$200M before the Sony acquisition and $200M after. It’s a little hard to believe. The story seems to only be coming from Colin Moriarty right now, but I trust Jordan Middler to consider it at least reasonably plausible if he wrote it up for VGC.
UPDATE: Sources not corroborating $400M number.
https://80.lv/articles/multiple-sources-dispute-concord-s-usd400-million-budget/
This is absolute bullshit.
Firewalk, the studio that made Concord, used to be a part of a parent startup called ProbablyMonsters. Firewalk was sold to Sony last year, in April 2023.
ProbablyMonsters only had a total Series A investment of $250 million, and Firewalk was not the only studio that it was funding - it had multiple.
But let’s just say all $250mil went to Firewalk (of which is impossible because ProbablyMonsters still exists and has other studios). In order to hit this mythical $400mil figure, Sony would have had to spend $150mil in ONE YEAR.
The most significant cost of making a AAA game is paying for the developers, of which Firewalk has about 160 of them. In what world would Sony pay over 900k per developer to see Concord through to the finish line?
The more likely figure that each developer got paid on average is about 180k, that’s still just short of 30mil for 1 year.
Firewalk didn’t start with 160, so you can’t extrapolate that cost to its 8 years of development.
Don’t believe this horseshit.
They also outsourced a ton to make CG cut-scenes and such, which can rack up a bill very quickly. ProbablyMonsters was an incubator, not a parent company, as I understand it. I too am skeptical of there only being one source in Colin Moriarty, but I trust Jordan Middler to vet the story, even if he isn’t corroborating it, and as others have mentioned, the credits are literally over an hour long, which is evidence that supports the high costs.
I used to work at ProbablyMonsters. It’s most definitely not an incubator.
If you were in such a role that you could correct anything in the story, I’d encourage you to reach out to a journalist and do so.
Unless someone from Sony AND ProbablyMonsters confirms the real numbers, I would have nothing concrete to add to the validity of the claims, other than I think it’s bullshit.
But even if I did have this bulletproof info, why would I do what you suggest? So that games journalism can continue to beat a dead horse?
News like this doesn’t do the industry and the people who work in it any favors other than to serve the masturbatory curiosity of people who claim “I can’t believe they spent this much on a game that was clearly going to fail!”
All this kind of reporting does is continue to pull money away from investors who are willing to take chances on new teams making new games (regardless of how derivative they might seem), and cause anguish for the passionate developers who poured their lives into what they believed would have succeeded.
The games industry is in absolute shambles now thanks to years of psychopathic ravaging from large corporations with milking profits, studio shutdowns and layoffs.
Contributing to unconstructive reporting will only worsen it, and I would instead encourage you to ignore news like this.
why would I do what you suggest? So that games journalism can continue to beat a dead horse?
Because the truth is worth knowing, and it sucks that this stuff is obfuscated the way it is compared to something like the movie industry. If true, I’d call it constructive reporting if the message becomes clear that this is an example of what’s ravaging the industry; trend chasing with absurd amounts of money designed to extract some mythical amount of money from people rather than building good products on sane budgets that keep people employed. But the point is moot if you not only don’t agree but also aren’t in a position to refute it.
Imagine if even a quarter of Concord’s budget had gone to efforts on PSVR2…
That’s rough, buddy
You’re telling me this cost more to develop than GTA V ?
Sony apparently saw this as their “Star Wars moment”, and went all in. Apparently there was also a culture of “toxic positivity” inside the studio where people became too reluctant to actually criticize anything. Sony probably heard nothing but enthusiasm.
It didn’t cost 400 million. There’s no way a game like this can cost more than something like The Last of Us 2.
The credits roll is like legit an hour and a half long. Id believe it.
Yeah it seems like the source is a podcast saying a number like after talking with a staff member of concord. I would have thought that people below executive/finance suite wouldn’t have that information. Not sure if they talked to someone in there but $400 million is just a bit steep.
Not impossible with tech salaries being what they are though, maybe it includes the buyout of the entire studio by Sony in that number though.
Colin said in the clip that it doesn’t include the cost of the buyout.
…on what?
Just heard the story. Apparently it cost 200m by the point they presented the alpha and it was absolute crap. So Sony put another 200m into outsourcing the work asap to fix it.
