Game budgets are mostly about size of dev team plus wages. So AAA games made in California will always cost much more than AAA games made in Poland or in Japan, only because of wage differences.

Reading through this thread it's hard to not imagine a AAA video game collapse in the future. These budgets are not sustainable

Cyberpunk pretty much tells the whole story - Witcher 3 cost $32 millions to make (that's just development), CP2077 cost $174 millions to develop (original version without Phantom Liberty). I think there's pretty much consensus on which one's better out of two. Both in same country, by same dev.

Budgets skyrocketed after the PS3.

Assuming a $40 net margin/copy (which is probably high but lets assume so), that would be about $8 million dollars, so they've got a ways to go before they break even against $27.5 mill.

This and also timeframe; back in the 7th gen to make a big game you'd be paying like 200 people for a year or two of work, now you're paying like 2000 people for like 6 years of work.

The calculations have already been done in the article. 

There likely about 10M+ revenue on launch.

And that was the digital only portion. We don't know how many physical copies were shipped as well. 

Nonetheless, this isn't bad for a new IP outing on launch. 

I'm interested in the game myself but I'm kinda in the middle of a bunch of games first. Feels perfect for an October game though !