I think another problem is the rise in YouTube and Twitter insiders, for Twitter insiders a lot of them are anonymous so there's no accountability, they get shit wrong they can just make a new account and move onto the next grift, they get shit wrong it doesn't really matter cause nobody knows who they are and they have nobody to answer to.

YouTuber Podcasters on the other hand aren't journalists so they don't have any "journalistic integrity" to worry about or any boss to answer to, they can say "I'm just a podcaster being told what I was told, don't blame me if it's wrong" and some straight up hide behind the fact that they aren't journalists to defend themselves when they get stuff wrong, Lol. 

So less accountability and a lot easier to claim you know something and get a big following, even with vague as shit "leaks"

Which makes me a little more cautious with insiders nowadays, too many grifting bullshitters.

Sure, if you say so, boss. Alas, I and many others trust Colin now whether we trust his scource is another issue. Like he said, it's unclear how much Sony put in from the initial 200 million up to alpha and looking at those CGI cutscenes, the idea was to put them out weekly so you'd imagine they'd have many stocked up and be well ahead of work on them cost they are time and labour intensive. I don't see how 400m is something unbelievable when Destiny cost 500m and they really wanted this to be as big as destiny. There's also the chance that they could have had a potential budget of 400 million and this confused the scource, money to continue service and the cutscenes and we'd not know how much they'd spent up until 1.0. Pretty sure that was the case with Destinys 500m. It's really not all that unbelievable. At any rate, 8 years dev and the idea of weekly cutscenes of that high a quality, ya 100m is waaay to low in retrospect. Laughably low. 

You can believe that Concord was Sony's most expensive title ever, almost double Horizon Forbidden West and almost $100m more expensive than Spider-Man 2. Games with huge open worlds, tons of NPCs, a lot of cinematics, a lot of motion capture and voice acting including from well-known VAs and far more technologically advanced. Then there's Concord, an undercooked GaaS, 5v5 PvP with 12 maps and 17 characters mostly filled with VAs nobody has ever heard of. Spider-Man 2 credits are 3,578, Horizon Forbidden West credits are 3,367, Concord credits are 1,972.

Things don't add up, Colin said Sony spent $200m between the Alpha and 2024 release but Concord also had $200m invested into it before then, so apparently Firewalk spent about $200m across 5 years but then blew $200m in a single year under Sony? How did they equal what they spent across 5+ years in a single year? How did they spend $200m in a single damn year? Lol. Other studios would be slaughtered for that. Concord was apparently "Herman's baby" and "The Future of PlayStation" or whatever, and yet it received next to zero marketing (Lol), Firewalk was apparently in a mess pre-acquisition but Sony still bought them and then dumped another $200m on them?

Firewalk was founded in 2018 under ProbablyMonsters who also owned Battle Barge and Cauldron Studios, PM received an investment of $18m which was spread across those 3 studios, in 2020 they received a loan for an unknown amount. In 2021 they received an investment for $200m and $31m. This money was split between all 3 studios. Cauldron cancelled their project in 2023 but the studio is still open, then there's Battle Barge and Firewalk. They had 450 employees in ProbablyMonsters and Firewalk made up 124 of those at the time.

I think there's a good chance that this "source" confused Probably Monster's investor roundups as going exclusive to Firewalk and that's where the "$200m" number is coming from when actually ProbablyMonster's owns 3 studios and it was split between all 3 (and the HQ) and if Sony threw down $200m in a single year then I reckon it would be noticeable in the quarterly reports, Lol. When Rockstar is deep in development of GTA it is noticeable because Take-Two stops profiting as a company, I'm not saying Sony wouldn't profit but we'd probably notice a dip in their FY.

I didn't believe it when it was first reported, I don't believe it even more now that Anthony Vaccaro (Naughty Dog), Tom Warren, Christopher Dring, Daniel Ahmed and Ethan Gach have all mocked/refuted it, all of these people have proven industry insider knowledge too and if it was just one it'd be a bit "he said/she said" but it's 5 vs 1, Lol. And Jason Schreier had this to say about it: "No insight I could share but I'd always be sceptical of a single source, limited info that not every dev would know, simply absurd numbers". Most professional journalists won't leak something from a "single source" they would corroborate it with multiple sources first.

Destiny's $500m was not the budget for that single game before release but what they had planned to spend on the franchise across the next 10 years, Activision's original agreement with Bungie was 10 years for multiple Destiny releases (I think 4 but it could have been 3). Clearly that plan changed because we've been stuck on Destiny 2 for years now and Bungie/Activision split.

Destiny Budget 'Nowhere Near $500m Says Bungie'

Also, Destiny easily beats Concord in terms of scope, content, etc.

How to stay motivated anyhow when working on a AAA game. I can't imagine being motivated if I don't see the fruits of my labor going live 6-7 years after the start. These long development cycles would be a reason to quit, if I was in their shoes.

The ONLY thing Ubisoft had to do was make a bog standard Assassins Greed game set in Japan to see the monies pouring in. But somehow decided to complicate things for themselves. Stepping on a rake.

Sure if you say so. Like I said, 400m could be the potential budget to keep the service going. 

It could be the budget if for some reason, we're including the acquisition costs, which would be stupid. It could have been the planned budget from creation to release to years of support, but the rumour was that it was the budget from creation to release and that's what I find unbelievable and is being disputed. I don't discount that like Destiny 1, it could have had tens of millions in planned spending after release.

Valhalla was a huge success commercially. Made over $1 Billion in just over a year, 20m players in it's first 2 years. Probably sold around 15m in 2 years. While I don't think Shadows will hit that mark and I expect it will "fail to meet expectations" for Ubisoft it's still going to sell well. I'd be surprised if it doesn't hit 10m lifetime.

My answer to the question in the title compared to the poll is different. Yes Ubisoft is in danger.

I don't know who this Youtuber's source was. But it would hardly been the CFO. The program manager on this project? Hardly, like if a program manager tells the outside world how big a budget was on a failed project they were responsible for.

There are not that many in the company that would know about the real costs. A disgrunted employee being the source can trow any money number in the air.

Anyway, a large part of my original comment was disputing Skull & Bones budget and it's more on topic, Lol. There are *ways* in which I could believe "$400M" for Concord such as if it was planned lifetime spending across the IPs entire life, or if it included acquisition costs, blah blah. But there's absolutely zero way I can make Skull & Bones $650-$850m work, Lmfao. That shit is just insane, it would make Skull & Bones one of the most expensive videogames ever, possibly the most expensive ever until GTA 6.

I'm not believing "RandomRageBaitYouTuber Number 2535" because he claims to have a source. $650-850m is utter horseshit.