007 First Light took 7 years and $200 million to make; sold 4m in first 3 months

[Otter]

Kyuu said:

Otter said:

You don't make a AAA licensed blockbuster with huge set pieces and expect it to sell poorly. There are not  modern examples of these games being made for much cheaper, especially not licensed ones.

Marvel Spiderman 2 was $300m to produce.

This was a calculated risk as is all games development and it's paid off brilliantly. I just think the framing of this being sold kind of blunder on IO interactive side is misjudgement on market realities 

Ghost of Yotei took about 5 years to develop and apparently only cost around $60 million. It's also a much longer game than 007 First Light.

Looking at 007 and Spider-Man 2's budgets, and EA giving FIFA the middle finger... I think licensing fees are just getting ridiculous. Naughty Dog is the joke of the decade (sorry!), Ubisoft is a mismanaged nightmare, and Santa Monica Studio is probably overspending on trivialities.

I don't think it's normal for a game of 007's scope to cost that much, and we don't even know for sure whether or not marketing and licensing are fully accounted for. Will they keep giving the IP owners a cut for every sale? We just don't know the nature of these contracts.

I believe Ghost of Yotei figure is it's production cost alone whereas James Bond includes marketing etc.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/007-first-light-officially-sells-27-million-copies-probably-at-three-million

He pushes back on previous reporting that the game had cost $200 million to make. That figure included "marketing, future [performance-related] bonuses and all those things," he says. "So it's less of an investment than that."

"We haven't completely recouped yet because there's a partnership as well, and royalties. But it's above all our dreams and expectations," he says. "It's going to be a massive, massive record for us and by all measures it's going to be a huge new success."

Beyond that Yotei is also a sequel and it's not a setpiece driven game.

For setpiece driven games entire new systems and engineering is needed to make the game work in different gameplay contexts/scenarios and simulations that last for 10-15minutes and then are never seen again. Lots of bespoke animations, simulations that aren't just part of a repeated template.

Length really isn't the major factor to be looking at. Once you've built an open world it's easy to populated it with recycled quests and hours consumed by the core gameplay loop.

Not to take anything from Yotei, it's a brilliant achievement but you are talking about games achieving very different things. DF also remarked on it that publishers have been avoiding Uncharted style single player games because they are both very hard to do but also very expensive/riske

Last edited by Otter - on 08 June 2026