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EpicRandy on 18 September 2020
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Dallinor said:
EpicRandy said:

"These games cost many millions of dollars, well over $100 million, to develop" That a gross exaggeration there's only a handful of games that have reach this figure let alone sony exclusives.
Also, what about day 1 A, AA games? no excuse for them?

But I think there's little confusion here the quote refer to streaming service and you compare with Gamepass which ain't a streaming service.

For Sony there might be a lot of investment to do to upgrade their PS Now infra to support higher resolutions and new releases which would also see a higher number of user. These investment might even be too high to justify.
Microsoft on the other end may rely on azure platforms.

If we talk more specifically about PS Plus Collection than you can quote me on this, Sony will release most of there AAA day one on it by the end of the generation. When this happen I'll buy a ps5 digital edition and subscribe to it for sure

I think you might be severely underestimating just how much development costs have increased, and how fast.

"Shawn Layden referenced PlayStation’s The Last of Us 2 – a game he oversaw – which is roughly double the length and took double the development time of its predecessor. While the former PlayStation exec did not comment on the Naughty Dog game’s budget, he referred to a common theory that development costs had doubled with every new console generation, and claimed that current-gen games had reached between $80m and $150m for most AAA games." Source.

That's for this generation (PS4, Xbox One).

"Industry research firm IDG Consulting recently said it believed that more major games publishers would explore raising the prices of their games on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, as development costs are expected to increase." 

"In 2005, a AAA developer making a top-10 title-Electronic Arts developing the next Madden, for instance- was spending somewhere between $25 million and $35 million. “But let’s say you’re a more reasonable, cost-rational development studio,” Osaki said. “Now [in 2020], for that same [top-10] title, you’re looking at development costs somewhere between $75 to $100 million. Some folks are spending $100 million to $150 million depending on what studio, what genre, what IP you’re looking at.” Source.

GT5 (10 years ago) cost Sony- $60 million. Fable Legends (2016) reportedly cost MS- $75 million.

I wouldn't be remotely surprised if Sony's big AAA games are hitting $100 million in development costs.

100M budget for development alone is still far from the norms among all AAA. I Know The Last of Us 2, is rumored to have reached this figure but cannot find any reliable info on other exclusives that did recently. But still, that kind of budget is only unlocked for new entries of an already well established, well loved, successful ip and when there's basically no risk related to the investment. Most of your source actually reflect this. 

Reliable information on the subject is scarce so there's guessing from my part but I'll argue that 30m-60m should still provide enough budget for many AAA and is probably the kind of budget you find for most new ip AAA titles and most sequel. Uncharted 4 budget was rumored to be about 50M.