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Horizon ZD Production cost at least €45 / ~$47 mil, peak team 250 people + 100 china

Some Nobody

Junior Member
So...< $90mil total if you count the advertising budget, then? That's pretty awesome, particularly for a project this big. What made GTA so freaking expensive, then? All the licensed music?
 

Zones

Member
In related news, Mass Effect: Andromeda's budget is at least 55 CAD / 41 USD.

Uncharted 4's budget was at least $258 / £208.

Meanwhile, the new God of War is said to cost more than a Starbucks coffee.

...

In all seriousness, this topic will only lead to mislead people into thinking this game had a budget of $47 million, whereas in reality, that number has no basis since the original article itself indicates that Guerrilla is not disclosing the game's budget at this moment.
 

Lime

Member
I'd be surprised if Uncharted 4 wasn't at least $80 million given the location of the studio and I believe a larger team size.

$100 million might be more realistic.



"Production" budget would be development budget in gaming terms.

ND still do a lot of outsourcing of a lot of the game, at least when you go through the credits and see how many other developers (usually cheaper) are involved
 

10k

Banned
That's pretty low. Other AAA games must be full of bloat and mismanagement if they're doubling that budget and putting out lower quality
 

farmerboy

Member
Wow, that's very cheap. I expected something more like 70 million.

I wouldnt be surprised if they lowballed it on purpose.

If 100% true, then I think it's quite remarkable. Decima must be one very flexible and productive engine to work with.
 

120v

Member
they must've been pretty focused to keep it under 50 mil over that long

gratz to gorilla, sure they'll go in the black in no time
 

Some Nobody

Junior Member
That's pretty low. Other AAA games must be full of bloat and mismanagement if they're doubling that budget and putting out lower quality

Other AAA games include marketing in their budget. :p

Someone remind me how much Destiny was again

Man, I don't even like Destiny. But I like people being purposefully inaccurate even worse. 500 million over ten years, with 4/5 games and massive expacs every other year isn't bad at all.
 
That's pretty low. Other AAA games must be full of bloat and mismanagement if they're doubling that budget and putting out lower quality

Aren't most of first party games relatively cheaper to make? I'd guess having access to all the knowledge and know&how from other teams as well as firmware guys plus not having to deal with Q&A for several platform is saving a lot of money.
 
That is a decently good budget given how much companies waste in game design. Game looks to be awesome so good on the people that worked on it.
 

Kaako

Felium Defensor
Its gonna make a lot of money and sell a bunch of ps4s. Sony must be beyond satisfied.
Worthwhile investment in their eyes, almost guaranteed at this point. GG & Sony handled this massive internal project really well.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
That's less than I expected given the scale and fidelity of the game. Glad to see it paid off. Been a while since I've seen this positive and enthusiastic a reaction to a new IP.
 

Gitaroo

Member
that is pretty good and smart. Realistically assets can be done by any studios, they can just out source a lot of the modeling work to China and other countries that may only cost 1/3 of what they would have cost the studio internally and have them work in parallel with their own schedule.
 
So...< $90mil total if you count the advertising budget, then? That's pretty awesome, particularly for a project this big. What made GTA so freaking expensive, then? All the licensed music?

Higher cost of living in NYC vs Amsterdam
Bigger scope (Online mode, multiple protagonists)
Lots of voice acting
Multiple Studios working on it
Licensed Music and original music (they had bands create original songs for the radio)
The fact that they knew they'd make all of it back so they went all out.

All of those will add up to an expensive game.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
ND still do a lot of outsourcing of a lot of the game, at least when you go through the credits and see how many other developers (usually cheaper) are involved

That's actually not necessarily cheaper based on who you're hiring.

This is why Ubisoft has 10,000+ staff. They hired the all the people you normally outsource work to as full time staff because it was cheaper that way.
 

Fbh

Member
Even if it's double the ammount that's still impressive.

How much did Destiny cost again?
I mean the game wasn't bad and a lot of it was marketing. Still, literally nothing about that game felt like "yeah, this sure feels like the most expensive game ever".
 

MadYarpen

Member
Development+Marketing costs. Assuming a 50:50 split I'd say the production costs are roughly the same.

That is if we're also assuming the value quoted in the OP is canonical and not just the lower bound.

I am almost sure that in case of the witcher it wasn't 50:50. I am not sure I remember it right, but I think it was more like 70:30 or 80:20 (most $ went for marketing). But feel free to correct me.
 
That's really cheap. Nice budget controls on their part.

Yep, the budgeting, and financial control of this AAA game is damn good. They have done some very good, smart and sensible planning for this game and it's incredible that they have kept their cool and game under a tight effective budget for SIX years.


Other devs and pubs need to learn from this.
 

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Also pretty impressive budget considering they got a whole new engine out of this that will serve them and other studios, presumably, for years to come.

Its not a new engine at all. Its the same engine they've been using for a very long time over multiple games. They just constantly add to it and update it and now share development with Kojima Productions.
 

AAK

Member
Nah, that sounds way too unrealistic. Probably only the amount spent on GG staff not including legal/outsourcing/marketing/distribution costs.
 

Vishnu

Member
But we don't know of that includes the development of the engine right?
Meaning it could be more , but seeing how the engine is reusable they don't count that cost?

Edit: Just saw the post above. It's not a new engine at all. Nevermind...
 

The Giant

Banned
Makes you think how much Nintendo spent on Zelda BOTW. When they said at last years e3, that it needs to sell 2 million to break even.
 

Viruz

Member
Interview with a Dutch national news paper for the release of the game today some info that might be new but at least thread worthy if not discussed before:

(at least) €45 / ~$47 mil production cost
peak team 250 people + 100 china (outsource for art I assume)
6 years in total to make incl pre-production with 20 staff.

(Dutch)
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/02/2...tie-van-nederland-is-gemaakt-6962270-a1547873

(English google translate)




/Buy me a $50 mil dutch AAA game if old.

Scared of a bunch of water, then get out the rain
Order a rapper for lunch and spit out the chain

The GAME.
 
Aren't most of first party games relatively cheaper to make? I'd guess having access to all the knowledge and know&how from other teams as well as firmware guys plus not having to deal with Q&A for several platform is saving a lot of money.

Like most studios, Sony doesn't usually discuss how much their games cost. But they have discussed it on rare occasions. The first two Uncharted games cost 20m each, God of War 3 cost 44m and Gran Turismo 5 cost 60m.
 
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