Starfield and FF16 were top 20 best selling games in the US.  

And if you ever wanted to be honest, Starfield wasn't a great game and was poorly optimized for PC.  FF16 hasn't been launched anywhere outside ps5. 

DESPITE all that, both are still top 20 in the US last year.  

Facts are facts son.  

Indiana Jones & The Dial of Destiny, The Flash, Ant-Man Quantumania, Aquaman were also in the top 20 box office last year too. That doesn't make those films successful (they were duds), top 20 is a very broad list. 

Spider-Man 2 is the only in the top 8. Harry Potter is a cross gen title ... so great. Just get a Spider-Man license or Harry Potter license ... like those things grow on trees. 

Top 8 seems arbitrary for a requirement.  If I didn't know better I would say you are shifting goalposts, again.

Fact: many top selling games are in big budget

Fact: you have been proven wrong, yet again 

If you're a 3rd party and you can't afford a slam dunk license like Harry Potter or Spider-Man like that but are gonna try to make a name for yourself with a graphics pushing game ... good luck. You're probably going to need it because the market is not responding to those games. 

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. 

Actually do name all of these graphics driven showcase titles that are made specifically for PS5/XBSX only or RTX 20+ series cards only that are selling huge numbers that aren't,

1.) Made by Sony and generally with a Marvel license attached to it. We know Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart broke even but from Sony's internal leaks it looks like it barely made a profit, they have pushed back a 4th game and cut the budget from what Rift Apart had, for it which indicates the game didn't make big money. Sony's own games obviously get a ton of marketing attention and bundles which a regular publisher is not going to be able to match. 

2.) Or have a unicorn license attached to them like Harry Potter. Most developers cannot afford to simply slap Spider-Man or Harry Potter or Star Wars onto their games and there's only a handful of IP like that even available to begin with. 

If we look at the games that fit into that criteria

Alan Wake II - Graphics showcase. Has won GOTY awards, has Nvidia marketing behind it, still has not broke even. 

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - Graphics showcase. Huge IP, had a marketing co-deal with Playstation. Charted one time at I believe no.6 on Circana and then dropped off the face of the earth. Further to that we find this:

Meanwhile, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which released last month, has seen 1.9 million players thus far, according to Henderson, accruing around $133 million in revenue, which is quite a step down from what developer Massive Entertainment’s previous releases managed in their early days, with The Division bringing in $330 million and The Division 2 bringing in $264 million.

So even with one of the biggest movie IPs ever attached they had underwhelming performance compared to something like ... The Division (lol).

Final Fantasy 16 + Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - Two fairly large budget next-gen games with a big name brand and FF7 itself is hugely iconic. Sales results are very disappointing here. 

Forspoken - Another big "next-gen" graphics blockbuster that Square-Enix was banking on, this one is a full on flop with a budget north of $100 million too. 

Starfield - One of the most expensive and hyped games ever made, nice graphics sure, but no where near the success of other Bethesda games, despite being their best looking game ever made by a good margin. $400 million dollar budget. Has done nothing to drive XBox hardware. 

Immortals Of Aveum - Big budget Unreal Engine 5 showcase title that's all about pushing graphics fidelity with a huge publisher (EA) behind it ... flopped. Half the dev team was laid off after release due to poor sales and just a few months ago another big chunk of the staff that was left was placed into furlough (basically an unpaid leave). Wonderful. 

Senua's Saga: HB2 - Another Unreal 5 Engine title, Microsoft paid $120 million for this studio no doubt hoping for a visual showcase that would drive XBox sales. Instead this is a total flop, Steam numbers below HiFi Rush which sold so badly it got that studio axed altogether. Lets hope Microsoft is generous and won't pull the plug on this studio so fast for the sake of the people who work there and need that paycheque. 

Gotham Knights - Very pretty game, next-gen only, not too far off from Spider-Man 2 in graphics to be honest. Huge IP (Batman) too. Has not sold huge numbers. 

I'm sure there will be graphics heavy games in the future that do sell well, but there are enough examples here to show that the modern industry is changing also and graphics are not the driving force for sales or even a reliable way to make money in the game business anymore. And it's not even like all of these games had poor reviews, the only one that really had outright terrible reviews would be Forspoken and it's not like games with poor reviews have never sold well, there are plenty of examples of games selling well without 9/10 reviews. So that can't be used as an excuse here, if people want next-gen graphics so bad, they sure as fuck aren't buying of the next-gen only games that really try to push the technology. 

I'm sure for instance Deadpool & Wolverine will do great in the future too, that doesn't mean there aren't serious problems with Hollywood movie budgets and the overemphasis on empty special effects that aren't impressing a lot of movie goers any longer. People acknowledge clearly several big budget Hollywood movies of late have bombed or underperformed, you would think on a sales website for gaming there could be some nuanced discussion beyond just "I likey graphix and needs my RAM! Gimme moar!!!!", but I guess not. 

The gaming equivalent to something like Boxofficetheory this website/forum is most certainly not. 

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 actually 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 3rd party 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. 

How is it a top end Avatar game with decent enough reviews can't even crack the top 20 here?