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

[ScarredBushido]

i remember hearing gta 5 spent more on marketing than development. its crazy because GTA is so well known that it wouldnt need to spend as much on marketing

 

[Grauken]

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?

Lots of younger people play them who talk to each other in different spaces than us old farts

 

[Roguey]

Lots of younger people play them who talk to each other in different spaces than us old farts

Oh sure, but even Horizon Zero Dawn made it into my periphery. Forbidden West, outside of pre-release mockery of Aloy's new model and seething over the post-release lesbian DLC, nothing. Might as well not even exist.

 

[Modron]

Might have something to do with console owners being a minority around these parts and the sequel isn't out on a real platform yet.

 

[Grauken]

Lots of younger people play them who talk to each other in different spaces than us old farts

Oh sure, but even Horizon Zero Dawn made it into my periphery. Forbidden West, outside of pre-release mockery of Aloy's new model and seething over the post-release lesbian DLC, nothing. Might as well not even exist.

This is just anecdotal obviously, but my nephew and his friends couldn't stop talking about Forbidden West. Though more due to its graphics than its story, which seems to have been just so-so.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Bit of a but this is probably the best place to put this, budgets for the last few Sony Insomniac games, $300M+ for Spider Man 2, $150M+ for the Miles spinoff, $81M for Rachet & Clank (Plus some future projections)

More Sony Budgets

 

[deuxhero]

Said leaks also included clips of prototype gameplay and potato face Jean Grey, so they're legit. Another slide reveals that the marketing budget for the X-Men games are (by contract with Disney) at least 1/4th the dev budget. Wonder if that's low (the IP is the marketing) or standard for Sony (which would actually be low for industry and how super saturated the marketing for their stuff is). If it is Sony standard, that would put the 220 million TLoU2 at 275 mil total between 10 million copies, meaning 27.5 dollars per copy just to reach break even.

Real bizzare thing is they needed 39 million dollars just to remaster PS4 Spider-Man. WTF?! That thing was essentially just a port to PC and PS5 with some drop in graphical options. As far as I can tell (based on this official page for PS4 and Steam store), no new languages were added. At least the port actually runs (and reasonably well given its used for benchmarks), unlike the TLoU port.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Bit of a but this is probably the best place to put this, budgets for the last few Sony Insomniac games, $300M+ for Spider Man 2, $150M+ for the Miles spinoff, $81M for Rachet & Clank (Plus some future projections)

More Sony Budgets

View attachment 44788

One day I will learn why finance wannabes use brackets and then also put a minus sign in as well.

When you remove future releases, there is a downward trend.

The essential missing data point is the original release of SM1. Googling suggests that it was probably omitted because would make the downward trend clearer: it did more like 13M sales, probably on a lower cost base and selling for a $60 price that was worth about $75 now (yes...inflation means that games are getting cheaper, even after the new $70 regimen...)

 

[deuxhero]

Another data point: We previous had Mile Morales sales as 6.5 million in July 2021, a year prior to its November 2022 PC release. About a third of its sales were after 2021 (most likely PC), lowest Steam sale was 40% off at 29.99 USD, and key sellers don't appear to have undercut that much.

 

[Elttharion]

Sales data from lots of Sony games leaked today, not sure if here is the best place to post them but here you go. The data is from early 2022.

FY2021 games:

1. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart - 2.34m
2. MLB The Show 21 - 1.606m
3. Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut - 1.494m
4. Returnal - 866k
5. Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection - 329k
6. Death Stranding Director's Cut - 210k

FY2020 games:

1. Spider-Man: Miles Morales - 10.184m
2. The Last of Us Part II - 9.636m
3. Ghost of Tsushima - 7.436m
4. Demon's Souls Remake - 1.857m
5. Sackboy: A Big Adventure - 1.289m
6. Predator: Hunting Grounds - 778k

Catalogue games (pre-FY2020):

• Spider-Man 2018 - 22.121m
• God of War PS4 - 20.826m
• Horizon Zero Dawn - 19.261m
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End - 18.616m
• The Last of Us Remastered - 18.242m
• Gran Turismo Sport - 12.726m
• Uncharted Collection - 9.684m
• Bloodborne - 7.464m
• Days Gone - 7.322m
• Ratchet & Clank - 6.97m
• God of War 3 Remastered - 5.57m
• Detroit Become Human - 5.406m
• LittleBigPlanet 3 - 5.391m
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - 5.246mil
• InFamous: Second Son - 5.084m
• Driveclub - 4.764m
• Death Stranding - 4.157m
• Until Dawn - 3.906m

 

[deuxhero]

Worth noting that the slides on the budgets of future games imply Sony considers launch sales to have a net of 42.1 USD average and mix of launch and discounted post-launch an average of 33.33 mil per sale. Presumably retail cuts, physical costs (production, shipping etc.), local currency shenanigans, royalty checks and maybe taxes are why full price contributes so little.

Applying those standards to The Last of Us 2 we have a gross of 321.16788 million off budget of 220 million development budget and (going by marketing budgets elsewhere in leak) a quarter of that as marketing, Sony spent 321.16 million to make a net of 46.16788 million. For Horizon 2's publicly given 8.4 million that's a gross of 279.72 million off 212 million and 53 million marketing. That's a mere 14 million for 265 million over four years. I think that one is even worse and actually sub-inflation.

 

[Forest Dweller]

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.

 

[Elttharion]

More data

Worth noting that the slides on the budgets of future games imply Sony considers launch sales to have a net of 42.1 USD average and mix of launch and discounted post-launch an average of 33.33 mil per sale. Presumably retail cuts, physical costs (production, shipping etc.), local currency shenanigans, royalty checks and maybe taxes are why full price contributes so little.

Applying those standards to The Last of Us 2 we have a gross of 321.16788 million off budget of 220 million development budget and (going by marketing budgets elsewhere in leak) a quarter of that as marketing, Sony spent 321.16 million to make a net of 46.16788 million. For Horizon 2's publicly given 8.4 million that's a gross of 279.72 million off 212 million and 53 million marketing. That's a mere 14 million for 265 million over four years. I think that one is even worse and actually sub-inflation.

While Sony wants to make a profit with their exclusives they mostly use them as showcases and to push console sales. Their idea is to trap people in the PSN ecosystem so that Sony gets at least 30% of every digital purchase they make, including games, DLCs, MTXs, etc. Even so things are reaching a point were their uber expensive blockbusters are getting unsustainable, which is a huge incline imho.

 

[deuxhero]

Oh, it's absolutely true that break even for exclusives is acceptable if they attract people to the console. The problem is
1: Who buys a console for TLoU2, fat dyke or Miles?
2: It's not exclusive.

I want to see the rest of that chart (titles starting before M and after the middle of G)

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

i remember hearing gta 5 spent more on marketing than development. its crazy because GTA is so well known that it wouldnt need to spend as much on marketing

It's due to the soundtrack costs as well. Licensing so many songs from so many artists and labels must cost a lot. One GTA game, can't remember which, had half of its total budget dedicated to licensing music.

 

[Modron]

It's due to the soundtrack costs as well. Licensing so many songs from so many artists and labels must cost a lot. One GTA game, can't remember which, had half of its total budget dedicated to licensing music.

Didn't EA buy some shitty but slighly large hiphop/rap label just to put that muzak in their sports games sometime in the late 2000s early 2010s?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

It's due to the soundtrack costs as well. Licensing so many songs from so many artists and labels must cost a lot. One GTA game, can't remember which, had half of its total budget dedicated to licensing music.

Didn't EA buy some shitty but slighly large hiphop/rap label just to put that muzak in their sports games sometime in the late 2000s early 2010s?

At least in FIFA they still had international acts from a variety of genres.

 

[deuxhero]

i remember hearing gta 5 spent more on marketing than development. its crazy because GTA is so well known that it wouldnt need to spend as much on marketing

It's due to the soundtrack costs as well. Licensing so many songs from so many artists and labels must cost a lot. One GTA game, can't remember which, had half of its total budget dedicated to licensing music.

Really, it's another reason to set this kind of game in the past instead of present day (besides the problems with cell phones, police procedure improvements, cameras etc.): Stuff that was popular but hasn't retained popularity is generally cheap (just don't try to license something that's still well known like Elvis or Beatles).

Any idea what percent of New Vegas's budget was songs? I always thought that had some really good picks and was conscious of the budget (given they couldn't do Elvis for budget).

 

[911 Jumper]

From Sony's Marvel Factory leaks

 

[9ted6]

Games keep getting more expensive but they keep looking worse. TLOU2 and FW had worse visuals and uglier models than TLOU1 and ZD.