It seems Sony Interactive Entertainment paid top dollar for us to see the end of the Viking arc of God of War.
Shuhei Yoshida, once President of SIE Worldwide Studios, and currently Head of the company’s Independent Developer Initiative, let it all out in a recent interview.
As reported in Tech 4 Gamers, Shuhei revealed that it cost $ 200 million to produce God of War Ragnarok, five times the cost of its predecessor.
While some fans will definitely be pointing at the quality of the game, its graphics and performance, and the large host of features it boasts, that cost may have more to do with something that can’t be seen in the final product.
God of War Ragnarok was released four years after the release of the 2018 God Of War. That’s a relatively short time to make a 30 + hour game of God of War Ragnarok’s caliber, but that time period also happens to encapsulate the entirety of the pandemic so far.
We have seen, of course, that Santa Monica Studio proved to be up to the challenge of making this game as they wanted it. Santa Monica did originally announce voice actor Christopher Judge’s health problems led to some initial delays, but the pandemic itself also staggered its development. For those who don’t remember, it was originally scheduled to release in 2021.
Now, that $ 200 million figure brings God of War Ragnarok up to the scale of some of the most expensive video games ever produced. I’m going to make some comparisons below, based on verifiable figures as much as that’s possible.
Halo 2, in 2004, had a total production budget of $ 120 million including marketing. Adjusted for inflation, that goes up to $ 190 million today.
The first Destiny, released in 2014, had a total production budget of $ 140 million including marketing. Adjusted for inflation, that is approximately $ 180 million today.
Leaning closer to current games, though at a much higher scale, is Cyberpunk 2077. Released in 2020, it had a total production budget of $ 316 million including marketing. Adjusted for inflation, that is approximately $ 366 million today.
It’s hard to avoid that this news comes just a day after a developer roundtable, where Cyberpunk 2077’s quest director Pawel Sasko remarked that AAA RPGs were about to hit a brick wall. But, we should also think about SIE president Jim Ryan’s own statement, about wanting to expand the reach of PlayStation’s games, not only to PC, but to mobile, to maximize how many platforms their games can be on as possible.
Obviously Sony’s glibness on this matter indicates that they aren’t hesitant to talk about how expensive their projects have been getting. It’s safe to assume the upcoming Spider-Man 2, and the third Horizon game will also have much higher budgets than their predecessors as well. Sony is at the frontlines of the challenges of making expensive games, and they’re looking for solutions for it.
