Boosteroid Expects to Reach 100 Million MAUs by 2026 (Page 298)
Boosteroid submitted that it intends to reach 100 million MAUs by 2026. This is expected to be primarily due to [REDACTED].
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Hate to say this about Boosteroid but this is an absolute insane projection, Lol.
Costs of Developing AAA Games Are Skyrocketing, Including Development and Marketing, Seasonal Updates Are Also Affected (Pages 309 - 310)
A report by IDG submitted by a third party [REDACTED] dated August 2021 notes that development budgets are reaching unprecedented ranges.
The report observes that while 5 years ago most AAA console/PC releases had development budgets between $50-150 million, on average, games that are greenlit today, with a potential release in 2024-2025, are being approved for development budgets of $200 million or higher. Also, the report says that some AAA franchises like CoD have development budgets already exceeding $300 million, and the next GTA and other future tent-poles are also expected to hit $250 million or higher.
Activision is also quoted in this report saying with reference to CoD: 'We have to make so much content for Call of Duty, that we can't even lean on one lead studio anymore. Now we need almost 1.5 lead studios for each annual CoD. That kind of bandwidth pressure is forcing us to use outsourcers more and more. I don't see that changing anytime soon.'
The above figures are consistent with submissions we received from other third parties. For instance:
(a) A publisher [REDACTED] mentioned that the overall figures for development and marketing costs for major brands and their recent instalments are approximately Euro 150 million for pre-launch development costs and approximately Euro 50 million for launch marketing campaign costs.
(b) 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.
(d) 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.
(e) Finally, another publisher [REDACTED] estimated that its development costs for seasonal updates for one of its first party titles range from approximately $50 million to $65 million.
Activision Uses 15 Outsourcing/Co-development Partners for a $100 Million Game, and 20- 30 Different Partners for a Larger Game (Page 315)
Also, as noted above, a report by IDG submitted by a third party [REDACTED] quoted Activision Blizzard as saying that it has so much content for CoD that it needs almost 1.5 lead studios for each annual CoD. Further, Activision is claimed in the report to have said that it typically uses about 15 outsourcing/co-development partners for a $100 million game, and 20- 30 different partners for a larger game.
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