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[pasterpl]

I didn’t ignore it, you keep ignoring the fact that the kotaku article only says $200M initially + other costs not included. You are extrapolating those other costs to be another $200M so that Colin’s math works out.

It doesn’t, I’m sorry, this is just a horrible jump to conclusions to fit the narrative analysis

200m for development after the purchase, they didn’t acquire them for 1 usd so that’s probably another 150-200m, getting IP, probably another 10-20m, we are at 400m+ already, then marketing etc. Its all adds up, and now they shut it down (the whole studio) - will be a massive tax write off for them. Biggest flop in history for sure. People will be learning about it in MBA courses as an example of bad business decision making.

 

[StueyDuck]

The rule of thumb for marketing is Concord had a 300 million dollar marketing budget because that game was everywhere right before launch. One of the most opulent marketing campaigns in human history.

aaah i see, so this one time, for this one game the marketing budget was purposefully small.

makes sense.

well it was a bold strategy of Sony to do the opposite of how things are done.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

200m for development after the purchase, they didn’t acquire them for 1 usd so that’s probably another 150-200m, getting IP, probably another 10-20m, we are at 400m+ already, then marketing etc. Its all adds up, and now they shut it down (the whole studio) - will be a massive tax write off for them. Biggest flop in history for sure. People will be learning about it in MBA courses as an example of bad business decision making.

Again Colin’s $400M figure does not include acquisition costs

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

aaah i see, so this one time, for this one game the marketing budget was purposefully small.

makes sense.

well it was a bold strategy of Sony to do the opposite of how things are done.

Like Helldivers 2?

 

[adamsapple]

He wasn't. You know it. I know it. We all know it.

Nah. You have an audience of only one agreeing with you.

Marketing touching the heels of the development cost is not surprising at all. Especially for a first party studio, it's probably on the higher end.

From the CMA reports when the Activision merger was happening:

Another publisher [REDACTED] reported development costs for its major AAA franchises ranging between more than $80 million to almost $350 million per title, and marketing costs reaching up to $310 million depending on the franchise.

We received similar ranges from an additional publisher [REDACTED]. Specifically, it reported a total of development and marketing costs between about $110 million and almost $380 million for some of its latest major releases.

A fourth publisher [REDACTED] submitted that the costs related to developing and regularly releasing new titles can vary significantly depending on the game type or business model of a particular studio. It provided an example that for one AAA game the development budget value could range between $90 million and $180 million, whereas the marketing budget could range between $50 million and $150 million. This publisher also submitted that for one of its major franchise's development costs reached $660 million and marketing costs peaked at almost $550 million.

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/9133...e-to-make-discuss-aaa-game-budgets/index.html

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Marketing touching the heels of the development cost is not surprising at all.

It’s only not surprising if you’re Call of Duty or Spider Man

For a game that has a flopped beta, flopped launch, there was no marketing. Sony did not actively advertise this game much at all.

It was well known with pre orders and the beta that it was a flop

Anyone saying the marketing budget equaled dev cost in this example by comparing it to God of War is being laughable disingenuous

 

[diffusionx]

I hoppe the doubters use this as an opportunity to learn and recalibrate for the next time they weigh in on this sort of discussion.

Del walker is a clown.

 

[Sooner]

Everyone's butt has a number to give you for how much this game cost.

 

[adamsapple]

It was well known with pre orders and the beta that it was a flop

Which has no bearing on the reported budget of the game.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Which has no bearing on the reported budget of the game.

It has a very large bearing on the marketing spend, brother

 

[diffusionx]

It’s only not surprising if you’re Call of Duty or Spider Man

For a game that has a flopped beta, flopped launch, there was no marketing. Sony did not actively advertise this game much at all.

It was well known with pre orders and the beta that it was a flop

Anyone saying the marketing budget equaled dev cost in this example by comparing it to God of War is being laughable disingenuous

It’s pretty obvious that the delay is doing a lot of the legwork here. Which is exactly what Colin said.

I’ll say what I said in the other threads, you bring in a boatload of emergency consultants and contractors and you could easily be spending 5x-10x what you would otherwise. And it seems that is what happened here.

 

[StueyDuck]

Like Helldivers 2?

ummm...
im sure somewhere in some strange land that was a sick burn.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

It’s pretty obvious that the delay is doing a lot of the legwork here. Which is exactly what Colin said.

I’ll say what I said in the other threads, you bring in a boatload of emergency consultants and contractors and you could easily be spending 5x-10x what you would otherwise. And it seems that is what happened here.

Show the receipts then that the last 8 months cost more than the first 5 years

 

[Thebonehead]

A lot of people here seem to think Firewalk was spun up by it's employees.

It wasn't. It was a subsidiary of Probably Monsters Inc .

Now this is an interesting company headed by Ex Bungie Harold Ryan which acts as an incubator for studios. They have a few currently creating games

They've had around $450m in series a funding since 2019. Do you think their investors wanted that subsidiary to go for free? I've got a concord to sell you if you do

 

[MiguelItUp]

That's a ton of money to just burn and waste. At least people were paid I guess, lol. Shame about their jobs though. But this all sounds about right, if you were to add all of the spending up (marketing + acquisition + and then some) it would most certainly equate 400+ mill.

Why are people being so defensive about them burning money? That's so bizarre to me, lmao.

 

[ikbalCO]

This should cost someone their job.

I dont know who but there should be post or an update about some big heads departure.

2 last of us budget for a game with the worst designed characters in creative desingn history.

Disaster

 

[clarky]

This should cost someone their job.

I dont know who but there should be post or an update about some big heads departure.

2 last of us budget for a game with the worst designed characters in creative desingn history.

Disaster

It just cost 170 jobs.

 

[WhamBamThankYouMaam]

So probably $300-400M with marketing and all the logistics.

Should have invested in Gaf. Gaf Studios would have made a better game and it would have sold at least 15K.

Dudebro as a service?

 

[kruis]

How much of Sony's money has Hermen Hulst wasted by now? How many studios closed? How many games canceled after multiple years of development?

Naughty Dog worked on The Last of Us 2 multiplayer for a couple of years and I'd assume that was a big team considering their ambitions. It was probably a good idea to cancel it, but that project alone must have cost at least $100 million dollars if not more. All those failures and closures are going to add up ...

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The game did not enter production until 2022, if they earmarked $200M, it was projected to be spent until completion. It may have ran over, but if so and to what extent is unknown.

Its hard to get anywhere close to $400M on dev costs alone



What other stuff? The primary cost is dev. They hardly marketed the game

Who knew marketing, cost to buy the studio, and any other costs associated with Firewalk are $0.

$400M people were right. They just had the splits wrong.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Who knew marketing, cost to buy the studio, and any other costs associated with Firewalk are $0.

$400M people were right. They just had the splits wrong.

Cost to buy the studio was not included in Colin’s $400m number, as I’ve said multiple times already

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

How much of Sony's money has Hermen Hulst wasted by now? How many studios closed? How many games canceled after multiple years of development?

Naughty Dog worked on The Last of Us 2 multiplayer for a couple of years and I'd assume that was a big team considering their ambitions. It was probably a good idea to cancel it, but that project alone must have cost at least $100 million dollars if not more. All those failures and closures are going to add up ...

Helldivers 2 generated more profit than concord’s failure, but let’s roast Hermen even though he likely had little choice in pushing GaaS aggressively. Those choices were made years ago above his pay grade.

 

[mckmas8808]

So probably $300-400M with marketing and all the logistics.

Should have invested in Gaf. Gaf Studios would have made a better game and it would have sold at least 15K.

Yeah this makes more sense as to what Colin heard. Clearly the game of telephone was a little off. I knew there's no way the game itself cost $400 million.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Cost to buy the studio was not included in Colin’s $400m number, as I’ve said multiple times already

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm just saying the $400M number that came up a month ago looks about right after all.

Way more than you estimated. Dev costs alone look like $200M. Then add on anything else.

Youre desperately trying to invalidate the $200M dev costs by bringing up $400M+.

 

[buenoblue]

They probably sourced Collin that's how "journalism" works now lol

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm just saying the $400M number that came up a month ago looks about right after all.

Way more than you estimated. Dev costs alone look like $200M. Then add on anything else.

Youre desperately trying to invalidate the $200M dev costs by bringing up $400M+.

How is a $400M figure accurate when we have nothing but two source reports claiming only $200m for some portion of total cost?

No, it’s not accurate. Until we have concrete evidence of final write off costs this is all wild speculation.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

So probably $300-400M with marketing and all the logistics.

Should have invested in Gaf. Gaf Studios would have made a better game and it would have sold at least 15K.

Looks about right to me. People forget Sony bought out Insomniac 5 years ago for $229M alone. And Firewalk already had a game in progress and it's their own IP. So it's not going to be dirt cheap to buy them in 2023. Probably cost them $50-100M alone. Given how wild Sony has been for years buying up music for billions, Bungie for $3.6B, Firewalk, Haven, and any other studio I missed, dont be surprised they amped up on purchase price because they really wanted it.

 

[The artful mincer]

I'm just gonna remind everyone that Miles Morales marketing budget was just $25 million.

I will add nothing else and leave

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

And Firewalk already had a game in progress and it's their own IP. So it's not going to be dirt cheap to buy them in 2023.

Yes it would have been much cheaper than IG

They have zero IP value and a much smaller studio headcount/assets

Goddamn some of you really want to inflate this cost as much as possible - like it cost as much as IG to buy and the marketing spend was call of duty levels

Use some logic

 

[DrFigs]

Hope Hermen finds out he is fired just like this, a company wide email

 

[simpatico]

Concord was all over NFL.com leading up to its launch. Big giant full site wallpaper on at least one day, but banners and whatnot for what seemed like weeks. Enough for people in one of my football groups to post about being annoyed by it. No clue why Sony thought that was going to be where they'd find the audience.

Herman is probably balls deep negotiating and planning a deal to do a Horizon x Rabbids game with Ubisoft. Too distracted to close the studio sooner. No clue what those 170 people were doing for the past two months.

 

[CLW]

Collin was right!

 

[Katatonic]

I wonder what the full story behind all this is. If they invested so much, it makes even less sense that they shut down Concord and closed the studio so fast.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I wonder what the full story behind all this is. If they invested so much, it makes even less sense that they shut down Concord and closed the studio so fast.

They probably decided that the talent at Firewalk was better being integrated into studios like Bungie than to keep the office open.

Don’t want to get into a sunk cost fallacy.

 

[decisions]

lol now will any of the clowns who pretended to have more insider info than Colin apologize for patronizing him after his leak? Probably not, they will just pretend they never arrogantly spouted lies for internet clout.

 

[IntentionalPun]

lol now will any of the clowns who pretended to have more insider info than Colin apologize for patronizing him after his leak? Probably not, they will just pretend they never arrogantly spouted lies for internet clout.

Why would they?

Game budget's don't include the purchase price of companies, and they don't include marketing.

In fact plenty of people were pointing out specifically that to get anywhere near that amount the person must be including things that you shouldn't be in a game's budget.

In the end it's all semantics though.. Sony blew a ton of money on Firewalk and Concord, and at this point.., any money invested in FIrewalk only went to Concord lol

edit: In fact, IIRC, Colin outright said that $400 million didn't include the cost to buy the company..so unless they went over budget by another $200 million, the game dev alone wasn't $400 million

 

[mrqs]

Once again, Colin was right.

 

[Danjin44]

Why these GaaS games cost this much to make? Is it worth it?

 

[MikeM]

So probably $300-400M with marketing and all the logistics.

Should have invested in Gaf. Gaf Studios would have made a better game and it would have sold at least 15K.

Can you imagine the game though?

“Big Titty Mommy Milkers with Guns”
“DEI Destroyers”
“Green Rat Extermination”

Sony should fund it for science just to see what happens.

 

[marquimvfs]

For a game that has a flopped beta, flopped launch, there was no marketing. Sony did not actively advertise this game much at all...

Anyone saying the marketing budget equaled dev cost in this example by comparing it to God of War is being laughable disingenuous

I'm not bashing you, barely know you. But you are missing one thing regarding your opinion. Marketing costs include advertising, but aren't composed just by it. So, it doesn't matter if the game had small advertising, that fact alone doesn't make the marketing costs shrink. Other aspects are part of it, even physical media prints, storage and distribution, and so on. The fact that game hadn't too many commercials doesn't prove your point.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I

I'm not bashing you, barely know you. But you are missing one thing regarding your opinion. Marketing costs include advertising, but aren't composed just by it. So, it doesn't matter if the game had small advertising, that fact alone doesn't make the marketing costs shrink. Other aspects are part of it, even physical media prints, storage and distribution, and so on. The fact that game hadn't too many commercials doesn't prove your point.

Sure, but when people talk about budgets of games being approximately equal to the marketing spend, it's for massive AAAAA caliber titles.

Someone already posted above, didn't verify, that Spider-Man miles morales had a $25M marketing budget for a dev budget that was over $75M. So not all games are equal, even some that would be considered very high profile.

My point was that you're not bridging much of a gap between $200M and $400M with marketing spend especially for Concord.

 

[FF:Enhanced_Reality]

Very simple lesson here, when the public tell you that your game looks really fucking basic and they aren't going to buy it, YOU SHOULD LISTEN.

Not double down and pretend like people don't know best.

If this game didn't look like a basic rip off of guardians of the galaxy, I may well have liked it a lot more.

 

[marquimvfs]

I


Sure, but when people talk about budgets of games being approximately equal to the marketing spend, it's for massive AAAAA caliber titles.

Someone already posted above, didn't verify, that Spider-Man miles morales had a $25M marketing budget for a dev budget that was over $75M. So not all games are equal, even some that would be considered very high profile.

My point was that you're not bridging much of a gap between $200M and $400M with marketing spend especially for Concord.

Gotcha. Makes sense. I agree that it's a big extrapolation to conclude that Concord had 200M marketing and accessory expenses just because some other titles had those expenses at almost dev cost, especially when Concord itself is overly expensive at 200M.

But if receipts are shown, I wouldn't doubt it either, especially when 200M for developing is already too much, like I said.

 

[Fake]

Why these GaaS games cost this much to make? Is it worth it?

The problem with modern gaming devs is both lack of proper management and toxic positivity.

Money more wasted than was suppouse to be. Not to mention they pick the most expensive places in USA to work.

 

[SHAKEZ]

Someone who gets paid in millions to make decisions ok'd this.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Gotcha. Makes sense. I agree that it's a big extrapolation to conclude that Concord had 200M marketing and accessory expenses just because some other titles had those expenses at almost dev cost, especially when Concord itself being overly expensive at 200M. But if receipts are shown, I wouldn't doubt either, especially when 200M for developing is already too much, like I said.

It'll be interesting to see if we get numbers in the next quarterly report.

StreetsofBeige arent you an accountant? Don't they list major "write offs" like this where projects make no income and are basically fully written as a loss? Or can they obfuscate it?

Like, will there be a line item that says "LOSS DUE TO FIREWALK SHUTDOWN AND CONCORD WRITE OFF -- ($220M)" or something like that?

 

[ReBurn]

It'll be interesting to see if we get numbers in the next quarterly report.

StreetsofBeige arent you an accountant? Don't they list major "write offs" like this where projects make no income and are basically fully written as a loss? Or can they obfuscate it?

Like, will there be a line item that says "LOSS DUE TO FIREWALK SHUTDOWN AND CONCORD WRITE OFF -- ($220M)" or something like that?

I imagine there will at minimum be a writedown of any goodwill from the purchase of the studio because the value of Firewalk is now zero.

 

[SHAKEZ]

Collin was right!

Imagine now all those people defending the game and saying he was full of shit lol

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Imagine now all those people defending the game and saying he was full of shit lol

Because he was?

Why do people think he was right?

 

[mdkirby]

So 400 million

Likely higher surely?

I thought marketing budgets for big AAA games these days ran between $50-$150mil alone, this was a tentpole game, where they included it in an amazon show too, and had custom controllers etc, so I would imagine it would be the higher vs lower end?

It was delayed a year, so what, another 50mil?

The acquisition was at the height of overvaluing of game studios in 2020, this was Sony believed to be a money printing machine by a promising team of veterans. I know Sony got an absolute bargain for insomniac at $230mil ish, and Embracer got a bargain at 300mil for Crystal dynamics, but acquisition costs in 2020 were just a bit crazy, with silly money flying around in the fever pitch of rapid covid induced industry growth, I can't imagine they were cheap to buy.