Yeah, if you're COD or GTA I can see a 60 million dollar budget being justified by the all but confirmed massive sales, but to try to apply the same business model to less super-popular franchises seems crazy to me. Of course it's not going to be sustainable.

its greed, these companies want the numbers those games pull in the irony is, I doubt COD costs that much to make anyway, considering its been running on the same engine since codmw4. GTA is probably that high

This.

Such budgets are ONLY justifiable with franchises that have consistently sold enough to get a return on them. I think even $100 million isn't crazy for something like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, because both have proven time and against to make that money back with interest. COD, in particular, has been pulling in nonsense numbers like clockwork for nearly the entirety of this generation. They can spend as much as they want until that stops, as far as I'm concerned.

The real problem, as you said, is that everyone thinks they can just get that same return on investment because they're willing to put the same amount of money in. COD's success is testament to COD's popularity; I think it's a horrible measure of general market trends considering how it's such an outlier in terms of sales.