• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

007 First Light cost $200 million dollars, and 7 years to make

Uncharted 4 only cost 50 million and had a 3-5 year development cycle despite having to rewrite the game halfway through when production leads changed.

Uncharted 4 is rumoured and forecasted to have cost 50 million by analysts. Sony and ND never have said what it cost. Plus the marketing campaign for that game was the biggest Sony had ever done at the time. Rumoured to be north of 100 Milly.

This game, is a massively better game than uncharted 4 and I believe anyone with a love of gameplay would agree. There's so many options to tackle entry into areas in missions. There's things that any hitman fan would love to go back and do again.

Yes, as a hitman fan the game feels easy but it has enough of the Devs magic in it that it feels truly special to me.

Plus the girls are fucking hot. I dare anyone to play the Vietnam area and name a sexier woman in a video game in the last 10 years. And you bone.

I can't believe there is people talking negative on this game. Our industry, it's fans are truly lost.

I feel there is now gamers and just grifters. People who actually enjoy good games and can look past a game not having the industry leading animation when it does everything else so well.

This game is well written, well acted, great length that just gets better and better.

This is a fucking classic video game imo. Easily to the level of sonys best, who are normally the leaders in this genre.

no bullshit, not really that woke when you take into consideration how fucking hot and sexy the game is.

They did bond proud and proven themselves as one of the best developers in the industry.

Amazing game imo.

I have decided I will fight for this games honour.

Fine for people to think it's an 8 out of 10, a 7 out of 10 if they've played it. But, I bet they will admit it's well fucking made and an awesome cinematic video game.
 
Last edited:
I would tend to a percentage base deal. Maybe something like ~20% on each sale.



Depends on if it's a perpetual license or one of those deals that last a handful of years, then the game gets an update to remove the music.



Maybe not a lot. They have a strong sponsorship with nvidia and that means they sent engineers to help out.
The DLSS and Path Tracing implementation are probably close to free for IOI.
The rest of the engine seems to be minor upgrades to the already existing engine. The only major upgrade is the software based GI implementation.

This whole post could have been summarized as

"I dont know"
 
I remember reading that Shenmue cost about 70 million Dollars to produce and market making it the most expensive video game ever made at that time.
How many units does First Light have to sell to make even?
 
The quality shows, everything from the gameplay to the graphics look amazing. It's one of the few modern AAA games that impress me

michael jordan laughing GIF
 
And not a single cent was spent on graphics.
The game looks fine. I've never understood the constant obsession with graphics. As long as it doesn't look like a game from 30 years ago, I really don't care.

It's like toddlers who need picture books because they lack the imagination to recognize anything beyond a surface level.
 
This seems to be like the whole Hollywood accounting system to me... $200 million for a nice looking generic videogame... I would suggest they have been robbed.
 
This just shows you that modern AAA development is largely infeasible. Yes some games will sell enough copies to make it feasible but most won't.
 





I don't see the source for these numbers anywhere. The article simply states them out of no where as if they are fact.

Ah....reddit pointed that out.

"The statement is at the beginning of the article and isn't attributed to a particular source. "

So these are numbers pulled out of the writers ass then
 
Last edited:
The real budget was probably around 120 mil. Which is lot less than what your average Concord costs, but it is still a lot for a 20 hour linear game. KCD2, open world 150+ hour game cost 40 mil (and broke even first day).

Bond will probably break even eventually, maybe in a year or so. The good reviews helped.
 
Last edited:
Uncharted 4 is rumoured and forecasted to have cost 50 million by analysts. Sony and ND never have said what it cost. Plus the marketing campaign for that game was the biggest Sony had ever done at the time. Rumoured to be north of 100 Milly.

This game, is a massively better game than uncharted 4 and I believe anyone with a love of gameplay would agree. There's so many options to tackle entry into areas in missions. There's things that any hitman fan would love to go back and do again.

Yes, as a hitman fan the game feels easy but it has enough of the Devs magic in it that it feels truly special to me.

Plus the girls are fucking hot. I dare anyone to play the Vietnam area and name a sexier woman in a video game in the last 10 years. And you bone.

I can't believe there is people talking negative on this game. Our industry, it's fans are truly lost.

I feel there is now gamers and just grifters. People who actually enjoy good games and can look past a game not having the industry leading animation when it does everything else so well.

This game is well written, well acted, great length that just gets better and better.

This is a fucking classic video game imo. Easily to the level of sonys best, who are normally the leaders in this genre.

no bullshit, not really that woke when you take into consideration how fucking hot and sexy the game is.

They did bond proud and proven themselves as one of the best developers in the industry.

Amazing game imo.

I have decided I will fight for this games honour.

Fine for people to think it's an 8 out of 10, a 7 out of 10 if they've played it. But, I bet they will admit it's well fucking made and an awesome cinematic video game.
I disagree. Despite being much more limited by hardware and tech of the time, Uncharted 4 outclasses in pretty much every single way. Even ignoring the visual presentation aspects, U4 has better gameplay, control, driving, physics, set pieces etc.
 
Last edited:
Another day, another GAF hate boner for a perfectly fine game.

I do agree 200 million is too large a budget for any game. If you sell the game at $70 and take out the 30% platform cut, you'd need to sell over 4 million copies just to make back your costs.

Most games don't sell 4 million copies at full price, the risk is just too high.
 
I'd imagine not the full studio was working on this for the full seven years? We have to remember that this was their first go at this this type of game. I bet the next installment is pushed out in a shorter period now that they have a blueprint of what their take on Bond is

Also kinda weird how people want this game single player, story-based game to fail? Go enjoy your gaas then I guess?
 
Last edited:
I'd imagine not the full studio was working on this for the full seven years? We have to remember that this was their first go at this this type of game. I bet the next installment is pushed out in a shorter period now that they have a blueprint of what their take on Bond is

Also kinda weird how people want this game single player, story-based game to fail? Go enjoy your gaas then I guess?
Big budget AAA SP games are not sustainable.
 
And not a single cent was spent on graphics.
Correction, not a single cent was spend on image quality and optimization.

This game has a ton of "graphics"; so much so that it looks like they threw the kitchen sink at it and said "ehh, just let upscaling and frame gen deal with it" and we are left with PS3 era image quality.

This is the true crime of the generation. Developers just not giving a shit about final image quality. It seriously feels like we are back in 2009 sometimes.

On a different note, they 100% should've built an old school deathmatch online mode in this game just for the fun and longevity of it. Doesn't need fancy battle passes or live service shit; just drop some maps and characters and let people dick around like they did with Goldeneye.
 
Last edited:
Not sure where the money went tbh. U4 did everything Bond does but better 10 years ago. The game is decent but it's not pushing any boundaries.
 
Last edited:
Another day, another GAF hate boner for a perfectly fine game.

I do agree 200 million is too large a budget for any game. If you sell the game at $70 and take out the 30% platform cut, you'd need to sell over 4 million copies just to make back your costs.

Most games don't sell 4 million copies at full price, the risk is just too high.

Im doubting the 200 million price, but its plausible considering all the licensing and stuff.

Didnt this game do 1.5 million in its first 24 hours?

Its profitable within a year no doubt.
If the sequels werent already greenlit, they would have been greenlit after the first 24 hours, and we get a sequel in 3 years.
MGM, IOI and Delphi made a hell of a bet and it looks to be paying off.
I certainly woulda never bet on this game on paper.

4y4zvaq4l24h1.jpeg




GAF seemingly just has a hate boner for games in general.
Has there been any uncontroversial release in like the last 2 years?
Even Exp33 had haters for reasons unknown.



<---Is guilty of hating on games too.........not riding on a high horse, but will defend good games when good games show up if for no other reason so that people getting "burnt out" by all the hate in the industry can atleast see some light.
 
Even Exp33 had haters for reasons unknown.
Maybe it's because the media glazed the game for being some super innovative JRPG where all it did was recycle mechanics Nintendo RPGs as well as other major (but niche) JRPGs have been doing for decades?

All the accolades and praise boiled down to in the medias eyes JRPGs = only Final Fantasy and E33 is doing all this other stuff that they loved but continuously (and suspiciously in unison) left out the fact that literally everything it did has been done for decades by games already. It's gameplay was ripped from Paper Mario and Lost Odyssey and its story was just Xenoblade Chronicles 3 minus the anime.
 
Last edited:
Maybe it's because the media glazed the game for being some super innovative JRPG where all it did was recycle mechanics Nintendo RPGs as well as other major (but niche) JRPGs have been doing for decades?

All the accolades and praise boiled down to in the medias eyes JRPGs = only Final Fantasy and E33 is doing all this other stuff that they loved but continently left out the fact that literally everything it did has been done for decades by games already. It's gameplay was ripped from Paper Mario and Lost Odyssey and its story was just Xenoblade Chronicles 3 minus the anime.

So people hated on it because other people liked it?


P.S Lost Odyssey was one of my favorite games from X360......how was the gameplay the same as Exp33 other than being turnbased?
 
On a different note, they 100% should've built an old school deathmatch online mode in this game just for the fun and longevity of it. Doesn't need fancy battle passes or live service shit; just drop some maps and characters and let people dick around like they did with Goldeneye.

Then they never would've got the Bond license. When they pitched it to EON, the rights holders didn't want a new Bond game because all Activision did was make shitty FPSs. They didn't want a Bond game that was just a deathmatch shooter.
 
So people hated on it because other people liked it?


P.S Lost Odyssey was one of my favorite games from X360......how was the gameplay the same as Exp33 other than being turnbased?
I literally explained that to you. People hated on it because a lot of the journalists that liked it pretended it innovated on all of these things it didn't and ignored (either through not knowing or intentionally ignoring) how all these other niche JRPGs have been doing these things for decades.

Then they never would've got the Bond license. When they pitched it to EON, the rights holders didn't want a new Bond game because all Activision did was make shitty FPSs. They didn't want a Bond game that was just a deathmatch shooter.
A death match mode with this games third person combat don't fit either of those. 1) not a FPS and 2) not "just" a death match shooter.
 
Last edited:
This game probably had a longer than usual concepting/pre-production period, since IO needed to figure out what exactly a Bond game should be.

There are also likely a lot of upfront costs here (licensing, asset creation, etc.) that they're planning to defer across multiple games.

If this is anything like Hitman, IO should be pretty efficient about using this title as a foundation for multiple sequels.
 
If that budget number is real I'd love to know where it all went.... Because that game is extremely inconsistent and the overall production values are certainly not where you'd expect them with such a budget.
 
7 years?
200.gif


7 years sure, pitching, preproduction, organizing licensing etc etc.
7 years full development absolutely NOT.

Full development would probably be 4 - 5 years.

200 million I could see that, especially when we factor in Licensing the 007 trademark(Im guessing all three games are in that), getting a theme song by Lana Del Ray.
The upgrades to the engine.
And as this is supposed to be a trilogy, some of that 200 million is likely actually a forward investment towards the other games.
Reusing assets, making sequel, assets now etc etc

When the trilogy is done they should release the cost of the trilogy and overall I can bet you they will be well under the average AAA cost.



For what this game is and if you really look at the breakdown of their costs.
Yes, this is a quality game for a relatively modest budget.
They are planning a whole trilogy and the intial 200 million is almost certainly a forward investment towards the other titles.
Exactly... I just hope people realize that these "game development costs" all just come down to the size of the studio and where its located.

You can have a 300-man studio in the States that costs the same thing it costs to run a 600-man studio in Istanbul.

Whether you are making a game or not, those people still get paid, you still pay an electricity bill...etc. Yes there are some contract-based costs that come into things based on the stage of development you are in, like voice actors QA testers...etc. But for the most part, you are paying workers regardless of what's happening in development.

And that's where a lot of this stuff gets weird, IO can say the game took 7 years to make and 200M... but in that time, they have released at least 3 Hitman games too. I think a more accurate way to look at the actual cost of making a game, is also taking into account how many games that same studio released in the same time frame...eg, we stay spiderman 2 cost insomniac $300M... and took them 5 years... but in that same time they also released R&C and SM:MM.
 
So people hated on it because other people liked it?


P.S Lost Odyssey was one of my favorite games from X360......how was the gameplay the same as Exp33 other than being turnbased?
I didn't hate on it. I like the game and beat it, but the ridiculous praise was undeserved. They talked as if it revolutionized the genre or something.
 
Another day, another GAF hate boner for a perfectly fine game.

I do agree 200 million is too large a budget for any game. If you sell the game at $70 and take out the 30% platform cut, you'd need to sell over 4 million copies just to make back your costs.

Most games don't sell 4 million copies at full price, the risk is just too high.
GTA IV famously cost $100M to make and it was most expensive piece of entertainment ever produced at the time.

Now every AAA seems to break that threshold.
 
Even if this isn't James Bomba (which it may well be), I still wouldn't necessarily expect a direct continuation of this.

When there's a new movie Bond cast, new Bond movies and zillions in marketing behind those things, the case for shifting to tie in with that becomes compelling for both parties imo.

That may be compelling enough for another crack at it even if this one doesn't make enough money, if they believe the groundwork advantage (from having made this game) and 'Real Bond' advantage could be enough to make the difference next time.
 
Top Bottom