The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West budgets revealed

[Tyranicon]

IGN link: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-la...orbidden-wests-budgets-revealed-ftc-documents

Cliff notes:

The Last of Us Part II - 200 full time employees, ~$220 million
Horizon Forbidden West - 300+ full time employees, ~$212 million

edit: Probably just for dev only, not including marketing

 

[StrongBelwas]

Seems about average for AAA nowadays to be honest, expected slightly more for TLOU at least.
EDIT: Ok reading the proper document it seems to be implying this isn't accounting for marketing, in which case the amount makes more sense.

 

[Tyranicon]

Seems about average for AAA nowadays to be honest, expected slightly more for TLOU at least.
EDIT: Ok reading the proper document it seems to be implying this isn't accounting for marketing, in which case the amount makes more sense.

Marketing is probably closer to 1:1 of the dev budget for AAAs. So we can just double those numbers in the OP and we'll be in the ballpark.

 

[deuxhero]

Interesting. WIkipedia claims LoU2's development proper began August 2017 and it was released June 2020 but early work began by 2014. What a waste.

 

[Jenkem]

IGN link: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-la...orbidden-wests-budgets-revealed-ftc-documents

Cliff notes:

The Last of Us Part II - 200 full time employees, ~$220 million
Horizon Forbidden West - 300+ full time employees, ~$212 million

edit: Probably just for dev only, not including marketing


View attachment 38014

 

[Anonymous Ranger]

200+ dollars that so much. They could've made anything and yet they chose to make TLOU2 with it. I am in pain thinking about this.

 

[deuxhero]

I wonder how much of that 200 million was snuff film purchases for "research".

 

[Sukhāvatī]

The yearly cost cap for a Formula 1 team is only $145 million lmao.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Seems about average for AAA nowadays to be honest, expected slightly more for TLOU at least.
EDIT: Ok reading the proper document it seems to be implying this isn't accounting for marketing, in which case the amount makes more sense.

Marketing is probably closer to 1:1 of the dev budget for AAAs. So we can just double those numbers in the OP and we'll be in the ballpark.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comm.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Marketing is usually 20% of budget or less. I've worked on titles closer to 12%. Blizzard, as an example, spends about $5M on marketing per expansion.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comm.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Depends on the game.

Call of Duty, Marketing >= Development like big budget movies for example.

Call of Duty is of course trying to capture the largest population possible and is a game designed for that type of market.

World of Warcraft's marketing is probably smaller because it's primary focus is probably trying to reengage old players as that's the most (or maybe only?) effective group to target.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comm.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

The short of it is costs are much less than they are for movies. Games don't focus as much on commercials as films do, and prime commercial spots are insanely expensive.

Games focus on 3 areas generally

Trailer(s): With a large cinematic or celebrity trailer being 800k-2M

Showcases: With game awards prime spot costing around 500k

Advertising: PS is minimum 100k buy-in to do any advertising, the largest banner for Xbox (which is basically perma-owned by EA or Activision) going for around 100k-250k.

If you have a larger budget, it will go to things like in-person events PAX, etc (another 1M or so) as well as traditional advertising like billboards and bus stops, etc. Cyberpunk was probably one of the most expensive marketing campaigns Ive seen, but it worked really well for them.

Now, whether these posters are actually in the industry or are telling the truth I certainly can't say. It is Reddit after all lol.

But it is very interesting info nonetheless...

 

[Noct]

I knew that AAA games were bloated but good god this is Hollywood tier. The real question is, what did they spend on marketing and other costs? What were their actual profit margins? I get the impression the return on investment is pretty shit. This would explain the push for $70 games on top of increasingly invasive monetization. Just goes to show why indies and small studios keep winning. God please let the AAA crash happen already

 

[lycanwarrior]

I knew that AAA games were bloated but good god this is Hollywood tier. The real question is, what did they spend on marketing and other costs? What were their actual profit margins? I get the impression the return on investment is pretty shit. This would explain the push for $70 games on top of increasingly invasive monetization. Just goes to show why indies and small studios keep winning. God please let the AAA crash happen already

That's why the AAA game publishers are moving more towards live service games. Profit potential can be significantly higher on those types of games.

 

[karoliner]

IGN link: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-la...orbidden-wests-budgets-revealed-ftc-documents

Cliff notes:

The Last of Us Part II - 200 full time employees, ~$220 million
Horizon Forbidden West - 300+ full time employees, ~$212 million

edit: Probably just for dev only, not including marketing


View attachment 38014

Imagine all the houses you could build with that money. All the struggling families who could finally have a home of their own no longer fearing ending up in the streets because they couldn't pay rent.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

IGN link: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-la...orbidden-wests-budgets-revealed-ftc-documents

Cliff notes:

The Last of Us Part II - 200 full time employees, ~$220 million
Horizon Forbidden West - 300+ full time employees, ~$212 million

edit: Probably just for dev only, not including marketing


View attachment 38014

Imagine all the houses you could build with that money. All the struggling families who could finally have a home of their own no longer fearing ending up in the streets because they couldn't pay rent.

Man if everyone could afford houses, price of housing would just go up.

 

[FreshCorpse]

The AAA bust is probably already happening. It's much harder to borrow money for stuff like this now that interest rates are higher. If you started your development project in 2015 prevailing interest rates were ~2% or something. More than double that now. The 60->70 USD price rise barely even covers one year of inflation at the moment. I would guess that 3-5 years from now there are materially fewer AAA releases.

That redditor is talking shit imo. Fairly well-established that the biggest AAA games are spending half to all of their development budget again on marketing. TBH that only makes sense for them really and I suspect the marketing spend often comes out of revenue once they've started selling so it's a much shorter term investment with lower risk. If you know you have a hit game you probably just let the metro and magazine adverts keep rolling until sales fall off. GTA5 was advertised on in presumably expensive spaces for about a year after release.

 

[StrongBelwas]

I knew that AAA games were bloated but good god this is Hollywood tier. The real question is, what did they spend on marketing and other costs? What were their actual profit margins? I get the impression the return on investment is pretty shit. This would explain the push for $70 games on top of increasingly invasive monetization. Just goes to show why indies and small studios keep winning. God please let the AAA crash happen already

The last sales count I can find for them is 10 million for Last of Us (1 year old information) and 8.4 million for Forbidden West (1 month old information) . So probably profitable unless you're very conservative about their cut of each copy sold but I have to think they wanted more out of Last of Us at least.
https://blog.playstation.com/2022/06/09/the-growing-future-of-the-last-of-us/
https://blog.playstation.com/2023/05/09/20-years-of-guerrilla-the-story-of-a-playstation-studio/

 

[deuxhero]

So probably profitable

If we assume marketing is only 50% the main budget, each of those 10 million copies of TLoU needed to bring Sony $33 dollars just to break even at 220+110 million cost. Forbidden West needed $37 per copy to break even at 212+106 mil. In reality, less than 50% of the sale price of retail copies goes to the publisher

 

[Roguey]

Remember in 2011 when Bioware spending $200 million on TOR was considered an astronomical amount?

Of course with inflation, that would be a somewhat greater amount now (not quite $300 million).

Now, whether these posters are actually in the industry or are telling the truth I certainly can't say. It is Reddit after all lol.

But it is very interesting info nonetheless...

I can't find it offhand, but Avellone mentioned that Bethesda spent far more on marketing New Vegas than they did on the development budget.

 

[DemonKing]

The last sales count I can find for them is 10 million for Last of Us (1 year old information) and 8.4 million for Forbidden West (1 month old information) .

Sales have probably gone up for the LoU series after the normies loved the TV show.

I'm surprised Forbidden West sold so well given it was released in the shadow of Elden Ring to be honest (although they could be counting copies sold in PS5 bundles which was the only way you could buy a PS5 for a while).

 

[Roguey]

I'm surprised Forbidden West sold so well given it was released in the shadow of Elden Ring to be honest (although they could be counting copies sold in PS5 bundles there which was the only way you could buy a PS5 for a while).

Yeah that's weird. Over 8 million people bought it and yet I've seen no one talking about it (at least not like I did with the first game). Just people silently consuming and moving on?

On the plus side, with the marketing budget that means they likely just broke even which has to be disappointing.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Remember in 2011 when Bioware spending $200 million on TOR was considered an astronomical amount?

Of course with inflation, that would be a somewhat greater amount now (not quite $300 million).

Now, whether these posters are actually in the industry or are telling the truth I certainly can't say. It is Reddit after all lol.

But it is very interesting info nonetheless...

I can't find it offhand, but Avellone mentioned that Bethesda spent far more on marketing New Vegas than they did on the development budget.

That was the case with Fallout 4 as well, I remember them being open about that, boasting even. That's the same mindset Paradox has, although at a different scale, and it works because both companies cracked a code that allows them to have a captive audience that will always want to play whatever they release.

 

[Tyranicon]

I'm surprised Forbidden West sold so well given it was released in the shadow of Elden Ring to be honest (although they could be counting copies sold in PS5 bundles there which was the only way you could buy a PS5 for a while).

Yeah that's weird. Over 8 million people bought it and yet I've seen no one talking about it (at least not like I did with the first game). Just people silently consuming and moving on?

On the plus side, with the marketing budget that means they likely just broke even which has to be disappointing.

There's no real draw for for a HZD sequel. The NPC characters aren't interesting, Aloy is a generic protagonist, the gameplay of fighting robo-dinos goes stale 10 hours into the game, the writing isn't great, etc.

It was a game held up by its graphics and semi-interesting premise.

And Aloy rule 34 I guess, but then they went ahead and ruined that in the sequel too.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

People pity Horizon because the release clashes with other, much more anticipated games. It's a normal action game, it never pretended to be anything else than that and as such it's not as important as other games with aspirations grew to be, like TLOU.

 

[Tyranicon]

People pity Horizon because the release clashes with other, much more anticipated games. It's a normal action game, it never pretended to be anything else than that and as such it's not as important as other games with aspirations grew to be, like TLOU.

I never really got the hype for TLOU 1. It was essentially a video game version of Oscar Bait. Nothing about the game rose above popamole, except maybe the voice acting.

It was a game made for game journalists when the zombie craze was at its height, with a huge budget and lots of marketing + backing from Sony.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

People pity Horizon because the release clashes with other, much more anticipated games. It's a normal action game, it never pretended to be anything else than that and as such it's not as important as other games with aspirations grew to be, like TLOU.

I never really got the hype for TLOU 1. It was essentially a video game version of Oscar Bait. Nothing about the game rose above popamole, except maybe the voice acting.

It was a game made for game journalists when the zombie craze was at its height, with a huge budget and lots of marketing + backing from Sony.

And "the" game to play for the console it was on, quite literally I might add. They had nothing else to play. And it was pretty much a third person shooter like any other. Still is.

 

[Fargus]

Bloated budgets, years to make all for the banal shit boring movie games with stronkwimmin protags and hideous tranny aestetics for playstation niggers and bottomless pit normies to consume. Amazing world of AAA games.