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Soundwave on 12 June 2024
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Chrkeller said:
Soundwave said:

The budget debate is over anyway, we have leaked memos from Sony themselves saying they can't go over $350 million dollars or they get into a very dangerous spot and Insomniac internally stated themselves they spent 3x more on Spider-Man 2 and have doubts the consumer even cares about the difference. 

And that's *SONY* ... they have more money than any 3rd party developer, get licensing fee money, money from hardware and accessories, money from PSN subs, no 3rd party can even dream of having those extra revenue streams. Sony can afford budgets a normal 3rd party, even a high end 3rd party can't. 

$350 million is basically what they have internally said is a dead end zone. You want to argue that, you argue with them and go tell Insomniac you're an expert and companies are just being greedy. 

The leak is also the best insight you will get into how these companies operate and what they are really thinking, not bullshit PR. You wanna debate that shit that never ending budget increases don't matter and we're just going to continually keep doubling/tripling budgets every gen, you're not going to win that debate so I'll save you the trouble of even trying to start. 

A billion dollar company, who has record breaking revenue, wants even more money?!!??

Yeah, no shit genius.  Very few billion dollar companies ever say "good numbers, let us stay flat next year!!"

The only sad part is people like you who fall for these silly corporate sob stories.  

This is going to be lost on you because I don't think you can understand basic economics and this is probably way above your head, but for everyone else who might care to actually learn something, here's a factual run down on how budgeting works in video games and why Sony is telling their developers that going above 350 mill in budget even for massive budget games is getting into a very dangerous spot. 

This is from Sony's internal data leak, this is their numbers on Spider-Man 2018 which sold over 20 million copies

So we have just under 800 mill in net sales (very good). Development costs is your dev budget, COGS for people who don't know is shorthand for Cost of Goods and Services, Marketing is well marketing. 

We see that on this game Sony made minus Marvel's royalty (which is in line with what 3rd parties pay for their own licensing fee so this is actually an example you can use roughly for a non-licensed 3rd party game too) is separate from the budget. All told after everything it comes out to about $352 mill in profit, quite good no?

Now Spider-Man 2018 had a 128 mill dev budget (says so right there), Spider-Man 2 on PS5 had a $300 million dev budget. If games get into the $350-$400 range you can see why Sony is worried. A 350 mill budget on this same game would take a massive chunk out of that 352 mill profit, it more than halves it. 

It's not bullshit, if the dev cost becomes $350-$400 mill almost their entire profit margin with sales in the 20 million sales range get wiped out. 

Sony is not greedy when they are internally telling their devs that going over $350 million is a massive problem. They are 100% correct in telling their developers they can't go over $350-$380 mill because it makes their games barely profitable even at a 20 mill sell range. 

You can also probably understand now with Starfield at $400 million why even Microsoft with sales probably nowhere close to Spider-Man 2018 got whiff of that Starfield stink and went running to "test" PS5 ports. They almost certainly lost a shit ton of money and have no where close to 20 million sold like Spider-Man does.

Last edited by Soundwave - on 12 June 2024