Sony will never match day and date Gamepass 1st party games with those type of budgets, even Wolverine costs over 300 Million and they expect only 85 million in profits. When they said that the Gamepass model was unsustainable i guess they were talking about themselves. 

This edition of Grifball looks fantastic!!! I love the additions of things like moving pillars and even enemy AI to change up the mode. Hopefully 343 is paying attention to these Forge creations when adding the official mode the game. 

We thought it was insane how nearly every major game Sony was releasing was costing over $200 million to make, but deeper into the PS5 gen, the budgets are already reaching $300 million!!! There's no way that can be sustainable. Just a single disappointing, not even a flop, release could send shockwaves through PlayStation. 

Profit margins be damned!

I think it's worth mentioning that nobody at XGS is doing licensed IP, only Bethesda is, I feel like studios inside of XGS rather work on their own IP, like Double Fine for example who always instantly shoot down working on Banjo because they'd preferred to do their own stuff, 14 studios inside of XGS and none are working on licensed IP, 7 studios inside of Bethesda and two are working on licensed IP with a 3rd slightly rumoured.

Not sure if Matt Booty is against licensed IP or not either but who knows.

I do question now if Indiana Jones makes more financial sense than Wolfenstein 3, Lol. Spider-Man is the biggest Marvel IP by far so I wouldn't expect Indiana Jones to be on similar terms but that sheet is about X-Men which is a lesser IP than Spider-Man even but the terms for X-Men are heavily in favour of Disney, Lol.

Bethesda would have made the Indiana Jones contract when they were 3rd party, between the license to Disney and the digital cut that Xbox/PS take, Bethesda could have been agreeing to give up a large chunk of their revenue...Indiana Jones projections are 10m+ as well but I honestly doubt it would have sold that even as a fully multiplatform title.

I'd not even be surprised if Blade despite being the less popular IP sells more than Indiana Jones which would be funny given the fact that I assume Blade has much better terms than Indiana Jones does as Indiana Jones is the far bigger IP overall. Makes sense as to why Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers financially bombed Crystal Dynamics and Eidos so hard now, those Disney licenses are expensive, Lol.

Todd must have really wanted to do an Indiana Jones, I suppose, Lol. Arkane might get away with a decent contract considering Blade is a B-Tier IP (in terms of popularity) and Arkane is based in France so their employee costs will be lower than a place like California plus they aren't as big of a studio as most other AAA studios.

Now I wonder though what terms Microsoft has to sign to get Indiana Jones and Blade on Game Pass, Lmao. Also if Spider-Man or X-Men don't sell over 6m then Disney has the right to cancel the agreement with Sony and demand Sony pay them a breakup fee, I wonder what that is for Microsoft now, is it a sales target or is it a Game Pass target or is it both?

Done Yakuza 6

Would have finished it earlier but got distracted.

Onto Yakuza 7!

On the subject of AAA budgets, it definitely seems like if AAA budgets keep ballooning, the bubble will pop eventually and the AAA industry will collapse hard, something is going to have to give.

7-12 years ago $120m+ budget AAA games were rare, we would see the occasional AAA that went over that threshold, but most were coming in under that based on the few budgets we've discovered from that time frame from either official sources or industry analyst estimates:

• LA Noire (2011)- $50m development budget, unknown marketing budget
• Max Payne 3 (2012)-$105m
• Battlefield 4 (2013)- $100m
• Gears of War Judgment (2013)- $60m
• Watch Dogs (2014)- $68m development budget, unknown marketing budget
• Tomb Raider reboot (2013)- $100m
• Witcher 3 (2015)- $81m

There were some games from that timeframe that went over that $120m threshold, but they were mainly from so called AAAA studios like Rockstar or big GaaS games where post-launch GaaS support for the first couple of years was factored into the initial budget:

• GTA V (2013)- $250m
• Halo 5 (2015)- $160m
• Destiny (2014)- $140m
• Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011)- $200m+

But then look at the budgets we have discovered from the last 6 or so years, you can tell that AAA budgets have ballooned enormously on average:

• Mass Effect Andromeda (2017)- $100m
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)- $100-135m
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)- Estimates range from $370-540m for the combined development + marketing budget 
• Resident Evil 2 remake (2018)- Estimated at $100m+
• Marvel's Avengers (2019)- Estimated at $170m+
• Control (2019)- $32m development budget, unknown marketing budget
• Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)- $316m for the launch game, currently at $441m factoring in the budget of updating the game post release with patches and the expansion pack
• The Last of Us 2 (2020)- $220m
• Final Fantasy 7 Remake (2020)- $144m
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (2021)- $80m
• Horizon: Forbidden West (2022)- $212m
• Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020)- $156m
• Spider-Man 2 (2023)- $315m
• Lords of the Fallen (2023)- $66m
• Alan Wake 2 (2023)- $76m
• Wolverine (upcoming release)- Given a $305m budget
• Spider-Man 3 (upcoming release)- Given a $385m budget
• Control 2 (upcoming release)- Given a $55m development budget, up from $32m on Control 1

It's pretty noteworthy to me that the cheapest games on the list come from parts of Europe where the developer pay is lower, substantially lowering the budget. This has allowed games like Control and Alan Wake 2 from Remedy and Lords of the Fallen from CI games to have easily sustainable budgets.

Something is going to have to give, budgets are flying up, publishers raised to $70 to help compensate, but gamers were highly resistant to the increase and many are now waiting on sales/discounts as a result. Gamers don't want microtransactions or $70, understandably, development costs are ballooning. It's a recipe for disaster. Publishers are going to have to reign in these budgets and stop focusing on graphics and huge releases as much as they have been, get development team sizes and development time back under control so that these games aren't being developed by 400+ dev teams over like 5 years. Focusing more on studios located in lower cost of living areas is a good idea, you simply have to pay developers too much in these high cost of living areas where many studios are concentrated like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, and Seattle. 

I don't really understand how spider man 2 has such a huge budget. The foundation was already there, where did all this money go?