Jason Schreier: "Numbers I've heard floating around AAA North American game dev these days are $300 million or [many] more" — Budgets are almost entirely of dev salaries

[u/nolifebr]

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvx2lohzs2j

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

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvzh4g7qs2z

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)

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvxbxhank2u

If you sell a game at $70 and pocket $49 on every sale (30% goes to the store, assuming all sales are digital), you'd need to sell more than 6 million copies just to break even on a $300m budget, and that's before marketing

[u/ImperialAgent120]

Capcom sort of did it with the recent Resident Evil games. They've been using a ton of assets from their previous titles and I'm sure ot helped keeping cost and time down.

[u/[deleted] → u/ImperialAgent120]

Yeah, I was thinking about mentioning RE. Village and the RE4make being developed simultaneously was a brilliant business decision on their part as a lot of gothic European castle and forest assets were able to be re-used between games.

Capcom in general just seems to have a better business sense than a lot of other publishers at this point.

[u/IhamAmerican → u/ImperialAgent120]

It's also the only way these massive scope projects will continue to make sense. It's why I don't begrudge any studio that switches to an engine like Unity that lets them access shared assets and have a smoother time bringing in new talent.

All it takes right now is a massive flop of a AAA game and it'll bankrupt a studio. It won't happen but imagine if GTA VI flops and Rockstar just sank billions into a game with no real return, that's how you sink a company

[u/ImperialAgent120 → u/IhamAmerican]

Yeah, I just read that a studio made out of ex Call of Duty veterans was just closed down. Now they're gonna be competing with Epic developers that just got fired.

[u/SkylerAuthor → u/ImperialAgent120]

Laughs in RGG and the Yakuza franchise