When talking about Sony’s first party studios, it’s arguable that the first to spring to mind would be Naughty Dog. Under the ownership of Sony, Naughty Dog has unleashed two massive franchises in the gaming landscape, beginning with Uncharted on the PlayStation 3 on 19th November 2007 and The Last of Us which first released on the PlayStation 3 14th June 2013.
Uncharted is the game that saw the biggest departure in terms of output for Naughty Dog. Prior to development on Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Naughty Dog released four Jak & Daxter games, their first games under ownership of Sony with Crash Bandicoot for the original PlayStation being the game series that really put them on the map.
Co-founder of Naughty Dog, Andrew Gavin has talked about the reasoning behind the sale of the developer to Sony way back in 2001. You can view it here on LinkedIn. It all comes down to costs. With each generation of hardware comes an increase to the development costs. This isn’t news to anyone, but perhaps what is interesting is the pace at which triple A games soared in development costs.
According to Andrew Gavin, the cost of developing Crash Bandicoot for the PlayStation was $1.6 million, a considerable jump compared to the games at the beginning of the 1990s which could range in several hundred thousand. However what is alarming is that the first Jak and Daxter, released for the PlayStation 2 on 4th December 2001, cost $15 million and by Jak 3 for the PlayStation 2 on 9th November 2004, development costs had risen to $50 million and over. The most recent brand new game from Naughty Dog was The Last of Us Part II for the PlayStation 4 and its cost was $220 million.
Development costs nowadays is at such a point that many in the industry as well as gaming public are beginning to question the value in such huge budget risks. The time for the average game to be produced can be upwards of six years, and this along with ballooning costs and resources required is only going to continue upwards.
A recent report has shown how the Call of Duty franchise has seen costs increase over a fairly short period of time. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 from 2015 cost $450 million, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare from 2019 cost $640 million and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million.
There will need to be some serious and likely difficult decisions over the coming years regarding both the investment needed to keep financing an ever increasing budget, as well as the time required for triple A games. Within the next five years we are likely to be entering a new generation of consoles from both Sony and Microsoft which will result in more insane jumps in development costs. Something will have to give. It’s a question of what.
