The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West each cost more than $200 million to develop based on new documents submitted as part of the ongoing Xbox Federal Trade Commission case.
According to the poorly-redacted declaration submitted by Sony Interactive Entertainment, The Last of Us: Part 2 cost some $220 million to develop, with a peak headcount of some 200 full-time employees. Horizon Forbidden West, meanwhile, cost $212 million to develop and utilized more than 300 developers.
The budgets provide a rare glimpse into the world of big-budget game development, where exact numbers are often treated as closely-guarded secrets, as well as the sheer scale of AAA game development. Just recently, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty said that big-budget games now take a half-decade or more to make, with failure having the potential to ruin a studio.
In this case, the budgets seem to have been worth it. Both games sold well and were a critical part of the PlayStation’s branding as a “prestige” platform.
PlayStation justifies these costs by pointing to the way that AAA games “create deep and ongoing engagement with players.”
“A comparison of the engagement with a AAA game to the engagement with a big budget Hollywood movie is instructive to understand player loyalty to game franchises,” the document says. “While most viewers of a movie will watch it once, players of a successful multiplayer AAA game will play it constantly; while a movie might run two hours, players of a successful multiplayer AAA game may play it for hundreds of hours a year.”
The document goes on to highlight Call of Duty as a “critical” component of PlayStation’s competitiveness, describing its annual release cycle as unique among AAA games. It claims that Call of Duty is played by “tens of millions” of users on PlayStation alone.
The budgets are one more revelation that has revealed all kinds of information about Xbox’s attempted acquisitions over the year, release dates, and more. The trial, which kicked off last week, will determine whether a preliminary injunction is issued against Xbox’s Activision Blizzard merger.
IGN is in the courtroom and covering everything as it happens, so keep an eye on the site as the trial continue.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.