Full post: 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
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)
Executives should still be accountable for inefficiencies and bad scoping.
The public is crazy demanding wrt AAA titles tbh, haters make comps when one asset is re-used in a sequel
They’re focusing entirely on appeasing the most expensive to satisfy people, at the expense of actual good gameplay.
Some players will complain about everything, the industry is the one amplifying it. For example, Like a Dragon games have been recycling assets since forever, and so did Zelda TOTK and no one cares.
In the end, the players would also benefit if the games were made through iterative improvements instead of making everything from scratch every time.