Prepare for some poor intern to cop the blame; due to some poorly-redacted new documents submitted by Sony as part of the ongoing Xbox Federal Trade Commission case, the confidential costs of developing The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West have been revealed.
The declaration was submitted by Sony Interactive Entertainment during the Xbox FTC case and included information regarding the development of the two major first-party Sony titles and other AAA games. However, thanks to the less-than-opaque attempt at redacting the figures associated with development costs and team sizes with what seems like a Sharpie, it was revealed that The Last of Us: Part II cost $220 million to develop, with a peak full-time team size of 200. Horizon Forbidden West, released in 2022, cost $212 million and had a team of more than 300 developers.
The document also notes just how long development work took on the games, with The Last of Us: Part II starting development as early as 2014 (the original The Last of Us was released in 2013). In a recent interview with IGN, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty said AAA games, even those with large teams of hundred, can “take…six, seven years or sometimes even longer” to develop.
The scale and cost of developing AAA game titles isn’t often made public knowledge, so this is an interesting glimpse into just how eye-wateringly expensive game development can be for big releases.
The document seems to rationalise these big-budget games, noting that “highly successful AAA games…create deep and ongoing engagement with players.” The FTC submission also argues that the competitiveness of PlayStation against Xbox is “contingent on the availability of high quality games that utilise the innovative…features of the console.”
The Sony submission notes that these figures don’t include the cost of marketing these titles, stating that “even for established franchises” global marketing costs are large, so the overall outlay for games like The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West is likely to be much, much bigger with these numbers included.
The document continues, highlighting the Call of Duty franchise as a “critical” part of the competitiveness of PlayStation, sharing that in 2021, 1 million PlayStation users spent 100% of their gaming time on Call of Duty – and a further 6 million spent 70% of their time on the game. Sony argues that should future Call of Duty releases become Microsoft exclusives, their bottom line would be heavily impacted due to the sheer number of players the franchise draws in.
In an FTC v MS/ABK deposition, PlayStation chief Jim Ryan said that, if deal closes, Sony couldn’t tell Activision about its next console
Is then asked about Sony working with Mojang (Minecraft) after MS bought them. Discussion is redacted but Ryan says it supports this concern pic.twitter.com/M86CBm3CcY
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) June 21, 2023
Sony’s fight for Call of Duty is quickly becoming pretty ugly, with Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan recently sharing in a deposition for the case that the company wouldn’t share PlayStation 6 information with Activision if it were to become a part of Xbox. “We simply could not run the risk of a company that was owned by a direct competitor having access to that information,” Ryan said, according to Axios.
The Xbox FTC case is still ongoing, and there’s already been plenty of big reveals, including attempted acquisitions and suggestions from 2019 that Microsoft could try to “spend Sony out of business.” We’ll keep you updated on any new information coming out of the case as it continues to progress.
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