Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us: Part 2's time and money allocation were made public earlier this week by badly redacted court documents. Both games' development cost more than $200 million and took more than five years.
Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million to produce and required 300 personnel to complete between 2017 and 2022, whereas Naughty Dog spent $220 million over 70 months with 200 studio staff at their peak.
Players were astonished to learn that the badly reviewed video game Forspoken cost $100 million earlier this year.
It is not shocking that these two games cost more than twice as much, but the industry has responded to the precise figures, and developers have helped to put some of those figures into context.
The Last of Us Part 2 cost Sony 220 million over six years to create , and as per Lisette , a former creator of game of Psychonauts 2 , said it is a great risk that no penny yet recieved on the money spent.
Developers have already talked about the extra expenses not included in those development costs, development budgets , third-party contracts, Budgets for marketing, which can be just as pricey as those for game creation, are also not taken into account.
Dating sim Thirsty Suitors' game designer Chananda Ekanayake commented, "$200M+ development budget of a AAA game to indie scale is wild
According to Rami Ismail, a former Vlambeer developer, "I'd need a tenth of that to fund 20-30 incredible indie games by super cool devs around the world.
Many independent developers have expressed the view that even a small portion of Naughty Dog's budget might have a significant positive impact on their careers.
More updates coming soon