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

Musilla

Member
Cheap
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Vlodril

Member
Giaf and you need to go to twitter and fight round after round after round cous you 2 are filling this topic like a bitch fight and nobody wants to loose, so go to twitter and sort it out.

I feel this happens in a lot of threads lately. If people have problem with each other take it privately. I go into a thread to read about the matter at hand and most of the time it's something completely different being discussed for pages or two people three people going back and forth.
 

Unknown?

Member
Heavenly Sword was only 3 hours long. Not even close to the examples given by that other poster.
Oh okay if going by speed runner numbers. No normal gamer is beating it that fast. I guess you believe God of War is an hour long game because there's a trophy for that?
 
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Synless

Member
Oh okay if going by speed runner numbers. No normal gamer is beating it that fast. I guess you believe God of War is an hour long game because there's a trophy for that?
6 hours, whatever, it was short as fuck. that’s the point. No replay value, no trophies, it’s a shit example regardless.
 

Unknown?

Member
6 hours, whatever, it was short as fuck. that’s the point. No replay value, no trophies, it’s a shit example regardless.
Nah it was perfectly fine considering the quality. Regardless there were many games that reviewed well that got bashed for being short including those previously mentioned. Reviews being cited doesn't mean anything.
 
Maybe, but hard to know withoutt more info.
It would make sense since the point is "the most expensive production in Netherlands", marketing doesn't fit well in this claim since aren't resorces put in the country.
However a $100m development budget seems to me very understandable and somewhat solid.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Umm people arguing over budgets, remember that HFW budget here is in Euro's so it's a bit more in US dollars..
Continue 👍
 

Nautilus

Banned
$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.
First of all, you are comparing apples to oranges. Everything was cheaper to make 25 years ago, because most industries used simpler tech and techniques to make stuff. Nowadays everything needs to be "cutting edge"(Something that deserves its own thread).

Secondly, I never said it was cheap. 100 million is an absurd mountain of money.

But take in account this: The first game was a commercial and critical success. I think it had sold 20 MILLION copies before the sequel came out. The franchise obviously has a fanbase and a loyal following.

Now, consider that most sales nowadays are digital, making the cut that Sony takes out of each copy sold to be pretty much 100% of what it costs. And that the sequel of a critical and commercial successful game is so desirable that, even if Sony completely screwed up with the sequel's quality, it would still have sold at least 5 million units when all was said and done(TLOU 2 was a complete disaster, and that game still managed to sell 10 million+ copies in more than 2 years), and that 100 million dollars is basically around 2 million copies sold and you start noticing that, at least when it comes to prestabilished franchises, the risk ain't THAT great.

Especially nowadays that games sell for years. No scratch that. They sell for DECADES. Its like having an asset that, once produced, keeps making money on its own. And if you need to bring it to modern hardware, just pretty it up, modernize the controls, and bam. And depending on the title, you will already have a dedicated fanbase that will eat it up, market the game for you(Since its a childhood game full of cherished memories for them)if you don't completely screw it up.

So when Sony goes on record and says stuff like making games is so risky, at leas when it comes to beloved and prestabilished franchises, I look at these numbers and scratch my head a little. Because while yeah, its a lot of money, its also almost garanteed, for these big and stabilished franchises, to do well regardless of the quality, unless there were warning signs in previous titles in that same franchise. And even then, its easy to spot.

So yeah, I don't know. I get when its a new IP, like the first Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima. But for Uncharted 5? Horizon 3? Ghost of Tsushima 2? Assuming the content that people liked about the previous titles is there in the second, its just a slam dunk.
 
"They can't keep doing this!"

Meanwhile, they keep doing this.

I get people want more shorter, cheaper, more-frequent games they can replay a bunch of times, so just say so instead of building up these doomsday scenarios.
 

sandbood

Banned
Pokemon and Animal Croing aren't really profitable like GTAV and Fortnite, so what? At each their own
Since 2017 Nintendo made around 20bn of usd in profits with Switch which is higher than TakeTwo+Epic+Sony PlayStation+Konami+Capcom+Square Enix+Bandai Namco+XBOX+Sega profits since 2017 combined.
 
Since 2017 Nintendo made around 20bn of usd in profits with Switch which is higher than TakeTwo+Epic+Sony PlayStation+Konami+Capcom+Square Enix+Bandai Namco+XBOX+Sega profits since 2017 combined.

You have a link to that? Because I really doubt that claim. Take Two & Epic alone will have generated a decent lions share of profit in that timeframe with GTA Online & Fortnite. PS typically makes around $2.5 - $3.5 billion in annual profits.

So I'd think just GTA Online, Fortnite & PS net profits from that period would eclipse Nintendo's net profits. Collectively, but still. And that's before throwing in the other companies you listed. Unless again, you have a source for the claim.

Yep, something's gotta give this cannot be sustainable.

That's partly what the live-service games are for: to produce a recurring revenue stream through MTX & DLC content sales that can help sustain development of the big marquee AAA games.

Other developments will help too, like AI-powered programming & development models, and maybe even new alternative funding & investment business models.
 
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Ronin_7

Banned
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.
70x11.000.000.

In EU is 80€ or 86$, plus all the More expensive editions + 559|/619€ bundles.

SIE also made 9B in Revenues Last quarter so 1-2B derived by God of War looks reasonable.
 

sachos

Member
I think its really cool that they can afford such big mega productions but i would love to see them do some sort of "classic gaming" experiment. Make a smaller team and give them 10 million usd and only requirement is "make an 8-10 hs single player game in 2 years" and then if its end up being good iterate over it over the duration of a generation, you can get full trilogy that way like we used to in the past in the span of a gen. At 10 million they only need to sell 300k to make a profit, even the less selling Sony productions sell more than that. I think they could do it.
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
First of all, you are comparing apples to oranges. Everything was cheaper to make 25 years ago, because most industries used simpler tech and techniques to make stuff. Nowadays everything needs to be "cutting edge"(Something that deserves its own thread).

Secondly, I never said it was cheap. 100 million is an absurd mountain of money.

But take in account this: The first game was a commercial and critical success. I think it had sold 20 MILLION copies before the sequel came out. The franchise obviously has a fanbase and a loyal following.

Now, consider that most sales nowadays are digital, making the cut that Sony takes out of each copy sold to be pretty much 100% of what it costs. And that the sequel of a critical and commercial successful game is so desirable that, even if Sony completely screwed up with the sequel's quality, it would still have sold at least 5 million units when all was said and done(TLOU 2 was a complete disaster, and that game still managed to sell 10 million+ copies in more than 2 years), and that 100 million dollars is basically around 2 million copies sold and you start noticing that, at least when it comes to prestabilished franchises, the risk ain't THAT great.

Especially nowadays that games sell for years. No scratch that. They sell for DECADES. Its like having an asset that, once produced, keeps making money on its own. And if you need to bring it to modern hardware, just pretty it up, modernize the controls, and bam. And depending on the title, you will already have a dedicated fanbase that will eat it up, market the game for you(Since its a childhood game full of cherished memories for them)if you don't completely screw it up.

So when Sony goes on record and says stuff like making games is so risky, at leas when it comes to beloved and prestabilished franchises, I look at these numbers and scratch my head a little. Because while yeah, its a lot of money, its also almost garanteed, for these big and stabilished franchises, to do well regardless of the quality, unless there were warning signs in previous titles in that same franchise. And even then, its easy to spot.

So yeah, I don't know. I get when its a new IP, like the first Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima. But for Uncharted 5? Horizon 3? Ghost of Tsushima 2? Assuming the content that people liked about the previous titles is there in the second, its just a slam dunk.
When sony says making games are expensive. They are not just talking about themselves. They are talking about the industry at large. And even if everything was cheaper back then, doesn't change the fact that development now costs almost 100x more than it did 30 years ago. Back then, a game needed to move 1M units to be considered a success. Now the typical AAA game needs to move 2M units to just break even. And that's only if you are first party,if you are third party, that goes up to around 2.5/3M to just break even.

Not everyone is sony or MS, there are clearly becoming fewer and fewer companies wing to invest in 3-4 AAA games/year now. Even the biggest publishers these days are mostly limited to one or two such games a year. And we are getting fewer and fewer new IPs each generation because as you have pointed out, only the established IPs are worth risking money on.

That price tag, as easy as you may think it is to recoup, is the reason why.
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
I think its really cool that they can afford such big mega productions but i would love to see them do some sort of "classic gaming" experiment. Make a smaller team and give them 10 million usd and only requirement is "make an 8-10 hs single player game in 2 years" and then if its end up being good iterate over it over the duration of a generation, you can get full trilogy that way like we used to in the past in the span of a gen. At 10 million they only need to sell 300k to make a profit, even the less selling Sony productions sell more than that. I think they could do it.
That would be a redundant experiment. Sony has almost 30+ years of game development to know exactly what it needs to make a game and how much it wud cost. Not all the games sony has made have been these super big-budget games you know.
 

sachos

Member
That would be a redundant experiment. Sony has almost 30+ years of game development to know exactly what it needs to make a game and how much it wud cost. Not all the games sony has made have been these super big-budget games you know.
Okay maybe experiment is not the right word, call it an "experiment" as a whole to see how the devs feel about it, the press, the fans, etc.
 
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.

You are missing

- benefits costs (SS, Health, Retirement)
- Overhead costs (supplies, tools, electricity, hardware, etc)
- Real estate costs

So no, you need to add an overhead factor to salary, usually over 50% more
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
Okay maybe experiment is not the right word, call it an "experiment" as a whole to see how the devs feel about it, the press, the fans, etc.
Point is, sony has... no, pretty much every publisher. Has akready done that before or at some point. We didn't get to these high budgets by accident or due to misappropriation of funds. We got here organically. As tech advanced, as quality went up, as game innovation improved and gamers expectations changed, what you needed to make a AAA game changed with it.

It's kind of like meeting a contractor and asking him what kinda house you can make for $50k. They usually can tell you exactly what that money would get you before you even break ground.

You are missing

- benefits costs (SS, Health, Retirement)
- Overhead costs (supplies, tools, electricity, hardware, etc)
- Real estate costs

So no, you need to add an overhead factor to salary, usually over 50% more
I am sure the first item on your list is factored into the salary already. As for the other two, those are under assets (be that fixed or variable assets) and aren't factored into the actual cost of a game. Eg, one studio can be making 3 games at the same time. Technically, it all falls under operation costs, but when they say cost to make game, they are usually talking about man hours and marketing.
 
You have a link to that? Because I really doubt that claim. Take Two & Epic alone will have generated a decent lions share of profit in that timeframe with GTA Online & Fortnite. PS typically makes around $2.5 - $3.5 billion in annual profits.

So I'd think just GTA Online, Fortnite & PS net profits from that period would eclipse Nintendo's net profits. Collectively, but still. And that's before throwing in the other companies you listed. Unless again, you have a source for the claim.



That's partly what the live-service games are for: to produce a recurring revenue stream through MTX & DLC content sales that can help sustain development of the big marquee AAA games.

Other developments will help too, like AI-powered programming & development models, and maybe even new alternative funding & investment business models.
Wasn't there a whole fight at Rockstar/Take2 where they wanted to ditch single player on go all in on GTA Online?
 

Nautilus

Banned
When sony says making games are expensive. They are not just talking about themselves. They are talking about the industry at large. And even if everything was cheaper back then, doesn't change the fact that development now costs almost 100x more than it did 30 years ago. Back then, a game needed to move 1M units to be considered a success. Now the typical AAA game needs to move 2M units to just break even. And that's only if you are first party,if you are third party, that goes up to around 2.5/3M to just break even.

Not everyone is sony or MS, there are clearly becoming fewer and fewer companies wing to invest in 3-4 AAA games/year now. Even the biggest publishers these days are mostly limited to one or two such games a year. And we are getting fewer and fewer new IPs each generation because as you have pointed out, only the established IPs are worth risking money on.

That price tag, as easy as you may think it is to recoup, is the reason why.
ut at the same time, the industry is several times larger than it was back then. Not only there are more people buying more games, but gaming is more accepted than ever. We can even say it reached mainstream status. SDo while the cap for most games was in a few millions, now that same cap for most successful games are in the dozens of millions.

Plus, I said that it ain't that great of a risk for pre estabilished franchises. And not just Sony too. RE, FF, KH, Nintendo in general. As long as the game doesn~t suck completely, its such a slam dunk to at least recoup the costs and make a small profit.

But for new IPs or small devs? Oh yeah, for sure the industry grew too expensive and risky. But then again, indies are a thing, and many of them are done by a team of 5-10 people. Most doesn't hardly pass the 1 million in budget, much less than that actually, and manage to be widly successful(Minecraft, Undertale, Celeste, Hollow Knight, etc). I think the problem is not just that the tech nowadays demands a big budget, but also a lack of imagination and lateral thinking by some AAA devs. Team Asano games must be *relatively* cheap to make and look at them, cracking one after another and finding quite the financial success with them.
 
Since 2017 Nintendo made around 20bn of usd in profits with Switch which is higher than TakeTwo+Epic+Sony PlayStation+Konami+Capcom+Square Enix+Bandai Namco+XBOX+Sega profits since 2017 combined.
We found the Nintendo supporter/shareholder.

About Horizon FW, at a budget cost of around $225M (production + marketing), the game would have need to sell around 5-6 million units to break even, with bundles is very very possible that quantity was already achieved last year.

Most Sony Big AAA games make profit and some more, so, it’s funny to see users saying they are porting their games to PC because they don’t make profit
 

sachos

Member
Point is, sony has... no, pretty much every publisher. Has akready done that before or at some point. We didn't get to these high budgets by accident or due to misappropriation of funds. We got here organically. As tech advanced, as quality went up, as game innovation improved and gamers expectations changed, what you needed to make a AAA game changed with it.

It's kind of like meeting a contractor and asking him what kinda house you can make for $50k. They usually can tell you exactly what that money would get you before you even break ground.
I don't doubt they know exactly what kind of game they can make with smaller teams and less budget, all im saying is that i would like to see them do it on top of their usual AAA stuff, so we can get more experimental stuff or get a bunch of sequels in the same gen and not wait 5 years each time.
 

Mr.Phoenix

Member
I don't doubt they know exactly what kind of game they can make with smaller teams and less budget, all im saying is that i would like to see them do it on top of their usual AAA stuff, so we can get more experimental stuff or get a bunch of sequels in the same gen and not wait 5 years each time.
I do get what you are saying, and why. I just feel it would be them wasting resources or being redundant. It's not like they have unlimited resources.

Furthermore, I do feel they are already kinda doing this, albeit in their own way. They do so by leaving those smaller games to indy devs, and in most cases they back and support them. Allowing them to channel their resources into things that very few are willing to do. Eg, while we are talking about experimental stuff, an argument can be made that sony helped re-vaidate the AAA single-player genre.
 
$80-100M is production cost alone. Double that and add some with marketing. That's the ballpark for most AAA games. Big ones like Cyberpunk are very likely $200M+ in production alone but these are the exception, not the norm.

Marketing is certainly not an equal part of the game's budget in this case. $30 to $50 millions (and that's pushing it) I could see, but not the $100+ millions you're suggesting.
 

Gaiff

Gold Member
Marketing is certainly not an equal part of the game's budget in this case. $30 to $50 millions (and that's pushing it) I could see, but not the $100+ millions you're suggesting.
Marketing costs a lot of money and it's not rare to see the marketing budget match or sometimes exceed the production budget. Cyberpunk for instance had reportedly a production budget of 174M but a marketing budget of 142M. According to the LA Times, the marketing budget for COD MW2 was $200M.
 
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.
I mostly agree with most of those complaints. But I'd say the game is still better than the first.

But they really need a real game director (and not an art director directing the game) for their next game. They could even do well with 2 game directors like in last Naughty dogs games.
 
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Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
I take it God of War costs something like twice this considering they’re based in California?

Horizon 2 was good and an improvement on the original. I’d be up for another game especially just to see it not constrained by last gen tech.
 

Humdinger

Member
I enjoyed HFW, but they definitely overdid it, Ubi-style. I could've shaved 25% off that budget, but they failed to consult me.
 

Madflavor

Member
Ubisoft style open worlds need to be thrown into the fire. It's overstayed it's welcome, and it's so fucking tiring. This is why Elden Ring was such a welcome and fresh take on the Open World formula.

I just started playing Horizon TFW for the first time. I'm enjoying with it, but there's a part of me that is just so over this type of approach to Open World. It's not impressive anymore.
 

Fbh

Member
That's a lot though though I'd assume most AAA games are in that ballpark these days. And at least Horizon was content packed and looked incredible.
Still think they could find a sweet spot cutting down on some of the bloat. I realize there's pushback against a 15 hours long $70 game, but I honestly doubt most people would complain if it was something like 20 hours campaign + 20 hours side content.


$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.

It's all about perspective though.
It's a content packed game with a 30 hours story which you can extend to 60+ hours of content if you do the optional stuff all while having some of the nicest looking visuals of any open world ever.

Meanwhile a turd like Thor Love and Thunder with a 2 hours run time, bad writing and horrible looking special effects (for the most part) cost $250 million. Of course it probbaly made the money back way faster because for some reason people still rush to watch this crap.

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.

According to this slightly out of date site retailers tend to keep around a 20% cut.
Platform holders also take a 30% cut but since this is a first party game that doesn't apply here
In some instances there's also royalties that have to be paid to the engine owners (like the 5% Unreal takes) but that also doesn't apply here since it's using their own engine
Then there's royalites for things like using existing IP's but once again that doesn't apply here because they own the IP.

So if we assume every copy was sold physically over retail (which would be wrong as it probably sold more digitally) that'd be $56 they are getting per game that would mean they need to sell almost 2.7 million to break even
 
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