AAA Game Budgets Regularly Reach $300m, New Report Claims

A new report has emerged which claims that modern AAA game budgets routinely find themselves ballooning to upwards of $300m, a staggering figure that might go some way towards explaining the current state of the industry.

According to a social media post by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, modern AAA budgets can be difficult to pinpoint thanks to a lack of transparency from publishers, but Schreier says he's "heard...$300 million or more - sometimes much more!" from certain corners of the industry.

Schreier goes on to say that these budgets mainly comprise developer salaries and overheads and "have nothing to do with executive compensation", so for once, it's not (directly, at least) the fault of the C-suite.

In a followup message, Schreier addresses suggestions that 2019's Ghost of Tsushima "cost only $60 million", tracing that rumor to an employee who "left the studio four years before the game even shipped". Chances are the game cost much, much more than that.

Although $300m sounds like a lot, it actually seems to be on the conservative end of major game project budgets. Back in January last year, it was reported that the budget for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was an eye-watering $700m, and since that game dates back to 2020, it's likely modern Call of Duty games cost much more.

Schreier's estimate for modern AAA game budgets would go some way towards explaining why so many major studios appear to be hemorrhaging employees. After all, it's not just budgets that are ballooning; games now routinely take a number of years to make, and it's easy to imagine how productions spiral as a result.

Despite these numbers, big indie hits like Edmund McMillen's Mewgenics are able to recoup their development costs after what most AAA studios would consider a mere handful of sales, so some indie games don't seem to be experiencing the same difficulties.

Numbers like this suggest to me that the industry has to change sooner or later; spending this much money on games puts unrealistic expectations on developers, which could be why some are shut down despite releasing titles that would be successful by any other metric.

Whether that happens, of course, remains to be seen. Stay tuned for more on all things industry-related.