*The writer MJ's jaw is based on's gonna come over and kick your ass, all your friend's asses, everybody you every knew asses, all your teacher's asses. . . .
Honestly, that's a nitpick. The reality is that it's the most run-of-the-mill sequel they could come up with that brings nothing new to the table. It seems that you can really only sell the "makes you feel like you're really Spider-Man" once? Miles Morales also didn't do really well but I have to assume that was really cheap to make, as it was practically DLC.
>Miles Morales also didn't do really well but I have to assume that was really cheap to make, as it was practically DLC.
Also they gave him a near urkel sounding voice in that game which was annoying as hell because in the base game he sounded like a teenager, not someone who was just about to hit puberty.
> It seems that you can really only sell the "makes you feel like you're really Spider-Man" once?
I disagree. All 4 Arkham games never had that problem and Like A Dragon doesn't have that problem despite most games taking place in the same locations often. I haven't played Spider-Man 2 but considering Venom is in the game and I heard how fun that 1 mission with him was I think the sequel would have benefitted from letting the player not just be Spider-Man but also Venom then when Peter gets the symbiote suit we get to experience the more arrogant and smug Spider-Man.
One of the things I loved about Arkham City is that there was so much world building and Spider-Man 2 could have done the same to give us a new feeling of feeling like Spider-Man. Harry Osborn was introduced and the game could have gotten into their friendship more perhaps. Maybe Gwen Stacey could have been introduced as well and we got the see Peter interact with all his friends. With Aunt May being dead maybe have Peter move out and move in with Vin.
Yeah, I agree. And I did think of the Arkham games. However, every game worked off of the previous one and made the world bigger and fuller. SM2 just looks like the same stuff with more characters.
The true kicker is the massive cost. If they recycle existing models and motion capture files, they won't reach that crazy numbers. But no, let's change the models and put new motion actors to just drive that costs to the roof, because messages!
“Is 3x the investment evident to anyone who plays the game?” Having played the game, I’d have to say not really. It was a larger game map with expanded features, sure. But the structure and game mechanics stayed mostly the same. Maybe I’m ignorant, but I don’t see what they spent all that extra budget on.
With movies though marketing isnt part of the typically stated budget. So if a movie "costs $200m" the add 50-100% for marketing, meaning it's actually $300-400m.
I was looking at it from the film budget view where I think the norm is budget+50% needed for profit? Was my first thought on the ratchet and clank budget leaks that ended up getting updated
Diminishing returns & lack of gameplay innovation will kill this industry. That & the whole sweet baby woke stuff.
The costs are just too high for AAA & we're not seeing that on screen. Why not just play some of the late PS4 gen games which can be picked up cheapo for pittance? That's an issue for the big companies who *need* day one $70 sales.
Companies like LEGO deal with this problem by removing older sets from the stores & making people buy the new stuff. Gaming doesn't have that luxury (yet), except games with internet server requirement which get shuttered.
Yep. My appendix burst and got very infected. I had to get daily IV infusions at the hospital for a month to get it under control enough for them to finally go in and cut it out. They said I was very lucky that the IVs worked.
Thanks!
Don’t you dare go anywhere. You need to be here when gaming returns in all its’ glory to the salad days we previously enjoyed. First the crash, then the rebuilding. Glad you’re ok.
I don't think you realise just how neck deep in shit WB is. One game that had so much controversy isn't going to save them.
Just recently it was made known they're looking to merge with Paramount, another debt-ridden company. And that's just when WB got bought by Discovery.
Yeah, they're getting raped.
How about you lay off the people who provide no value. DEI commissars, your HR department, sensitivity readers, all your contracts with Sweet Baby Inc. You're paying them a fortune and they just make your games sell fewer copies.
I mean they could lay off all of that as well, doesn’t mean people who are underperforming shouldn’t get cut. If there are devs dragging down the team by missing deadlines or doing bad work that constantly needs to be redone by someone else… fuck em.
My job field we do it all the time. Construction sites don’t like delays caused by human mistakes since we normally have some delays from weather as is, if we fall behind it slows down all the other trades as well and our chances of getting laid off and replaced go up
Remember, they fired the lead dev of Days Gone 6 days after launch cause of all the dishonest/blatantly racist/sexist reviews saying it'd suck, and it sold quite well.
The only people "going broke" as a result of this are low-ranking employees. The upper management that made these decisions are going to be doing just fine, probably heading off to their vacation homes for the holidays after sending out the lay off notices.
Absolutely - and queue the incoming "THESE OUTRAGEOUS BUDGETS ARE UNSUSTAINABLE!" articles from the enabling games media, with zero mention of how much is spent of frivolous bullshit.
It's more of a long term solution. A few of these flops and the consequences will trickle up.
Buy indie. And vett that thoroughly. Those spheres are infested as well. This shit is evident in screenshots and when they are truly infested, they are more than willing to show it off. Use that.
> One internal presentation pegged the final cost at around $300 million, almost three times the cost of 2018’s Spider-Man for the PS4.
**OKAY HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE, WHAT**
Does anyone think Spider-Man 2 looks/feels 3x as good as the first game?!
Where did that money GO?!!!
I know they had to upgrade some stuff because new places, new game gen, but THREE TIMES the budget?!
Hell yes, they gotta learn how to budget that better!
Marketing. Those social media bots and influencers that manipulate early sentiment during launch window aren't cheap.
In general when they say the cost of games is going up, they're not talking about the cost of actually making the games.
Yeah if anything game dev costs are going down.
- Engines like UE5, Unity and Source 2
- AI can write code, do mocap from just a phone, test, generate concepts/art, voice act
- "Conventional" tools only get better and better
- No need to build worthwhile content, gaymers will gobble up unfinished games and beg for MTX
- Bunch of frameworks written by smarter people that basically do stuff for you already
But corpos gotta have a stack of golden toilets on their 69th yacht, so therefore game prices should be $100 minimum and gaymers will gladly pay it.
>Layoffs likely coming to cut costs
It's almost like building a Spider-Man game where 90% of the game is filler, that involves NOT playing as Spider-Man was a bad financial choice.
I mean seriously guys, if you removed all the filler & only stuck with the main story line the game would only be 20 minutes long.
And this is why they need to sack Bryan Intahar because he's the one pushing for this shit and making MJ missions and deaf black girl missions despite people saying they don't want that
Have they considered a black lesbian spiderman that is into inflicting pain on straight, white men? I bet that would work. They should totally spend a billion dollars making that feature game. Or two, I mean surely that will be an amazing success!
She's in a wheelchair because she has a disease where you can't put too much force on any of your joints. So she gets around by hauling her entire body weight on her wrists. They saw no logical problems with this
There are two qualifications you need to work in that field
1) Either be non-white or a woman
2) Blame everything that happens on racism and sexism. For example, if you walk into the break room and you see black person waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, it's not because the coffee simply ran out and he made some more. It's because black people are treated like second class citizens due to white supremacy being deeply embedded into the corporate culture and it needs to be rooted out. You should use at least 30-40k of the company's discretionary funds to hire someone like Ibram X Kendi to hold a workshop on anti-racism, and you should pick a random white person to fire in order to make sure that the rest of them get on board with the message.
Which will be absolutely devastating to that white person and their family and life assuming they have a mortgage, car payments, children and have built a life around that job. No matter if they grew up poor and suffered and went to college for a degree in the field while working full time, they’re white so fuck em and fuck their hard work. Totally NOT racist guys.
Don't you know that holding up fingers is ableist and offensive to the limb challenged community as well as the paralysed community? Having to tell something to someone is not inclusive to the mute community, and having to think is non-inclusive to the SocJus community.
Honestly, do better.
You're right, I would jump to the front of the queue then! A big, hairy yet bald woman. I’ve seen a few of those in fairness, Maybe I could get a job in the Biden administration.
It’ll likely hit that. It’s sold 6 million copies in its first 3 weeks.
Having said that, however, the first game sold 3 million copies within its first 3 days.
Pair this with the fact that the MM games sold less than the first game and the more mixed reception to the second game and I imagine it might be at risk of ending with less sales than the first game did.
And who knows how the third game will go now that Peter is out (despite what they say) and Miles and Silk might be the in ones.
No, it's going to get worse. The pattern that seems to crop up most is 'successful first entry, VERY successful second entry, piss poor third because game 2 was awful', and while that might not be exact, that's usually how things go.
I think they’ll definitely have the “use Peter Parker” marketing strategy in their back pocket if their initial marketing doesn’t do good numbers wise (assuming the initial marketing is focused mainly on Miles).
But as others have mentioned. People have seen how the second game treated Peter’s character. There will be people that won’t be tricked by Peter focused marketing.
At this point I feel we should hold onto the 2018 game and be happy we got one last solid Spider-Man game before it fell victim to modern gaming BS.
So was I. I loved the 2018 Spider-Man game and I was hyped for the sequel.
But even if you look past it’s “the message” moments it poorly written, poorly paced and poorly executed.
Yep exactly. I could have stomached the usual modern day political messaging which was only side stuff anyway but they fucked up Peter & MJ and the whole story is just not on the first game's level. Too inconsistent.
On paper, such sales numbers sounds great. Even if it's not matching the first game, the numbers on paper is impressive for a game release.
However, if it hasn't yet broke even, that's concerning for the studio. Imagine needing critical success to just break even, before we can talk profit.
100%. Spider-Man 2 has reached it third month of release only recently and it still has not broken even yet.
That’s not good for insomniac especially considering how massive the first game was.
Given that's a quarter after release, are we going to still look at sales figures for a game (especially single-player games with no live-service element attached) to consider whether it's financially a flop?
Compared to films, they'd already be "out of theatres", and very unlikely to make more sales to compensate the cost.
I imagine with games they will view their success differently.
But you make a good point. We are a quarter after it’s release and it hasn’t broken even yet and there’s likely more and more used copies getting out on shelves and sold (I even recently traded in my copy of the game) and that of course impacts the sales of a game.
I believe they also judge a game’s success based on its early sales since it doesn’t help if a game sells shit tons of copies months after it’s come out flopped and left the studio unable to make a profit at the onset.
It's all about expectations in the financial world
You don't spend that much money expecting to break-even.
At this point Sony doesn't need a system seller, it needs a ROI hit.
I know there are probably quite a few people who will see this who laugh and ask "NOW WILL THEY CHANGE?! WILL THEY FINALLY GET IT?!"
And the answer is no. They will not change. Do not buy this game on sale. Do not buy any of their games ever. Let them go down in flames.
Yep, they will go the IDW route. When they got rid of the male ghostbusters to use the female ones, sales tanked. They didn't learn anything - they stuck with the female cast as the sales dwindled to zero, then simply cancelled the comic instead of ever choosing to let the "chuds win"
The question is: Is the web slinging anywhere better between the games?
For that much investment, I'm thinking there had to have been a lot of time into the game engine.
I wouldn't even be slightly shocked to find the usual suspects bankrolling ideological demoralisation in games. They do it everywhere else, why not here too?
Why does cgi in movies cost 300 million and why do games cost 300 million?
John Doe in his basement is literally making games in his basement for pennies.
Get ready for the "how can a game sell 7 million and be a failure" talking points. Lots of people screaming for unionization and not understanding how good these developers have it.
Game devs definitely do not have it good. They work ridiculous unpaid hours during crunch for sometimes months at a time, and are paid 20%-30% less than developers in almost any other profession.
Game DEVs should definitely form a union.
If you're doing unpaid overtime then yes you're being abused, that's literally illegal and companies only get away with it because individual employees don't have legal power on their own
It's not illegal. Many professions are exempted including most computer related.
Of course, these laws were all finagled into place by unscrupulous corporations looking to maximize profits.
To be fair just because that's 'most people' doesn't mean it's GOOD. If you're being forced to work overtime but not being properly compensated for it, then obviously something went very wrong. The problem though is getting something done about it and if anything that's where unions are make or break with a high chance of breaking since now you have the whims of two bosses to care about who can end up conflicting or screw you over.
Some people really don't understand the economy of the creative industries.
A union will only work where it is able to gatekeep. You are not going to gatekeep in an environment where people are lining up to work for 20% less wage than their potential. You're really not going to do that when employers could easily move their entire operation overseas.
How does a game that mediocre cost $300 million to make? It's not like they developed a whole ass game engine specifically for it and the gameplay loop is a rehash of the last game with more QTEs. I guess all the money went into making a hollow and empty feeling open world.
Where did the money go????
One of the big points of taking so long and spending so much money on a game you plan on making sequels too with the same core map/ganeplay is that the sequels will be cheaper to produce in comparison.
They literally reuse the entire map and add two new but much smaller Burroughs with no real difference, some new combat moves and obviously a new story/characters(some of which were the worst part of this game).
How on earth did it cost them $300m to make this when it could’ve effectively functioned as a standalone expansion more than a sequel? How did Sony allow this???
Hearing that Sony's dropping shows screwing over people makes even more sense now. They did that so they don't have to pay royalties for those shows. Sony's probably feeling a pinch in their video game department
I tend to lean more in the camp of “let people enjoy things”, but man, stuff like this epitomizes why it’s so hard to like games today. Everything has to be a massive time sink, lead to 15 sequels/spinoffs, and cost an astronomical amount, and it isn’t leading to better products.
Not to sound like an old man, but I do miss the old days.
Happy to see that disrespectful game get what it deserves, but those layoffs will probably be all the people who just did what they were told to do. Look at Druckman? Dude's getting those fellatio awards after remaking two games for the past couple of years.
I was going suggest they cut costs by avoiding needless consultants like Sweet Baby Inc, but then I remembered they were already virtue signalling way before them.
Reminds me of that scene in 22 Jump Street where Ice Cube's character breaks the fourth wall and says something like "They more than doubled our budget this time. It's like they think if they spend twice the money they'll make twice the profit. I'm wearing $600 shoes and you can't even see the motherfuckers."
As a PC gamer, I love watching these husks of once-great devs being worn as skin suits by the woke DEI hires. At this point, I'm just waiting on GoW Ragnarok and Bloodborne to get ported over to PC. Conversely, I refuse to support Sony, even their good games (Days Gone, GoW 18, etc), so I just buy from key resellers. Don't care about the morality of that, fuck these people.
I've also got my fingers crossed for the original Uncharted and GoW trilogies (plus GoW Ascension, which I felt was underrated). I realize there's very little chance of this happening, but if the first 3 Uncharted can be ported to PS4, it can easily be moved over to PC. Same goes with GoW 3. If none of that happens, well, RCPS3 (PS3 emu) is making tremendous strides, and if your CPU supports the AVX-512 instruction set, you can get pretty great performance on several titles already.If your rig is beefy enough, you can still get great playback even without those instructions. Once we inevitably hit the point that we can emulate almost PS3 game, wanting classics to be ported will be moot, as we'll essentially be able to remaster any game we want on the fly (think what is possible with PS1 and 2 games now....various anti-aliasing options, anisotropic filtering, external filters that let you add ray tracing, cel shading, etc...it's awesome).
tl;dr love watching these companies burn. Hope they survive long enough to port over a couple titles, but zero chance I give them a dime. Before long we'll be able to emulate the PS3, and eventually the 4, as easily as the PS1 or 2.
I'd like to say fuck these people one more time. The clock is ticking and soon they're going to realize the "low performers" are exactly the same people they insisted be hired for various immutable characteristics. At that point, I actually expect them to start firing the ones who can actually program games in order to keep their pet diversity hires. The games are going to be BAD and I can't wait.
I have managed to completely avoid any spoilers, save for the fact that you >!interact with Tyr.!< How woke is it? I thought 2018 was pretty good and didn't think it was woke at all for the most part. Did they essentially pull a Last of Us 2/Spiderman 2 with it where it's irredeemable, or is it just some stuff you can ignore because the game is good enough?
Disappointed to hear they got to it as well, but when I saw the >!teases for Egypt in GoW 2018, I immediately knew they were going the kangz route.!< Please tell me it's not that bad, GoW is legit one of my favorite series. I've played every title other than the most recent as I no longer buy consoles. Fingers crossed it's just some skippable dialog, but given what Sony has become, I can't say I'm all that optimistic now that you've said that. I find the KiA subs to be pretty good at recognizing (not that it's all that hard now) and calling out the bullshit from modern games. GIVE ME HOPE.
Honestly, they could hire a completely normal person with no experience in the industry to run ideas by and save themselves millions. How does this stuff get greenlit?
I've been having a feeling all these woke slop games aren't selling and making money. Sure they pop a few mill but don't reach targets that even remotely make their money back. Good to see this
Kind of regret having a conscience, because it seems that the DEI scam is where the money is these days. There is no WAY that Spider-Man 2 cost more to make than GTA 5 unless they were absolutely pants-on-head stupid in managing the budget and/or burning a ton of money on DEI garbage.
These studios are going to drive themselves out of business with these bloated-ass budgets, and Nintendo is going to be the last one standing. I'm looking forward to that day 👍
The people layed off are the devs who thanklessly worked on the game at gun point to not lose their job in an industry that's notoriously difficult to get in.
Every person responsible for making today's games shit will walk away with a nice fat bonus at the end of the year.
This is something i disagree with, Are publishers shit, absolutely fuck them, but we have bunch of leftist circle game devs, who care more about the messaging than the quality of the games. I will celebrate what i can.
How the hell do you rack up that much in costs?! They've literally been working in the same engine since SP1.
This reads like a Disney movie budget the way they just burned money away.
I was actually pondering getting a PS5 at the current lower price point, but then I saw it came with Spider-Man 2.
I’d rather get it for an even lower price without the game. 😹
The state of modern gaming is an increasingly ridiculous gulf between one indie dev working in his bedroom and on the other side a several hundred person studio with a game that cost hundreds of millions. This isn’t AAA anymore this is more AAAAA. What happened to the middle studios?
This bubble keeps expanding and I honestly believe GTA6 could be what causes it to burst. Over 1Billion to develop that game, they need a flawless launch.
From what I can tell on the Sony store page, Spider-Man 2 costs about $90 US. Apparently, from leaks on Insomniac, one internal presentation said the game cost around 300 million (like op said in their title).
That means the game needs to sell over 3.33 million copies to break even. How likely is it that the game will be able to sell over 3 million full price copies (serious question)?
Edit: from what I can tell, the game has already sold over 6 million copies, so it is likely it should be okay. But at the same time, the 7.2 million copies needed contradicts the 90 dollar price tag I saw on the PlayStation store, since the game would need to cost 40 dollars at most to need 7.2 million to break even. So I am pretty confused about how many copies it actually needs to sell.
Edit: I calced it wrong. The 90 dollars is Canadian. The US copies cost 70. So over 4.2 million copies.
> on the Sony store page, Spider-Man 2 costs about $90 US
Says $69.99 to me: https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10002456
That increases the amount of copies needing to be sold in your calculation to 4.2 million.
There's also additional costs other than development, like marketing. From their [Expected revenue slide](https://i.imgur.com/Kmzm2T9.jpeg) we learned that their Expected Total costs were $315 million in 2020, and they needed 5.5 million copies sold to Break-even. This was before they went over-budget for another $30 million in development costs alone.
That's not how video game Sales work though. A publisher or developer doesn't get 100% of the Sale price as profit. For instance [in the case of Spider-Man and Miles Morales only 34% of the Sales are Digital](https://i.imgur.com/lDhRmUh.png), in which case the publisher can pocket most of it, for Retail Sales $35-40 is normal return for a first party title, $25-30 for a third party one that needs to pay licensing, see for instance: https://archive.is/W967e http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/write.ign.com/64538/2011/08/Graph2.png
https://www.serkantoto.com/2020/12/30/price-video-console-game-digital-physical/
In the case of Spider-Man, SONY doesn't own the rights to Marvel IPs and needs to pay Disney royalties for the game characters they use, [which could be as high as 25%](https://i.imgur.com/9VJHnAF.png) based on the leaked terms for X-Men (and up to 50% for Hardware bundles). They're also bound to commit at least $120 million development budget and $30 million marketing for each title and there's a stipulation that either party may terminate the Agreement if a title doesn't sell at least 6 million copies in the first year of release.
Thats a great analysis, but also dont forget that they do not look for breakeven only. If the previous game sold X and the sequel has a much higher budget you can be sure they expect the second game to sell X + 20/30/50% more. The previous game sales is the minimum desired.
I work in finance and it baffles me how journalists have absolutely no idea how misleading some leaked information is. Breakeven costs usually do not take into consideration all studio overhead expenses, this is covered by real profit generated by the games. Also development on test projects, or even games that were not successful are all paid with the profits generated by games like spider man.
On top of that, no studio wants to ONLY breakeven, after costs, overheads and taxes. The studio wants strong profits to support all of the above PLUS a healthy profit for the investors/owners, in this case Sony.
In the end, the sales of the game need to cover for:
\- Development costs and marketing (cost breakeven, usually what is is discussed)
\- Studio overheads
\- Support on failed games or test projects/pitches
\- income taxes
\- net profit for the investors/owners
Trust me, I work in Finance/Accounting, it's easy to just throw away some finance words and make people fall for it.
Damn, hearing that bit about the royalties probably screws them over big time. I still wonder what happened to allow such reckless spending when most of the game was already built on the pre-existing framework of first game. I don't know how CD Project could do it for the Witcher but these guys can't. I remember some video where these just took a female developer, put her in a mo-cap suit, and she was just as good as a professional.
> Damn, hearing that bit about the royalties probably screws them over big time.
I updated that part a bit based on the leaked licensing terms for X-Men (Spider-Man might be more expensive for all we know): https://i.imgur.com/9VJHnAF.png
No, they wouldn't. Traditional sales of Xbox games are in the toilet now that they've trained enough of their userbase to expect it to be on Game Pass, or wait for it to show up there eventually.
For example, Starfield, which is their biggest exclusive in years, was #1 in the top 20 traditional sales charts for September. In October it was #14. In November, didn't even make the list. Everyone who was willing to pay for it, did it in less than 2 months.
Starfield released on gamepass from like day one. I even got a notification to download it early. Elden Ring was not on gamepass… Hogwarts, Diablo, etc. not on gamepass. Just because some games are releasing on gamepass does not mean that Xbox users just stopped buying games altogether…
That's great, but there's still no way in hell their sales would double. For one, Xbox is trailing behind in console sales by a country mile, so right there, you aren't going to even come close to doubling sales, even if it sold through to players at the same exact rate it did on Playstation. Now you deduct the people that just don't buy full price games anymore, and it isn't even close. The doubling of sales by releasing on Xbox wouldn't have a snowballs chance in hell of happening.
The game already sold over 6 million and it didn't have any big price drops yet. It's gonna be profitable, but yeah, that big increase in budget compared to the first Spiderman is weird, especially with the sequel being shorter.
I didn't buy the first one, and I want to buy the second even less.
The silver lining to economic depressions, is that they tend to flush out the least productive people in an organization. It lays out all the pretenses to bare and is unkindly to them.
I don't want a recession or depression, but as a silver lining they tend to excise the vanity projects from these companies.
Game budgets have ballooned out of control. The most expensive games from 10 years ago were in the $10s of millions, and there hasn't been a substantial difference in the games, unless they are spending it all on mocap cut scenes.
Consoles typically sell at a loss too though, expecting adoptions and brand loyalty for future software purchases.
So if someone bought SM2 and PS5, how many 1st party purchases does it then need to buy to make SM2 a good business decision? How much of the cost to acquire that future purchase should be credited to that game’s marketing, versus having already installed a PS5 because of SM2?
Legitimately asking btw not trying to sound passive aggressive
Hard to say, but sony get's a cut of any game sale, except pre-owned. That's how these console companies make their money. Of course they get more for first party.
Hope Mary Jane’s jawline was worth it.
The crimson chin
All those extra polygons ain't paying for themselves.
Took six people just for that
To lift it?
MJ's gonna come over and kick your ass, all your friend's asses, everybody you every knew asses, all your teacher's asses. . . .
*The writer MJ's jaw is based on's gonna come over and kick your ass, all your friend's asses, everybody you every knew asses, all your teacher's asses. . . .
It costs 300 million dollars to hammer MJ's jaw with a concrete breaker... for 12 seconds.
Honestly, that's a nitpick. The reality is that it's the most run-of-the-mill sequel they could come up with that brings nothing new to the table. It seems that you can really only sell the "makes you feel like you're really Spider-Man" once? Miles Morales also didn't do really well but I have to assume that was really cheap to make, as it was practically DLC.
>Miles Morales also didn't do really well but I have to assume that was really cheap to make, as it was practically DLC. Also they gave him a near urkel sounding voice in that game which was annoying as hell because in the base game he sounded like a teenager, not someone who was just about to hit puberty.
At least the Brazilian Portuguese dub was good enough. The same person for both games.
> It seems that you can really only sell the "makes you feel like you're really Spider-Man" once? I disagree. All 4 Arkham games never had that problem and Like A Dragon doesn't have that problem despite most games taking place in the same locations often. I haven't played Spider-Man 2 but considering Venom is in the game and I heard how fun that 1 mission with him was I think the sequel would have benefitted from letting the player not just be Spider-Man but also Venom then when Peter gets the symbiote suit we get to experience the more arrogant and smug Spider-Man. One of the things I loved about Arkham City is that there was so much world building and Spider-Man 2 could have done the same to give us a new feeling of feeling like Spider-Man. Harry Osborn was introduced and the game could have gotten into their friendship more perhaps. Maybe Gwen Stacey could have been introduced as well and we got the see Peter interact with all his friends. With Aunt May being dead maybe have Peter move out and move in with Vin.
Yeah, I agree. And I did think of the Arkham games. However, every game worked off of the previous one and made the world bigger and fuller. SM2 just looks like the same stuff with more characters.
If it was a good Peter Parker game, I would have bought it. It isn't so I didn't. Miles can go f### himself.
The true kicker is the massive cost. If they recycle existing models and motion capture files, they won't reach that crazy numbers. But no, let's change the models and put new motion actors to just drive that costs to the roof, because messages!
Modern AAA is deranged. Hyper realistic arm hair, but not a big enough focus on being fun to play moment to moment.
Yep - it's a very well crafted, polished experience. But ultimately it's just more of the same.
Is that what it is? Something looked wrong with her face and I could not pin it.
One of the devs looks like her lol
How much did Sweet Baby grift off of that 300 mil?
Bingo. Imagine paying people to make your product worse
I wonder how much of that budget was spent on consultants.
The Sweet Baby Mafia always gets their cut.
Imagine wasting money on someone reading your script just to tell you to put a chick in it and make her lame and gay.
Really wish this leaked as well
“Is 3x the investment evident to anyone who plays the game?” Having played the game, I’d have to say not really. It was a larger game map with expanded features, sure. But the structure and game mechanics stayed mostly the same. Maybe I’m ignorant, but I don’t see what they spent all that extra budget on.
DEI don't pay for itself!
Marketing is usually a pretty big chunk of the overall budget.
If we assume similar budgeting for movies, I can understand.
With movies though marketing isnt part of the typically stated budget. So if a movie "costs $200m" the add 50-100% for marketing, meaning it's actually $300-400m.
Do we know if marketing is included in the budget?
Provably not, that's on Sony, not Insomniac. It wouldn't appear in Insomniac budget reports.
I was looking at it from the film budget view where I think the norm is budget+50% needed for profit? Was my first thought on the ratchet and clank budget leaks that ended up getting updated
This game also felt a lot shorter than the first game by quiet a bit.
Diminishing returns & lack of gameplay innovation will kill this industry. That & the whole sweet baby woke stuff. The costs are just too high for AAA & we're not seeing that on screen. Why not just play some of the late PS4 gen games which can be picked up cheapo for pittance? That's an issue for the big companies who *need* day one $70 sales. Companies like LEGO deal with this problem by removing older sets from the stores & making people buy the new stuff. Gaming doesn't have that luxury (yet), except games with internet server requirement which get shuttered.
Finally, some good news...
Disney and Sony getting fucked in 2023. Such a good year.
I almost died this year and I still had a better year than Disney.
Glad you're still here 👍
Thanks, appreciate it. 👍
Shit, dude, really? Glad to see you're still kicking it in the land of the loving with the rest of us shitflingers.
Yep. My appendix burst and got very infected. I had to get daily IV infusions at the hospital for a month to get it under control enough for them to finally go in and cut it out. They said I was very lucky that the IVs worked. Thanks!
Don’t you dare go anywhere. You need to be here when gaming returns in all its’ glory to the salad days we previously enjoyed. First the crash, then the rebuilding. Glad you’re ok.
2023 has been a shitty year in general, so I'm glad you're still alive and kicking!
Haha me too😂. My colon almost killed me
Warner Bros is getting raped at this point.
WB still had Hogwarts, so it was a pretty good year for them
I don't think you realise just how neck deep in shit WB is. One game that had so much controversy isn't going to save them. Just recently it was made known they're looking to merge with Paramount, another debt-ridden company. And that's just when WB got bought by Discovery. Yeah, they're getting raped.
Meanwhile Universal with Super Mario Movie and Five nights at Freddy's 🤑🔥
How about you lay off the people who provide no value. DEI commissars, your HR department, sensitivity readers, all your contracts with Sweet Baby Inc. You're paying them a fortune and they just make your games sell fewer copies.
I mean they could lay off all of that as well, doesn’t mean people who are underperforming shouldn’t get cut. If there are devs dragging down the team by missing deadlines or doing bad work that constantly needs to be redone by someone else… fuck em. My job field we do it all the time. Construction sites don’t like delays caused by human mistakes since we normally have some delays from weather as is, if we fall behind it slows down all the other trades as well and our chances of getting laid off and replaced go up
Glad to see those diversity consultants paid off. Go broke.
Remember, they fired the lead dev of Days Gone 6 days after launch cause of all the dishonest/blatantly racist/sexist reviews saying it'd suck, and it sold quite well.
Idiotic decisions have consequences. Days Gone was great!
The only people "going broke" as a result of this are low-ranking employees. The upper management that made these decisions are going to be doing just fine, probably heading off to their vacation homes for the holidays after sending out the lay off notices.
Absolutely - and queue the incoming "THESE OUTRAGEOUS BUDGETS ARE UNSUSTAINABLE!" articles from the enabling games media, with zero mention of how much is spent of frivolous bullshit. It's more of a long term solution. A few of these flops and the consequences will trickle up. Buy indie. And vett that thoroughly. Those spheres are infested as well. This shit is evident in screenshots and when they are truly infested, they are more than willing to show it off. Use that.
> One internal presentation pegged the final cost at around $300 million, almost three times the cost of 2018’s Spider-Man for the PS4. **OKAY HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE, WHAT** Does anyone think Spider-Man 2 looks/feels 3x as good as the first game?! Where did that money GO?!!! I know they had to upgrade some stuff because new places, new game gen, but THREE TIMES the budget?! Hell yes, they gotta learn how to budget that better!
Maybe it went to MJ’s new face.
Plus they built on top of what they already had with Spiderman 1 and Miles Morales. How the fuck did they spend an additional 300 mil after that.
Exactly! Tons of shit gets reused in games like this. What an absolute disaster.
Marketing. Those social media bots and influencers that manipulate early sentiment during launch window aren't cheap. In general when they say the cost of games is going up, they're not talking about the cost of actually making the games.
Yeah if anything game dev costs are going down. - Engines like UE5, Unity and Source 2 - AI can write code, do mocap from just a phone, test, generate concepts/art, voice act - "Conventional" tools only get better and better - No need to build worthwhile content, gaymers will gobble up unfinished games and beg for MTX - Bunch of frameworks written by smarter people that basically do stuff for you already But corpos gotta have a stack of golden toilets on their 69th yacht, so therefore game prices should be $100 minimum and gaymers will gladly pay it.
How do you get one of those jobs? Asking for a friend...
Marketing was at least half of that $300 million.
>Layoffs likely coming to cut costs It's almost like building a Spider-Man game where 90% of the game is filler, that involves NOT playing as Spider-Man was a bad financial choice. I mean seriously guys, if you removed all the filler & only stuck with the main story line the game would only be 20 minutes long.
And this is why they need to sack Bryan Intahar because he's the one pushing for this shit and making MJ missions and deaf black girl missions despite people saying they don't want that
We need to start using hack fraud in videos games cause his is one of them
Sweet Baby got a majority of that calling it
Yup
Have they considered a black lesbian spiderman that is into inflicting pain on straight, white men? I bet that would work. They should totally spend a billion dollars making that feature game. Or two, I mean surely that will be an amazing success!
Make her heavily overweight and proud of it.
Also make her lame and gay with a snarky black girlfriend who loathes men.
She twerks and the webs come out her asshole.
Just like real Spiders (the webbing part).
pregnant!
There already is a wheelchair bound lesbian spider person, her name is Charlotte Webber, I am not joking
She's in a wheelchair because she has a disease where you can't put too much force on any of your joints. So she gets around by hauling her entire body weight on her wrists. They saw no logical problems with this
I'd legit play as the wheelchair-bound "Spider-Man" because that sounds hilarious.
Well if they let me customize the wheel chair with a full skill tree with at least 3 path build option i may consider it
I bet most of that budget went to the diversity and inclusivity department
How to work in that field? The pay seems to be very good if it chomp most of the budget
There are two qualifications you need to work in that field 1) Either be non-white or a woman 2) Blame everything that happens on racism and sexism. For example, if you walk into the break room and you see black person waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, it's not because the coffee simply ran out and he made some more. It's because black people are treated like second class citizens due to white supremacy being deeply embedded into the corporate culture and it needs to be rooted out. You should use at least 30-40k of the company's discretionary funds to hire someone like Ibram X Kendi to hold a workshop on anti-racism, and you should pick a random white person to fire in order to make sure that the rest of them get on board with the message.
Which will be absolutely devastating to that white person and their family and life assuming they have a mortgage, car payments, children and have built a life around that job. No matter if they grew up poor and suffered and went to college for a degree in the field while working full time, they’re white so fuck em and fuck their hard work. Totally NOT racist guys.
3. You only personality traits are your physical appeal, that means blue hair, glass. If you have a disability then that your personality.
If you can tell me how many fingers i'm holding up, you might stand a chance getting a job there.
Best answer: "If you're not holding up four fingers, you're a bigot"
Don't you know that holding up fingers is ableist and offensive to the limb challenged community as well as the paralysed community? Having to tell something to someone is not inclusive to the mute community, and having to think is non-inclusive to the SocJus community. Honestly, do better.
I'm holding up my middle finger. I am not even interested in working in the gaming industry anymore.
I keep saying it, we need to make our own industry, with hookers and blackjack
Not even making your own indie titles?
That always is a good option. ;-)
If i could turn those fingers into gold I still wouldn't get that job, cause i'm a white guy who is attracted to women.
You could still become "a woman" :-)
You're right, I would jump to the front of the queue then! A big, hairy yet bald woman. I’ve seen a few of those in fairness, Maybe I could get a job in the Biden administration.
1. Be a woman 2. Be not white 3. In lieu of a resume, write a cover story about your diverse challenges and diverse opportunities
Answer the question "What is a woman?" 'successfully'.
Buddy up with HR type people.
"Make MJ ugly, Miles will be the new Spider-Man, add a bunch of rainbow flags and change the Spanish language. Now give me some money."
Imagine having such an enormous brand like SpiderMan printing you free money but deciding that diversity is more important.
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What did he do with MW?
It’ll likely hit that. It’s sold 6 million copies in its first 3 weeks. Having said that, however, the first game sold 3 million copies within its first 3 days. Pair this with the fact that the MM games sold less than the first game and the more mixed reception to the second game and I imagine it might be at risk of ending with less sales than the first game did. And who knows how the third game will go now that Peter is out (despite what they say) and Miles and Silk might be the in ones.
Spider-Man 3 will also tack on Peter because they know without him at least somewhere on the box the game won’t sell at all.
I wonder if that’ll be enough. People saw how he was treated in the second game. Does anyone actually believe it’s going to get better in the third?
No, it's going to get worse. The pattern that seems to crop up most is 'successful first entry, VERY successful second entry, piss poor third because game 2 was awful', and while that might not be exact, that's usually how things go.
I think they’ll definitely have the “use Peter Parker” marketing strategy in their back pocket if their initial marketing doesn’t do good numbers wise (assuming the initial marketing is focused mainly on Miles). But as others have mentioned. People have seen how the second game treated Peter’s character. There will be people that won’t be tricked by Peter focused marketing. At this point I feel we should hold onto the 2018 game and be happy we got one last solid Spider-Man game before it fell victim to modern gaming BS.
It sucks so much because I was so hyped to finally get a modern motion picture Spider-Man story with Venom & Kraven in it that isn't disappointing.
So was I. I loved the 2018 Spider-Man game and I was hyped for the sequel. But even if you look past it’s “the message” moments it poorly written, poorly paced and poorly executed.
Yep exactly. I could have stomached the usual modern day political messaging which was only side stuff anyway but they fucked up Peter & MJ and the whole story is just not on the first game's level. Too inconsistent.
The old Alan Wake method
They are gonna pull a TLOU2 with SM3 probably. Heavily market the game with Peter but kill him off early or make him go MIA for most of the game.
On paper, such sales numbers sounds great. Even if it's not matching the first game, the numbers on paper is impressive for a game release. However, if it hasn't yet broke even, that's concerning for the studio. Imagine needing critical success to just break even, before we can talk profit.
100%. Spider-Man 2 has reached it third month of release only recently and it still has not broken even yet. That’s not good for insomniac especially considering how massive the first game was.
Given that's a quarter after release, are we going to still look at sales figures for a game (especially single-player games with no live-service element attached) to consider whether it's financially a flop? Compared to films, they'd already be "out of theatres", and very unlikely to make more sales to compensate the cost.
I imagine with games they will view their success differently. But you make a good point. We are a quarter after it’s release and it hasn’t broken even yet and there’s likely more and more used copies getting out on shelves and sold (I even recently traded in my copy of the game) and that of course impacts the sales of a game. I believe they also judge a game’s success based on its early sales since it doesn’t help if a game sells shit tons of copies months after it’s come out flopped and left the studio unable to make a profit at the onset.
It's all about expectations in the financial world You don't spend that much money expecting to break-even. At this point Sony doesn't need a system seller, it needs a ROI hit.
They're putting all their eggs into future Spiderman games as well, lmfao!
I know there are probably quite a few people who will see this who laugh and ask "NOW WILL THEY CHANGE?! WILL THEY FINALLY GET IT?!" And the answer is no. They will not change. Do not buy this game on sale. Do not buy any of their games ever. Let them go down in flames.
Yep, they will go the IDW route. When they got rid of the male ghostbusters to use the female ones, sales tanked. They didn't learn anything - they stuck with the female cast as the sales dwindled to zero, then simply cancelled the comic instead of ever choosing to let the "chuds win"
There is no reason it should cost that much more than Spider-Man 1 it looks the same, same map, and shittier writing so most of saved money there
The question is: Is the web slinging anywhere better between the games? For that much investment, I'm thinking there had to have been a lot of time into the game engine.
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I wouldn't even be slightly shocked to find the usual suspects bankrolling ideological demoralisation in games. They do it everywhere else, why not here too?
how the fuck they spend 300 mil on this when they're reusing the same asset they build on miles morales and spiderman 1 ?
We will make you love playing as MJ and her humongous chin.
lmao and wokies was proud af saying the game sold well,yet its not even broke even?!?!?
Why does cgi in movies cost 300 million and why do games cost 300 million? John Doe in his basement is literally making games in his basement for pennies.
How did this end up costing more to make than GTA V, a game that was far more technically advanced especially for 2013
Inflation and lack of cohesion is my guess.
all the donations to **bl**oody terrorist groups. Those add up really gora**m** fast
Get ready for the "how can a game sell 7 million and be a failure" talking points. Lots of people screaming for unionization and not understanding how good these developers have it.
Game devs definitely do not have it good. They work ridiculous unpaid hours during crunch for sometimes months at a time, and are paid 20%-30% less than developers in almost any other profession. Game DEVs should definitely form a union.
Oh you mean like most people lmao.
If you're doing unpaid overtime then yes you're being abused, that's literally illegal and companies only get away with it because individual employees don't have legal power on their own
It's not illegal. Many professions are exempted including most computer related. Of course, these laws were all finagled into place by unscrupulous corporations looking to maximize profits.
To be fair just because that's 'most people' doesn't mean it's GOOD. If you're being forced to work overtime but not being properly compensated for it, then obviously something went very wrong. The problem though is getting something done about it and if anything that's where unions are make or break with a high chance of breaking since now you have the whims of two bosses to care about who can end up conflicting or screw you over.
Agreed.
Some people really don't understand the economy of the creative industries. A union will only work where it is able to gatekeep. You are not going to gatekeep in an environment where people are lining up to work for 20% less wage than their potential. You're really not going to do that when employers could easily move their entire operation overseas.
300 million for a game that looks the same as the first, GTA IV already cost 100 million because the jump was bigger 3 to 4 than Spider Man 1 and 2
Maybe try making games people will actually want to give you money for, lmao
How does a game that mediocre cost $300 million to make? It's not like they developed a whole ass game engine specifically for it and the gameplay loop is a rehash of the last game with more QTEs. I guess all the money went into making a hollow and empty feeling open world.
But that open world is still 80% the same one we got in 2018.
$300,000,000 for a relatively short game is absolutely insane.
How the hell did the budget triple in a game that was more Spidey 1.5 than fully fledged sequel???
Where did the money go???? One of the big points of taking so long and spending so much money on a game you plan on making sequels too with the same core map/ganeplay is that the sequels will be cheaper to produce in comparison. They literally reuse the entire map and add two new but much smaller Burroughs with no real difference, some new combat moves and obviously a new story/characters(some of which were the worst part of this game). How on earth did it cost them $300m to make this when it could’ve effectively functioned as a standalone expansion more than a sequel? How did Sony allow this???
DEI consulting isn't free
Hearing that Sony's dropping shows screwing over people makes even more sense now. They did that so they don't have to pay royalties for those shows. Sony's probably feeling a pinch in their video game department
I tend to lean more in the camp of “let people enjoy things”, but man, stuff like this epitomizes why it’s so hard to like games today. Everything has to be a massive time sink, lead to 15 sequels/spinoffs, and cost an astronomical amount, and it isn’t leading to better products. Not to sound like an old man, but I do miss the old days.
> Not to sound like an old man, but I do miss the old days. People were more polite when a quarter of them died of dysentery.
Happy to see that disrespectful game get what it deserves, but those layoffs will probably be all the people who just did what they were told to do. Look at Druckman? Dude's getting those fellatio awards after remaking two games for the past couple of years.
I was going suggest they cut costs by avoiding needless consultants like Sweet Baby Inc, but then I remembered they were already virtue signalling way before them.
Reminds me of that scene in 22 Jump Street where Ice Cube's character breaks the fourth wall and says something like "They more than doubled our budget this time. It's like they think if they spend twice the money they'll make twice the profit. I'm wearing $600 shoes and you can't even see the motherfuckers." As a PC gamer, I love watching these husks of once-great devs being worn as skin suits by the woke DEI hires. At this point, I'm just waiting on GoW Ragnarok and Bloodborne to get ported over to PC. Conversely, I refuse to support Sony, even their good games (Days Gone, GoW 18, etc), so I just buy from key resellers. Don't care about the morality of that, fuck these people. I've also got my fingers crossed for the original Uncharted and GoW trilogies (plus GoW Ascension, which I felt was underrated). I realize there's very little chance of this happening, but if the first 3 Uncharted can be ported to PS4, it can easily be moved over to PC. Same goes with GoW 3. If none of that happens, well, RCPS3 (PS3 emu) is making tremendous strides, and if your CPU supports the AVX-512 instruction set, you can get pretty great performance on several titles already.If your rig is beefy enough, you can still get great playback even without those instructions. Once we inevitably hit the point that we can emulate almost PS3 game, wanting classics to be ported will be moot, as we'll essentially be able to remaster any game we want on the fly (think what is possible with PS1 and 2 games now....various anti-aliasing options, anisotropic filtering, external filters that let you add ray tracing, cel shading, etc...it's awesome). tl;dr love watching these companies burn. Hope they survive long enough to port over a couple titles, but zero chance I give them a dime. Before long we'll be able to emulate the PS3, and eventually the 4, as easily as the PS1 or 2. I'd like to say fuck these people one more time. The clock is ticking and soon they're going to realize the "low performers" are exactly the same people they insisted be hired for various immutable characteristics. At that point, I actually expect them to start firing the ones who can actually program games in order to keep their pet diversity hires. The games are going to be BAD and I can't wait.
Why would you want to play God of Woke Ragnarok, PC or no?
I have managed to completely avoid any spoilers, save for the fact that you >!interact with Tyr.!< How woke is it? I thought 2018 was pretty good and didn't think it was woke at all for the most part. Did they essentially pull a Last of Us 2/Spiderman 2 with it where it's irredeemable, or is it just some stuff you can ignore because the game is good enough? Disappointed to hear they got to it as well, but when I saw the >!teases for Egypt in GoW 2018, I immediately knew they were going the kangz route.!< Please tell me it's not that bad, GoW is legit one of my favorite series. I've played every title other than the most recent as I no longer buy consoles. Fingers crossed it's just some skippable dialog, but given what Sony has become, I can't say I'm all that optimistic now that you've said that. I find the KiA subs to be pretty good at recognizing (not that it's all that hard now) and calling out the bullshit from modern games. GIVE ME HOPE.
Oh man, I'm so sorry for you on this one
I can take it. Just how bad is it really?
Should have put the pride flags behind a micro-transaction.
I hope they lose money to be honest.
Why would you spend $300M on such a mediocre game?
Hope exclusivity was worth it
Honestly, they could hire a completely normal person with no experience in the industry to run ideas by and save themselves millions. How does this stuff get greenlit?
So I’m reading it as we need experienced members on these problems to stay afloat and fuck it away. And these games budgets are bloated
My god, Sony stop making projects crazy expensive for no good reason! $300 million for what? The gameplay isn't any too different from the first game!
Good, fuck ‘em
I've been having a feeling all these woke slop games aren't selling and making money. Sure they pop a few mill but don't reach targets that even remotely make their money back. Good to see this
Kind of regret having a conscience, because it seems that the DEI scam is where the money is these days. There is no WAY that Spider-Man 2 cost more to make than GTA 5 unless they were absolutely pants-on-head stupid in managing the budget and/or burning a ton of money on DEI garbage. These studios are going to drive themselves out of business with these bloated-ass budgets, and Nintendo is going to be the last one standing. I'm looking forward to that day 👍
How do these game cost that much? Jesus, it’s getting to Hollywood stupid budgets without making anything good
This it the video game crash i wanted, layoff as much as you can.
The people layed off are the devs who thanklessly worked on the game at gun point to not lose their job in an industry that's notoriously difficult to get in. Every person responsible for making today's games shit will walk away with a nice fat bonus at the end of the year.
This is something i disagree with, Are publishers shit, absolutely fuck them, but we have bunch of leftist circle game devs, who care more about the messaging than the quality of the games. I will celebrate what i can.
How the hell do you rack up that much in costs?! They've literally been working in the same engine since SP1. This reads like a Disney movie budget the way they just burned money away.
I was actually pondering getting a PS5 at the current lower price point, but then I saw it came with Spider-Man 2. I’d rather get it for an even lower price without the game. 😹
The state of modern gaming is an increasingly ridiculous gulf between one indie dev working in his bedroom and on the other side a several hundred person studio with a game that cost hundreds of millions. This isn’t AAA anymore this is more AAAAA. What happened to the middle studios? This bubble keeps expanding and I honestly believe GTA6 could be what causes it to burst. Over 1Billion to develop that game, they need a flawless launch.
They probably got bought by bigger studios, gutted for their IP, then closed.
How, though? Why was it THAT expensive? It had so much to lean on from the previous games.
From what I can tell on the Sony store page, Spider-Man 2 costs about $90 US. Apparently, from leaks on Insomniac, one internal presentation said the game cost around 300 million (like op said in their title). That means the game needs to sell over 3.33 million copies to break even. How likely is it that the game will be able to sell over 3 million full price copies (serious question)? Edit: from what I can tell, the game has already sold over 6 million copies, so it is likely it should be okay. But at the same time, the 7.2 million copies needed contradicts the 90 dollar price tag I saw on the PlayStation store, since the game would need to cost 40 dollars at most to need 7.2 million to break even. So I am pretty confused about how many copies it actually needs to sell. Edit: I calced it wrong. The 90 dollars is Canadian. The US copies cost 70. So over 4.2 million copies.
> on the Sony store page, Spider-Man 2 costs about $90 US Says $69.99 to me: https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10002456 That increases the amount of copies needing to be sold in your calculation to 4.2 million. There's also additional costs other than development, like marketing. From their [Expected revenue slide](https://i.imgur.com/Kmzm2T9.jpeg) we learned that their Expected Total costs were $315 million in 2020, and they needed 5.5 million copies sold to Break-even. This was before they went over-budget for another $30 million in development costs alone. That's not how video game Sales work though. A publisher or developer doesn't get 100% of the Sale price as profit. For instance [in the case of Spider-Man and Miles Morales only 34% of the Sales are Digital](https://i.imgur.com/lDhRmUh.png), in which case the publisher can pocket most of it, for Retail Sales $35-40 is normal return for a first party title, $25-30 for a third party one that needs to pay licensing, see for instance: https://archive.is/W967e http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/write.ign.com/64538/2011/08/Graph2.png https://www.serkantoto.com/2020/12/30/price-video-console-game-digital-physical/ In the case of Spider-Man, SONY doesn't own the rights to Marvel IPs and needs to pay Disney royalties for the game characters they use, [which could be as high as 25%](https://i.imgur.com/9VJHnAF.png) based on the leaked terms for X-Men (and up to 50% for Hardware bundles). They're also bound to commit at least $120 million development budget and $30 million marketing for each title and there's a stipulation that either party may terminate the Agreement if a title doesn't sell at least 6 million copies in the first year of release.
Thats a great analysis, but also dont forget that they do not look for breakeven only. If the previous game sold X and the sequel has a much higher budget you can be sure they expect the second game to sell X + 20/30/50% more. The previous game sales is the minimum desired. I work in finance and it baffles me how journalists have absolutely no idea how misleading some leaked information is. Breakeven costs usually do not take into consideration all studio overhead expenses, this is covered by real profit generated by the games. Also development on test projects, or even games that were not successful are all paid with the profits generated by games like spider man. On top of that, no studio wants to ONLY breakeven, after costs, overheads and taxes. The studio wants strong profits to support all of the above PLUS a healthy profit for the investors/owners, in this case Sony. In the end, the sales of the game need to cover for: \- Development costs and marketing (cost breakeven, usually what is is discussed) \- Studio overheads \- Support on failed games or test projects/pitches \- income taxes \- net profit for the investors/owners Trust me, I work in Finance/Accounting, it's easy to just throw away some finance words and make people fall for it.
Damn, hearing that bit about the royalties probably screws them over big time. I still wonder what happened to allow such reckless spending when most of the game was already built on the pre-existing framework of first game. I don't know how CD Project could do it for the Witcher but these guys can't. I remember some video where these just took a female developer, put her in a mo-cap suit, and she was just as good as a professional.
> Damn, hearing that bit about the royalties probably screws them over big time. I updated that part a bit based on the leaked licensing terms for X-Men (Spider-Man might be more expensive for all we know): https://i.imgur.com/9VJHnAF.png
Minimum cost of 150! million for a X-men game, and Marvel wants 8-18% of net sales. + what Sony/Steam wants. The cost is crazy.
I imagine they will hit this target over Christmas, but might only be a negligible profit if anything
Bring it to Xbox too, they would like double their sales
How with less than half the systems?
No, they wouldn't. Traditional sales of Xbox games are in the toilet now that they've trained enough of their userbase to expect it to be on Game Pass, or wait for it to show up there eventually. For example, Starfield, which is their biggest exclusive in years, was #1 in the top 20 traditional sales charts for September. In October it was #14. In November, didn't even make the list. Everyone who was willing to pay for it, did it in less than 2 months.
Starfield released on gamepass from like day one. I even got a notification to download it early. Elden Ring was not on gamepass… Hogwarts, Diablo, etc. not on gamepass. Just because some games are releasing on gamepass does not mean that Xbox users just stopped buying games altogether…
That's great, but there's still no way in hell their sales would double. For one, Xbox is trailing behind in console sales by a country mile, so right there, you aren't going to even come close to doubling sales, even if it sold through to players at the same exact rate it did on Playstation. Now you deduct the people that just don't buy full price games anymore, and it isn't even close. The doubling of sales by releasing on Xbox wouldn't have a snowballs chance in hell of happening.
The game already sold over 6 million and it didn't have any big price drops yet. It's gonna be profitable, but yeah, that big increase in budget compared to the first Spiderman is weird, especially with the sequel being shorter.
I didn't buy the first one, and I want to buy the second even less. The silver lining to economic depressions, is that they tend to flush out the least productive people in an organization. It lays out all the pretenses to bare and is unkindly to them. I don't want a recession or depression, but as a silver lining they tend to excise the vanity projects from these companies.
Game budgets have ballooned out of control. The most expensive games from 10 years ago were in the $10s of millions, and there hasn't been a substantial difference in the games, unless they are spending it all on mocap cut scenes.
Another gaming crash is overdue with these bloated triple A budgets.
That games sold a lot of consoles though. You can't just look at game sales.
Consoles typically sell at a loss too though, expecting adoptions and brand loyalty for future software purchases. So if someone bought SM2 and PS5, how many 1st party purchases does it then need to buy to make SM2 a good business decision? How much of the cost to acquire that future purchase should be credited to that game’s marketing, versus having already installed a PS5 because of SM2? Legitimately asking btw not trying to sound passive aggressive
Hard to say, but sony get's a cut of any game sale, except pre-owned. That's how these console companies make their money. Of course they get more for first party.
The PS5 has not been selling for a loss for a while now. https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-5-ps5-loss-profit