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[James Sawyer Ford]

SlimySnake said I was full of shit about AAA Sony first party costing $250+M

Like no bro, I was dead nuts on

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Maybe it's time for Sony to move their studios to Malaysia or something, then. Those budgets for Spiderman 2 are crazy IMO, more than most Hollywood blockbusters. And this doesn't even include marketing, so it's probably even more expensive than the MCU films.

I'm wondering if the costs factor in the deal Sony have set up with Disney/Marvel, where they're paying it out over a period of years instead of all at once/upfront? That would at least in part explain the costs. Other people are saying they doubled the studio size, I guess that would be a factor as well.



You mean the amount Sony paid for the license? There's no way this amount doesn't include some portion of that cost being paid out over the course of the game's development. Has to be similar for the other Marvel games Insomniac are making too.

Otherwise these costs really do look rather insane. These companies are gonna use AI so hard to get these costs down like crazy as soon as it becomes viable. Some are gonna go overboard...hopefully Sony aren't one of them.

Does anyone know when it comes to Insomniac development, how many headcount are done by overseas people (if any)? Wiki says 400+ people work there. So the most expensive overhead math would be all 400+ being US based employees.

The more US based people, the more savings they can get from cheaper overseas workers. Of course that assumes the trade off between cost savings and quality of work makes sense (that fine balancing act when it comes to outsourcing work).

 

[Stooky]

We can start with California offices and the shit they throw money away on in the building. Atomic Heart probably got developed on their snack budget. Get some humble cubicles in Kansas City and get back to me.

Step 2: fire everyone who doesn't actively code

You realize STALKER 2 is being developed in a bombed out warzo

John from Digital Foundry said a few directs weekly ago that maintain a studio in California is high expensive. I can't understand why Sony keep doing things in California. Keep in mind that John used the quote 'insanily high'.

Is like they love to burn money, I get that, but this is starting to get very suspicious. If you want to reduce costs instead of firing people, why in hell you still doing bussiness in California, one of the US most expensives places to work?

majority of the talent, artist, programmers designers, actors , stunt actors, voice actors are in california. including mocap facilities, design firms, foley stages, sound stages,marketing teams. it is the entertainment hub in US, the world. it makes sense to have a studio in cali.

 

[SlimySnake]

SlimySnake said I was full of shit about AAA Sony first party costing $250+M

Like no bro, I was dead nuts on

If you believe that miles, a 7 hour dlc cost 156 million and a ps5 port of Spider-Man cost $39 million then i don’t know what to tell you.

These numbers just don’t make any sense whatsoever. Even if you put them up Sonys own inflated numbers for hfw and gow which they said cost $200 million. So 50-100 hour games 5 years in development cost $200 million while miles, a 7 hour dlc set in the same city costs $156 million?

Meanwhile remedy with 350 devs takes 4 years to make alan wake 2 for $50 mil euros. The docs state that in the peak year 380 devs worked on sp2 and it cost them $100 million that year. Remedy had around the same number of devs for 4 years and averaged 12.5 million a year.

These numbers make zero sense.

And btw, we discussed this when horizon fw was confirmed to have cost $112 million euros by a Dutch documentary on GG. If we go by that figure, spiderman 2 costing 3x more while being in full dev for 3 years instead of 5 for hfw while using the same damn city is insane.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

And btw, we discussed this when horizon fw was confirmed to have cost $112 million euros by a Dutch documentary on GG

That was never confirmed

But California is crazy expensive

 

[SlimySnake]

That was never confirmed

But California is crazy expensive

Naughty dog and ssm are based out of LA just like insomniac. Their games took longer, had new assets and cost less.

It doesn’t cost $39 million to port a game to ps5. Not sure why you insist on ignoring this.

 

[Stooky]

you guys shouldn’t really shouldn’t worry about game budgets. the only way the large budgets gets approved is from their projected ability to turn a profit. these budgets are what it takes to make these types of games. you pay for quality. you want the best it’s going to cost.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

It doesn’t cost $39 million to port a game to ps5. Not sure why you insist on ignoring this.

They redid all the cinematics due to character changes and improvements

I wouldn’t be so sure $39M is BS

 

[Stooky]

Honestly, the only silver lining to this leak is that this private industry discussion is going to be made public. We are long past the point that we should be carefully analyzing why so much budget is going into new projects and what can be done about heading this off.

The most fascinating part of all the data that came out was Insomniac doing a very well researched fiscal pitch to do "smaller" ($100m is still a lot) projects instead of one big one, and how that can mitigate financial risk. Under these budget levels, why would any dev blow a AAA budget on a new IP, for example. Without a built-in audience, its almost impossible realistically forecast that you're going to do over 7m units of sales, even if you were multiplatform.

There is a very prescient internal note in the financial analysis docs that basically asks themselves, 'We spent $200m more on SM2 than SM1 ($300m vs $100m), but can anyone play that and feel that extra money?'. Paraphrasing, but this is a really self-aware question to ask.

I want to head off any discussion by immediately stating that we should not ever say that devs are being overpaid - relative to how much games bring in, despite how much more it takes to break even, game devs have been the most underpaid area of software development for far too long, they still are not making as much as their contemporaries, and the answer to this situation is not, nor will it ever be, to pay devs less. I think it needs to start with why it takes so much more manpower to make the games that we're making. Yes, Insomniac doubled in size basically going for FY20 to FY21, but those devs were spread around multiple projects, although now we know most of those other projects hit the back burner in order for SM2 to ship this year.

I wish we could get some producers in here who have done PM work for a long time to gain some insight on just what is eating up resources to this absurd degree. When you look at a game like SM2, so much of what it is is built on top of what was already done. The framework for its gameplay, for its open-world, for enemy behaviors, is mainly implemented, just waiting to be iterated on, so why did it take that many more devs an 2/3rds the amount of money in order to ship a sequel.

show me a game that’s equal to SM2 that cost half the budget.

 

[SlimySnake]

They redid all the cinematics due to character changes and improvements

I wouldn’t be so sure $39M is BS

No they didn’t. Those are realtime cutscenes and they just swapped out the new spiderman character model. You can do that in any naughty dog game.

And they botched that too because they didn’t reanimate him which is why he looks so off in major scenes in the remaster when he takes off his mask.

Even if they had people sit down and redo all his scenes, it can’t add up to $39 million which is almost what it cost remedy to make a brand new game.

 

[Stooky]

Yeah, the problem is the c-suite folks don't see it that way. Their thought process is as non-imaginative as it can get. Its gotten detrimental to the creative process throughout the industry.

I would honestly, like to see actual nerds with a business sense and flair for creative ideas retake the CEO seats in the industry and push these current top people to CFO positions where they belong.

oh you want the 90’s again, short, paint by numbers, formulaic games that you still spent $50+ on . what a horrible idea

 

[Kaiserstark]

If you believe that miles, a 7 hour dlc cost 156 million and a ps5 port of Spider-Man cost $39 million then i don’t know what to tell you.

These numbers just don’t make any sense whatsoever. Even if you put them up Sonys own inflated numbers for hfw and gow which they said cost $200 million. So 50-100 hour games 5 years in development cost $200 million while miles, a 7 hour dlc set in the same city costs $156 million?

Meanwhile remedy with 350 devs takes 4 years to make alan wake 2 for $50 mil euros. The docs state that in the peak year 380 devs worked on sp2 and it cost them $100 million that year. Remedy had around the same number of devs for 4 years and averaged 12.5 million a year.

These numbers make zero sense.

And btw, we discussed this when horizon fw was confirmed to have cost $112 million euros by a Dutch documentary on GG. If we go by that figure, spiderman 2 costing 3x more while being in full dev for 3 years instead of 5 for hfw while using the same damn city is insane.

They never was 350 people working on Alan Wake 2. they had about 130 people on average working on Alan Wake 2 for 4 years. The salaries are also not the same obviously, we cannot compare on this point a studio in Finland and one like Insomniac which is located in the US in an area known to be quite expansive.

The thing that is rather surprising is that Insomniac does almost no outsourcing and does almost everything internally even though it is a good way to reduce costs.

 

[Stooky]

Please tell me studiis are investigating how AI can help write code, run simulations (QA testing) and whatever else, because that is the only way I see costs coming down.

every studio is looking at it. ai does not write efficient code which is important for games. you still need a good to programmer to review that code and at that point most programmers would much rather write it themselves. Most importantly no programmer is going to put proprietary code in an online AI prompt.

 

[ADiTAR]

You mean the amount Sony paid for the license? There's no way this amount doesn't include some portion of that cost being paid out over the course of the game's development. Has to be similar for the other Marvel games Insomniac are making too.

Otherwise these costs really do look rather insane. These companies are gonna use AI so hard to get these costs down like crazy as soon as it becomes viable. Some are gonna go overboard...hopefully Sony aren't one of them.

Do they pay in advance? I think it's a cut they take from the game profits.

 

[SlimySnake]

They never was 350 people working on Alan Wake 2. they had about 130 people on average working on Alan Wake 2 for 4 years. The salaries are also not the same obviously, we cannot compare on this point a studio in Finland and one like Insomniac which is located in the US in an area known to be quite expansive.

The thing that is rather surprising is that Insomniac does almost no outsourcing and does almost everything internally even though it is a good way to reduce costs.

If we take the 380 devs = $100 million cost per year figure from their slides, we can determine what it must have cost rockstar to make gta6 since they only work on one game at a time, have 3,000 devs and will have taken 7 years to release gta6.

The math says $5.5 billion. Do you believe gta6 costs $5.5 billion?

Insomniac’s numbers are nonsense. Finland vs LA cost of living difference is maybe 100% or 2x. Not 400% or 5x.

 

[Fredrik]

Meanwhile remedy with 350 devs takes 4 years to make alan wake 2 for $50 mil euros. The docs state that in the peak year 380 devs worked on sp2 and it cost them $100 million that year. Remedy had around the same number of devs for 4 years and averaged 12.5 million a year.

These numbers make zero sense.

No facts but salaries in Finland and US are probably lightyears apart.

 

[Stooky]

If you believe that miles, a 7 hour dlc cost 156 million and a ps5 port of Spider-Man cost $39 million then i don’t know what to tell you.

These numbers just don’t make any sense whatsoever. Even if you put them up Sonys own inflated numbers for hfw and gow which they said cost $200 million. So 50-100 hour games 5 years in development cost $200 million while miles, a 7 hour dlc set in the same city costs $156 million?

Meanwhile remedy with 350 devs takes 4 years to make alan wake 2 for $50 mil euros. The docs state that in the peak year 380 devs worked on sp2 and it cost them $100 million that year. Remedy had around the same number of devs for 4 years and averaged 12.5 million a year.

These numbers make zero sense.

And btw, we discussed this when horizon fw was confirmed to have cost $112 million euros by a Dutch documentary on GG. If we go by that figure, spiderman 2 costing 3x more while being in full dev for 3 years instead of 5 for hfw while using the same damn city is insane.

horizon FW did not cost $112 mill to make(double it) your numbers are way off. you can’t make that type of game $112 mill.

 

[SlimySnake]

When it comes to royalty cuts (at least contracts I've seen in the past), it's based on the supplier's shipments dollars or as a fixed amount per unit shipped out.

No supplier or Marvel will be able to track 100% of retail sales, so an accurate total retail dollars for a royalty calculation would never be known. Tracking any big retailer sales is easy as they'd have the data in terms of units or dollars. But any sales to mom and pop stores or wholesalers shipping to random game stores would not really be known. Nor would the final retail prices.

I'm just going on what I know. But if the Sony/Marvel contract specifically states the % cut is based off retail prices totaled up somehow then that's cool.

They make money the second they sell to the retailers. Basically shipping the game is a sale to them. That’s when they get their money. Not when you buy it from Walmart. Walmart pays $56 instead of $70. And marvel takes a further 20% off every shipped copy. Sony keeps track of who they ship it to.

 

[SlimySnake]

horizon FW did not cost $112 mill to make you numbers are way off.

There was a thread about this. I mentioned that in my post. I didn’t make it up. Even if you go by Sonys inflated $200 million figure, miles costing $156 million doesn’t make sense.

Why this is so hard for you guys is beyond me. A 2 year 7 hour dlc cannot cost $156 million when horizon cost $200 million. Forget the $112 figure.

 

[captainnapalm]

The bloat and perks are off the charts in these California tech studios. We saw what was going on at Twitter before Musk arrived.

 

[Puscifer]

It's actually more than that as it doesn't include marketing costs. So a $300M dev budget is probably more like $500M with marketing.

That GTA 6 1.2 billion dollar budget seems super realistic now after this, holy shit. But I'm sure that also includes GTA online and with all the stuff they inherited from the 5M Role Playing mod scene after they bought it they likely sped up development on that front.

I'm really scared for gaming as an industry, short of good indie studios not getting bought up or closing with they hit their stride I'm not sure how this is sustainable. I remember when a million copies was seen as a holy grail, not a flop.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

I think the "unsustainability" people are talking about is coming, but it's not going to be a collapse of the industry. It's going to be a revolution in the way games are created. AI tools are going to make games much easier to produce at (today's) AAA level. It will sacrifice creativity to do so, but will reduce costs. And then there will be a boundary-pushing studio who takes THAT as a baseline and pushes the medium forward again.

I don't buy that the sky is falling.

 

[Stooky]

There was a thread about this. I mentioned that in my post. I didn’t make it up. Even if you go by Sonys inflated $200 million figure, miles costing $156 million doesn’t make sense.

Why this is so hard for you guys is beyond me. A 2 year 7 hour dlc cannot cost $156 million when horizon cost $200 million. Forget the $112 figure.

the pandemic inflated cost a lot. it’s hard to say without seeing an itemized list. example i know that shooting mocap during that time got insanely expensive because of sag covid rules. you can’t say horizon cost this much to make so miles should cost this much, it means nothing.

 

[ProtoByte]

There was a thread about this. I mentioned that in my post. I didn’t make it up. Even if you go by Sonys inflated $200 million figure, miles costing $156 million doesn’t make sense.

Why this is so hard for you guys is beyond me. A 2 year 7 hour dlc cannot cost $156 million when horizon cost $200 million. Forget the $112 figure.

It does make perfect sense. It's fucking Burbank vs Amsterdam. Also, marketing costs are most assuredly included, and Spider-Man marketing is pretty aggressive.

 

[ProtoByte]

Double post, sorry.

 

[vpance]

I blame all the mental health absence leaves.

 

[StealthGoblin]

DEI is expensive. Game development has gotten so bloated now. Credits for AAA games takes 30 dang minutes. Time to cut the fat.

So what would you cut?

 

[Lucie Goosey]

Lol some of you guys in here are crazy.

Blaming AAA development as if it's some universal law that it must be unprofitable by nature and that there can't possibly be any other explanations as for why things have increasingly become the way they are.

YOUR BUSINESS MODEL IS KILLING YOUR BUSINESS.

Seriously. This shit needs an Elon Musk to come in and purge the woke stupidity from this industry.

But, no worries, it'll choke the life out of itself with enough passing time.

Here's a company that seems to have every available statistic at it's fingertips seemingly scaling all the way up through the publisher itself, and all that knowledge yet it's dug itself and it's soulless creations several feet into the ground.

If it wasn't for these behemoth publishers handholding developers then the whole thing would've fallen in like a house of cards.

 

[StealthGoblin]

They never was 350 people working on Alan Wake 2. they had about 130 people on average working on Alan Wake 2 for 4 years. The salaries are also not the same obviously, we cannot compare on this point a studio in Finland and one like Insomniac which is located in the US in an area known to be quite expansive.

The thing that is rather surprising is that Insomniac does almost no outsourcing and does almost everything internally even though it is a good way to reduce costs.

Look at the pace they output games. That becomes a lot slower with outsourcing.

 

[LixhulHot]

Just unsustainable and I see a gaming break coming soon, like we did in the Atari days. I can just feel it. Things are getting longer and expensive, customers are getting less things and higher expectations.

245 million dollars, 380 people, 5 years, to make a AAA video game now is just far too unsustainable. Something will give.

I am part of the unsustainability crowd having seen this.

 

[StealthGoblin]

Just unsustainable and I see a gaming break coming soon, like we did in the Atari days. I can just feel it. Things are getting longer and expensive, customers are getting less things and higher expectations.

245 million dollars, 380 people, 5 years, to make a AAA video game now is just far too unsustainable. Something will give.

I am part of the unsustainability crowd having seen this.

Player expectation has to change. Insomniac are probably among the most efficient developers out there.

 

[HoodWinked]

gotta spend money to make money

 

[MaxwellParrish]

Now that I look at the chart again.......it's presented in a way that states everyone at Insomniac is making Spiderman 2. Like, how is it true that Spiderman 2 took up the full Insomniac budget for those years, while they were also making Wolverine?

It's pretty weird, considering that the last chart show no more than 250 Insomniac employees working on the title in its 2 peak years, with far less personal for the rest of its production time...

 

[Famipan]

Anyone noticed the lower budget for IT & Office Support?
Did they change to cheaper security?

 

[Pedro Motta]

Everything is more expensive in California.

 

[Insane Metal]

6 million on localization costs. Sony games have stupendous dubbing in European Portuguese. It’s at the level of any dubbed high-profile film.

Everything is expensive in these games. Sony is totally in in the AAA blockbuster and it’s not coming back.

7.2 million units to break even though is absolutely nuts.

In Brazilian Portuguese too! They're really really good

 

[YeulEmeralda]

John from Digital Foundry said a few directs weekly ago that maintain a studio in California is high expensive. I can't understand why Sony keep doing things in California. Keep in mind that John used the quote 'insanily high'.

Is like they love to burn money, I get that, but this is starting to get very suspicious. If you want to reduce costs instead of firing people, why in hell you still doing bussiness in California, one of the US most expensives places to work?

Because literally nobody wants to live in Maine. Some regions are expensive for a reason.

 

[ActusReusJB]

What is ODC ?

Other Direct Costs, usually it is a collection of smaller costs that you bucket for convenience rather than break out all the detail since each individual item that comprises it would be very small dollars.

 

[Stooky]

Just unsustainable and I see a gaming break coming soon, like we did in the Atari days. I can just feel it. Things are getting longer and expensive, customers are getting less things and higher expectations.

245 million dollars, 380 people, 5 years, to make a AAA video game now is just far too unsustainable. Something will give.

I am part of the unsustainability crowd having seen this.

and yet the games sell and they make a profit. not every game needs to be home run. not every game will have 300mill budget. but if i were making SM2, 245 mill investment, easy choice. it is sustainable with the right ip.

 

[The artful mincer]

There was a thread about this. I mentioned that in my post. I didn’t make it up. Even if you go by Sonys inflated $200 million figure, miles costing $156 million doesn’t make sense.

Why this is so hard for you guys is beyond me. A 2 year 7 hour dlc cannot cost $156 million when horizon cost $200 million. Forget the $112 figure.

There's a slide in this Thread which said Miles Morales cost a far more reasonable 80 million to develop.

Sales-Age - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Sales Reach 14.4M Units (as of June 2023)

The slide also contains some additional key financial measures including projections for the upcoming Venom title.

www.neogaf.com

There's alot of conflicting information coming out of this leak. People should be very careful about what there reading before running with it as fact.

Personally the idea that Spider-Man 2 needs 500 million to break even is dubious...

 

[Fake]

In Brazilian Portuguese too! They're really really good

Yep. Brazil is expensive as shit.

 

[ManaByte]

Get the fuck out of California. Let the place drown in literal shit.

 

[StereoVsn]

If I calculate right it means that the average salary per core dev is a little above >$200k a year (in 2022, $67M divided per 315 devs). That's quite impressive.

That’s not salary but total compensation which includes insurance, and other office costs. Salaries can be 30-50% less in total.

 

[freefornow]

What is ODC ?

I'll be kind and say Our Daily Coffee and not Our Daily Crack.

And what is it with this culture of "bonuses"? My bonus is I get paid every week for doing the work I was employed/contracted to do.

 

[UnravelKatharsis]

I'm thinking the game industry has finally taken a page from the film industry and figured out how to make every game look like it lost money.

 

[RainblowDash]

No fucking wonder they want to start selling games in parts for full price each…

 

[FlyyGOD]

I'm sure if they cut the Mary J missions out they could've saved some money.

 

[geary]

Sony bought Insomniac for 229 millions so it can make a 310 millions game…

 

[Thirty7ven]

If you believe that miles, a 7 hour dlc cost 156 million and a ps5 port of Spider-Man cost $39 million then i don’t know what to tell you.

These numbers just don’t make any sense whatsoever. Even if you put them up Sonys own inflated numbers for hfw and gow which they said cost $200 million. So 50-100 hour games 5 years in development cost $200 million while miles, a 7 hour dlc set in the same city costs $156 million?

Meanwhile remedy with 350 devs takes 4 years to make alan wake 2 for $50 mil euros. The docs state that in the peak year 380 devs worked on sp2 and it cost them $100 million that year. Remedy had around the same number of devs for 4 years and averaged 12.5 million a year.

These numbers make zero sense.

And btw, we discussed this when horizon fw was confirmed to have cost $112 million euros by a Dutch documentary on GG. If we go by that figure, spiderman 2 costing 3x more while being in full dev for 3 years instead of 5 for hfw while using the same damn city is insane.

The only thing that matters is headcount, studio location and dev time.

That Remedy number uh, I’m gonna call bs on that. 380 devs, 12.5 million is <33k a year per head, in a country where your avg is 45k? That’s € by the way.

Salary in Finland: A complete guide on Finnish wages, valuable salary increases, exciting employee benefits, and more!

Salary in Finland is one of the most satisfying among all European nations, as it offers many privileges. Read our blog to learn more!

www.edunation.co

Sorry but either you’re telling me Remedy is slaving a lot of their workers, or something’s wrong with the math here.

 

[SlimySnake]

The only thing that matters is headcount, studio location and dev time.

That Remedy number uh, I’m gonna call bs on that. 380 devs, 12.5 million is <33k a year per head, in a country where your avg is 45k? That’s € by the way.

Salary in Finland: A complete guide on Finnish wages, valuable salary increases, exciting employee benefits, and more!

Salary in Finland is one of the most satisfying among all European nations, as it offers many privileges. Read our blog to learn more!

www.edunation.co

Sorry but either you’re telling me Remedy is slaving a lot of their workers, or something’s wrong with the math here.

380 devs and $100 million salary for that year comes out to $268k a year per dev. That’s whats nonsense.

This is from insomniacs glassdoor.