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

Well, every single cent in this is visible when you play the game.

The fidelity is next level.

They also got decima out of this (ist that cost included?).

Best game ever!!!!
 

Cartman86

Banned
It's pretty important to make a distinction between full time employees of the studio and outsourced content from China (or wherever). Especially for a Dutch specific story. Are there any good stories out there that actually go into outsourcing with AAA studios? I think I remember one that was about Heavy Rain and how much they used outsourcing for art.
 
I love that companies like GG and CDPR are becoming "titans of industry" in their countries. It's so cool that smaller countries (relatively speaking, in the U.S. here) are able to have companies producing some of the best products in the world in their respective industries.

It doesn't help the US that more and more programming talent is being lead down to the Unity ghetto while other countries are less reliant on middleware.
 

K.Jack

Knowledge is power, guard it well
That's what I got from this as well. I doubt this game only cost 45 lol.

I imagine the info came, like this:

Interviewer: Hey did the game cost much?

GG:....

I: Say... 35 million?

GG: No?

I: how about 45 million?

GG: We'd rather not say.

I: So you're saying it cost more than 45 million, right?

GG: No comment.

I: PRINT IT BOYS
 

Joni

Member
How many big Chinese outsource studios are there? Do Naughty Dog and Guerilla Games use the same one?

There are a significant amount, mostly former real development studio's that are now reduced to outsourcing because the cheap MMO bubble burst. Most famous ones would be Tose (Japanese with presence in China), Virtuos and Gamestar but these companies try not to be famous. That would be bad for business.
 
Good job GG.
Hopefully this means a better ROI for everyone involved.

I don't think this is that much high production budget, is it?

Reading this thread it seems this is on the lower end for AAA production costs (which I would've thought as well personally). Considering this is an open world game with this sort of insane production value, it's very efficient project management.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Probably helps to pay your staff for 40 hours and then make them work 80.

That is just amazing budgeting necessary to create dreams... it is not crunch and missing pay and ruining your family and social life... it is just what is required to make dreams come true... /s at the crunch is always justified culture.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Now think about the fact that Kojima poached a lot of his old team at Konami including the minds behind the Fox Engine and is co-developing the Decima engine with Guerrilla Games. Imagine what Horizon 2 is going to look like with the improvements and advancements made alongside Kojima and his team while working on Death Stranding.

Did he hire away Merceron (TD behind Fox Engine IIRC) too?
 

Thorrgal

Member
Mmm at least 45M means that the cost could be 100M, 150M or any other sum greater than 45M? Or I'm not reading this right? Mb something lost in translation?

How can it be cheaper than The Witcher 3 with dutch sallaries and longer development time? Or The Witcher 3 is 80M including marketing?

Edit: Even if the latter is the case I find the wording weird
 

Chuckie

Member
I laughed at the distinction between people and China

There is no such distinction. It is a mistranslation.

The article says:
250 man in Nederland en nog eens honderd in China

250 people worked on it in the Netherlands and another 100 in China.
You don't repeat the word people (at least in Dutch) because it would make an awkward sentence and it is already implied.
 

vivekTO

Member
Source? Pretty sure he went to Namco Bandai.

Maybe i am confusing him with someone else, nut i read it that one of the tech leads behind fox engine joins the Kojima production or it might be the Lighting tech lead. Sorry can't find the actual quote. But on googling , you seems to be right about him joining the Bandai Namco. Sorry my bad.
 
Now think about the fact that Kojima poached a lot of his old team at Konami including the minds behind the Fox Engine and is co-developing the Decima engine with Guerrilla Games. Imagine what Horizon 2 is going to look like with the improvements and advancements made alongside Kojima and his team while working on Death Stranding.

*drooling*
 

TransTrender

Gold Member
The best football teams in Europe can qualify to the champions league where the best teams compete annually to be the best.
What an odd reference considering most of Europe could probably name some teams that participate in that but outside of EuroGAF like 5 people could identify Guerrilla Games.
 

Blablurn

Member
Outsourcing to China is a good strategic move. Looking forward till one Chinese company has learned enough to develop its own AAA game for the current consoles.
 
Considering the size of the game, $47 million seems really cheap. Even God of War 3 had a budget of $44 million and and was a 10+ hour linear game from 7 years ago.

What was The Witcher 3 - something like $60-70 million, I think?

I love dissecting this kind of information. Wish we got more.
 
Watch Dogs 1 was also about 45 million

Watch Dogs was that cheap? I'm very surprised for a game developed in Canada and didn't it have a dev team of like 600 at one point? Ubisoft must have spent a fortune on marketing it though.

how expensive is a big marketing campaign these days? 60-70 mio in total? (combined with the production costs)

I recall someone from EA commenting back in 2011 that the combined marketing for Call of Duty (BOII I think?) and Battlefield 3 would probably be $200 million, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was ~$100 million for major releases like that.

Sony really has tight budgets. I assume Uncharted 4 was more expensive, right?

I seem to recall reading that Uncharted 2 cost I think $21 million dollars which even back then was pretty cheap, but I don't know about UC3 and I'm betting UC4 was significantly more than that.

Is that more or less expensive than Zelda on these fronts.

Nintendo have said BotW needs to sell 2 million copies to break even I think, which possibly puts its development budget in the $40-50 million range. It's clearly their biggest development ever and they've had up to a few hundred people working on it.

Engine development costs and anyone who was working on KZ at the same time are probably factored out

Yeah, of course. Why would they factor anyone working on Killzone into the Horizon budget?!
 
There are a significant amount, mostly former real development studio's that are now reduced to outsourcing because the cheap MMO bubble burst. Most famous ones would be Tose (Japanese with presence in China), Virtuos and Gamestar but these companies try not to be famous. That would be bad for business.

I'm really interested to know more about how the outsourcing works.
"outsourcing art" always sounds really simple but what do I have to imagine here? Does the main studio say "We need texture work for grass, pelts, rocks and trees?"
What does the work of those chinese studios entail?
 

Tonyx

Member
While, as many others said, it's a big number but well below top AAA games' budgets, I wonder how many units they need to sell to recoup it.

Does anyone have a rough idea of the margins in game sales?

I guess for digital it should be pretty high (even though not 100% because of infrastracture like payment system) but for brick and mortar I really have no idea of the margins (I would guess less than 50%).
 
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