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God of War Ragnarok cost $200M to make

feynoob

Banned
Horizon cost $100 million. For this game to cost double that is nonsense. GG did so much more to improve the visuals and production values which is where most of the budget is supposed to go. Horizon also took 6 months more in development in a studio twice the size of GG.

If it indeed cost $200 million to make then Sony should shut that studio down because someone in that studio is embezzling money.

If there is no fraud then reign in your stupid developers. We dont need six different hub worlds that all do the same shit. They shouldve just made Vanaheim and Crater, and called it a day. Two copy pasta Alfheim worlds, the same Midgard and svarthalfheim nonsense lifted straight out of the the last game. Who asked for this? The game is 50 hour game. It wouldve sold the same as a 30 hour game that was made in 3 years like Star Wars. And what a phenomenal game Star Wars is. Feels fresh in ways Ragnorak just didnt despite being a straight sequel just like Ragnorak.
Guerrilla B.V. (trade name: Guerrilla Games) is a Dutch first-party video game developer based in Amsterdam and part of PlayStation Studios.
That is your answer. While Santa Monica studio is a US company.

Budget of employee salary will be different. Also it's cheaper to have marketing team from Netherlands than from US.
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
Horizon cost $100 million. For this game to cost double that is nonsense. GG did so much more to improve the visuals and production values which is where most of the budget is supposed to go. Horizon also took 6 months more in development in a studio twice the size of GG.

If it indeed cost $200 million to make then Sony should shut that studio down because someone in that studio is embezzling money.
Wasn't it you who just posted that this 200 mil number didn't come from Yoshida?

Also, no shit it costs more to run a studio in Santa Monica than Amsterdam. American studios are just more expensive.

If there is no fraud then reign in your stupid developers. We dont need six different hub worlds that all do the same shit. They shouldve just made Vanaheim and Crater, and called it a day. Two copy pasta Alfheim worlds, the same Midgard and svarthalfheim nonsense lifted straight out of the the last game.
If they didn't have all the realms or restricted most of them to just a few levels, people would bitch and moan. It doesn't really make sense for a game about Ragnarok not to span the 9 realms.

Who asked for this? The game is 50 hour game. It wouldve sold the same as a 30 hour game that was made in 3 years like Star Wars. And what a phenomenal game Star Wars is. Feels fresh in ways Ragnorak just didnt despite being a straight sequel just like Ragnorak.
Oh, gtfo dude. You admitted that you didn't play Fallen Order. Yeah, it's going to feel more "fresh".

Also, that 3 years certainly helped. Not like Jedi Survivor has terrible performance across all platforms and modes, or is bugged all the way down to the HDR setting.

Ragnarok released with little to no bugs and fantastic performance on day one. Your standards just seem to be high and arbitrary when it comes to PlayStation first parties. The former is fine to a degree, but the latter undermines your credibility.
 
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God of War must have earned Sony a lot since Sony sells digital the most and digital cost 70 Euro and all the 70 goes directly to Sony because they are publishing and developing the game.And more if you count the deluxe edition from which 100.000 are probably sold they put 10 dollar merchandise beside the game and sell it for 100 or 150.let’s say Sony sold digital from the 11 million it sold 8 million digital 8 million 70 which goes all to Sony is 560 million let’s say 40 dollars goes to Sony from 70 sold at stores 3 million 40 dollars are 120 million.
So Sony would have made nearly 700 million from this game which cost them with marketing 200 million if you ad in a DLC which will sell a few million times than Sony will made around 800 million depending on the number they sell 20 dollar 3 million sold is 60 million 6 million sold 120 milion.And the game keeps on selling at high price maybe it’s already passed 13 million Sony will have made way more than 1 billion Dollars from this game.
 

//DEVIL//

Member
200M for that turd when the epic best GOW game that is 3 cost 44 Million..

It just showed the efficiency of a team back then vs hiring many useless woke people as an added extra cost.

I played and finished both PS4 and PS5 GOW. They are NOTHING in terms of the epic and the quality of GOW3.

If they remake GOW 3 from the heart with updated graphics ( do not use the ugly 3rd view slow-ass shit they have been using now ), you would probably have the ultimate action game of all time.
 
This might be the reason for their GAAS push.

If even Final Fantasy could turn away from focusing so much on graphics/production values, i think it's definitely possible for Sony.

Personally would like to see more games like Returnal, Psychonauts 2, Hifi Rush being made.
 

Bragr

Banned
Without marketing.

Marketing for such a gigantic game is easily over 100 mill.

The game likely cost around 400+ including marketing, something that fits the current reporting from other studios that high-end tripe-A games are getting into the 200+ million range just to develop alone, while marketing can be higher.

Current triple-A is not sustainable. This is a huge problem, because the moment you don't sell 10 million and over, you lose so much it's gonna put a dent in the machine. Forspoken, Calisto Protocol, Redfall, these games lost an absurd amount of money.

Nintendo is the only one who is built to handle this, as their old hardware is not as reliant on the extreme development cost, apart from Zelda, nothing is closing in on 100 million in their neck of the woods.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Without marketing.

Marketing for such a gigantic game is easily over 100 mill.

The game likely cost around 400+ including marketing, something that fits the current reporting from other studios that high-end tripe-A games are getting into the 200+ million range just to develop alone, while marketing can be higher.

Current triple-A is not sustainable. This is a huge problem, because the moment you don't sell 10 million and over, you lose so much it's gonna put a dent in the machine. Forspoken, Calisto Protocol, Redfall, these games lost an absurd amount of money.

Nintendo is the only one who is built to handle this, as their old hardware is not as reliant on the extreme development cost, apart from Zelda, nothing is closing in on 100 million in their neck of the woods.

You can still sustain these budgets, you just become too big to fail

1 out of every 5 or so games is probably an acceptable failure rate

1 out of 2 isn’t
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
200M for that turd when the epic best GOW game that is 3 cost 44 Million..

It just showed the efficiency of a team back then vs hiring many useless woke people as an added extra cost.

I played and finished both PS4 and PS5 GOW. They are NOTHING in terms of the epic and the quality of GOW3.

If they remake GOW 3 from the heart with updated graphics ( do not use the ugly 3rd view slow-ass shit they have been using now ), you would probably have the ultimate action game of all time.
Heads need to roll at SSM if this thing indeed cost $200 million. We've seen what they can do with $44 million.

I would be surprised if this figure includes the marketing budget of putting those stupid Miljnors all over Europe even though the genius director failed to put that weapon in the game.

How do you give that man $200 million?

ND was making Uncharted and TLOU for $20 million just ten years ago. What happened? Inflation has gone up by 30% which would make them $26 million in 2023.

9fcae6Y.jpg


GOW3 took 3 years and Ragnorak took 4.5 years. So lets increase the costs by 1.5x. Thats $66 million, putting it in the inflation calculator back to 2010 dollars get us $91 million.

$200 million in nonsense. It's like when that publisher told CMA that their game cost $600 million and $550 million were spent on the marketing. Thats a fucking money laundering operation if I ever saw one.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius



This is about what I stated previously, but many people said there's no way it could have cost that amount.
I do wonder what the marketing budget is though. Is it part of that? It is included? How much is it? Not clear.
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
Maybe not but I do think GoWR is the better game in terms of production values

But I also don’t believe that 100M number for horizon
My guess is that Horizon's budget doesn't include marketing.
It's not hard to imagine that game costing 200 million total. It's not that abnormally big an investment for a game that sold 20 million copies previously, 17.5 of those being on PS4 alone.

UK sales data also showed it was only around 100k behind Ragnarok at the end of the year; a slower seller for sure, but high performer if indicators say anything. PS5 adoption and a complete edition with Burning Shores will boost that up a lot.
 

ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
Heads need to roll at SSM if this thing indeed cost $200 million. We've seen what they can do with $44 million.

I would be surprised if this figure includes the marketing budget of putting those stupid Miljnors all over Europe even though the genius director failed to put that weapon in the game.

How do you give that man $200 million?

ND was making Uncharted and TLOU for $20 million just ten years ago. What happened? Inflation has gone up by 30% which would make them $26 million in 2023.

9fcae6Y.jpg


GOW3 took 3 years and Ragnorak took 4.5 years. So lets increase the costs by 1.5x. Thats $66 million, putting it in the inflation calculator back to 2010 dollars get us $91 million.
I don't know how you could say this stuff and claim to understand the industry at this same time.

I also don't get how you think comparing GOW3 and Ragnarok is at all appropriate. Look at them both. You can't seriously think that the height of AAA game production should cost in the mid to high 8 figures, and still extent ground breaking visuals, (but more importantly) and underlying tech, actually good design, larger scale, gameplay, complexity and 2-3 feature length films of cinematics.

$200 million in nonsense. It's like when that publisher told CMA that their game cost $600 million and $550 million were spent on the marketing. Thats a fucking money laundering operation if I ever saw one.
No, that 1.1 billion budget thing was probably true. The thing is that the budget alone doesn't tell the full story.

Whatever game that is no doubt at the top of industry production values AND has a live service plan of sorts over multiple years. It's probably GTA6. If you don't think they've spent close or more than a billion marketing and servicing GTA5 over these last 9.5 years, you're nuts. And that game is the most profitable entertainment product of all time by a wide margin. If you don't think Epic has spent similar proportions of money on Fortnite, adjusted for time and nature of content, you're nuts.

They're only investing that much because they're confident in making that money back many, many times over.
 
65% of the game is recycled. Combat. Animations, moves, character models. The game is gigantic though. Also most people complained about a lack of marketing. Only really started close to release. The game is obviously dripping with money and has phenomenal polish and production values.

If thats what it takes to reign it in at 200 mill, I'm cool with AA and a bit of jank. Polished games are obviously great but the budget seems crazy for a direct sequel. They definitely made it back this time though. That's the gamble.
If the 200 million includes marketing then that makes perfect sense to me. It probably cost 125-150 mil plus 50-75 million for marketing. Sony nowadays has such a good reputation for quality games, they will still print money even with those budgets. But from Sony's and their investors perspective, the money will be less than before. Especially in the next few years because they are selling games to fewer people. Which is why you see Sony investing in GAAS games on the side. But I feel like Sony knows their brand name is everything. So I don't see them skimping on budgets for any of their big premiere studios going forward. It's not like they are going to replace motion capture with animated stills when telling their stories...
 

3liteDragon

Member
I swear some of you can't read for shit & it shows. It's saying modern PS5 games nowadays can cost up to $200M to make, nowhere does it say Ragnarok cost $200M to make, it probably cost them around $80-$100M with marketing if I were to guess.

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Södy

Member
200M for that turd when the epic best GOW game that is 3 cost 44 Million..

It just showed the efficiency of a team back then vs hiring many useless woke people as an added extra cost.

I played and finished both PS4 and PS5 GOW. They are NOTHING in terms of the epic and the quality of GOW3.

If they remake GOW 3 from the heart with updated graphics ( do not use the ugly 3rd view slow-ass shit they have been using now ), you would probably have the ultimate action game of all time.
I prefer the older style aswell. Just much more fun and replay value.
 

Elog

Member
I do not understand why people think 200 MUSD is a lot? It is a multi million copy franchise - it is a very reasonable investment given the return profile.

The problem is not GoW, HZD et cetera - the problem is that with such investments new IPs will rarely get the attention they deserve when a remake/remaster or GoW 69 is a given positive return investment (and hence why we get so many of them).

To be fair to Sony, I believe they have an ok balance between new IP bets (Returnal, Sackboy, Ghost of T etc) and remasters/remakes but they are dangerously close to play it a little to safe (imo).
 
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Bragr

Banned
You can still sustain these budgets, you just become too big to fail

1 out of every 5 or so games is probably an acceptable failure rate

1 out of 2 isn’t
Yeah, but you need to be 100% sure the game is gonna succeed, you simply can't afford something like Ragnarok to fail.

The problem then becomes that you need to shovel a massive amount of marketing and time into it to make sure it works. This won't work if it continues to grow, we are getting into a situation where you need to sell the sort of numbers that becomes unrealistic. Playstation is in a boat where they need Sony Santa Monica and Naughty Dog to spend 4-5 years making a game, minimum, and with the growth of expenditure, they need to sell 10 million-ish at the minimum to make the sort of money they need.

The growth of expenses has risen so much in such a short time that the roof will eventually be hit, soon they will need to sell north of 15 million. This can't continue.

Even now, there are talks about how Playstation ain't selling the amount of software they wanted.

And when we look at the bigger market, we can see the cracks. The failure of The Callisto Protocol for example likely ensures the studio can't make anything close to a big triple-A game like that again, you become dependent on having a huge company behind you to even think about it.

Just look at how few triple-A games from third-party publishers are being released compared to 15 years ago when top-tier games were possible for a large number of studios. PC development, for example, has been practically decimated. AAA titles are more and more in the hands of first-party studios, and even then it's shaky. We are being hoodwinked by looking at the big Sony games, across the field it's looking ugly.
 

CamHostage

Member
  1. Avatar (2009) - $2.79 billion (budget: $237 million)
  2. Titanic (1997) - $2.19 billion (budget: $200 million)
  3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) - $2.07 billion (budget: $245 million)
  4. Avengers: Infinity War (2018) - $2.05 billion (budget: $316-400 million)
  5. Jurassic World (2015) - $1.67 billion (budget: $150 million)
  6. The Lion King (2019) - $1.65 billion (budget: $260 million)
  7. The Avengers (2012) - $1.52 billion (budget: $220 million)
  8. Furious 7 (2015) - $1.52 billion (budget: $190-250 million)
  9. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - $1.40 billion (budget: $365-495 million)
  10. Black Panther (2018) - $1.34 billion (budget: $200-210 million)

(*for fun)


10. The 13th Warrior (1999) - negative $63.3 million (budget: $125 million; worldwide gross: $61.7 million)
9. Monster Trucks (2016) - negative $63.4 million (budget: $125 million; worldwide gross: $61.6 million)
8. The Alamo (2004) - negative $68.1 million (budget: $92 million; worldwide gross: $23.9 million)
7. The Nutcracker in 3D (2010) - negative $69.5 million (budget: $90 million; worldwide gross: $20.5 million)
6. How Do You Know (2010) - negative $70.4 million (budget: $120 million; worldwide gross: $49.6 million)
5. Cutthroat Island (1995) - negative $73.5 million (budget: $92 million; worldwide gross: $18.5 million)
4. The Promise (2016) - negative $79.4 million (budget: $90 million; worldwide gross: $10.6 million)
3. The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002) - negative $92.9 million (budget: $100 million; worldwide gross: $7.1 million)
2. Town & Country (2001) - negative $94.6 million (budget: $105 million; worldwide gross: $10.4 million)
1. Mars Needs Moms (2011) - negative $110.5 million (budget: $150 million; worldwide gross: $39.5 million)


L
 

Bragr

Banned
Read the article, not the headline.

What's the source for the statement in the headline?
Various analysts.

‘The momentum of software, the lucrative part of the game business, remains weak. This shows PlayStation users are not buying new games,’ said analyst Hideki Yasuda, speaking to Bloomberg.
 

GHG

Member
Various analysts.

‘The momentum of software, the lucrative part of the game business, remains weak. This shows PlayStation users are not buying new games,’ said analyst Hideki Yasuda, speaking to Bloomberg.

"analysts" != “sony"

Sony said that the slight fall in software sales was expected since they didn't have any new first party releases, but unfortunately that doesn't make for sensationalist headlines so it is what it is.
 

samoilaaa

Member
"analysts" != “sony"

Sony said that the slight fall in software sales was expected since they didn't have any new first party releases, but unfortunately that doesn't make for sensationalist headlines so it is what it is.
yeah , i expect spider man 2 to sell 15 million at least
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Even now, there are talks about how Playstation ain't selling the amount of software they wanted.

I’m not sure where this is coming from. GowR has sold faster than any first party of theirs.

You can have a GoWR fail if a bunch of other titles succeed, but the failures should be exceedingly rare.

Technology will improve development. I don’t think budgets from here on out will get much worse. We’ve topped out on expected hours for games, and the visual Fidelity is limited more by hardware than artistry constraints
 

Bragr

Banned
"analysts" != “sony"

Sony said that the slight fall in software sales was expected since they didn't have any new first party releases, but unfortunately that doesn't make for sensationalist headlines so it is what it is.
Expected or not, they wanted more, which is what I said.

In fact, it kind of shows it's a topic for them that they have to address in public.

They know the dangers of triple-A expenses.

 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Half of that was probably marketing.
live-from-ps5-london-southbank-leviathan-axe-god-of-war-ragnarok-3.large.jpg

That was part of the "LIve from PS5" ad campaign for Playstation. That campaign started months after the release of GOW:Ragnarok. It referenced more games (Returnal, Spider-Man, etc)


 
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