Otter said:
I believe Ghost of Yotei figure is it's production cost alone whereas James Bond includes marketing etc. 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 |
There is no concrete evidence that games with setpieces inherently cost more to develop than larger open world games. They would logically only cost (a lot) more if the content and world size are similar.
Ghost of Tsushima which came out in 2020 didn't cost more to develop than Yotei even though it was a new IP. Sequels still take time and can cost a fortune to make. Tears of the Kingdom with a crap load recycling took 5-6 years to develop, coz all these new content and systems required a lot of time and resources. Ragnarok (sequel) cost 4-5x to make than GoW 2018 (which may as well be a new IP in terms of design). FF7 Rebirth didn't recycle the map of Remake, and it only needed just over 3 years. It's a feat alright.
I get it though, there is a lot we know nothing about and it's impossible to make a like for like comparison. TotK's team for example may have worked on many other projects vs FF7's team being more laser-focused on Rebirth immediately after Intertgrade's production ended, and on Revelation immediately after Rebirth.
Good to know marketing was included in the 007 budget, but it does seem like they have to pay royalties for every copy sold.
