Microsoft’s legal bout with the FTC has revealed more than a few pieces of info that all parties included would’ve likely preferred kept private, and a more recent addition to that list is Sony’s huge budgets for two of its biggest first-party releases in recent years.
Thanks to Sony displaying some poor redacting skills, documents that were meant to have their numbers blacked out were still quite readable, revealing that both Horizon Forbidden West and The Last Of Us Part II cost well over $200 million to make.
For Horizon Forbidden West, documents showed it cost about $212 million to make across five years and 300 employees, while The Last Of Us Part II cost about $220 million to make with 200 employees.
These kinds of massive budgets aren’t exactly a surprise when considering that Horizon and The Last Of Us are two of the biggest franchises under the PlayStation Studios umbrella, it’s the kind of money you’d expect Sony to be spending on these games.
Still, it shows just how costs for AAA game development have skyrocketed, and how long games like this can take to be made, from conception to launch.
Source – [The Verge]