$120M is the current ballpark for a AAA game.
 
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