- Sucker Punch says Ghost of Yotei budget and scope are quite similar to its predecessor.
- This marks a change in PlayStation’s policy where sequels got a huge budget increase.
- It shows the shift in policies to tackle increasing budgets and the risk of failure.
Ghost of Yotei is set to release in just a couple of weeks amid all the controversy surrounding it. While most PlayStation sequels have seen a tremendous increase in budgets, their upcoming title will change the tradition.
According to Sucker Punch’s co-founder, Ghost of Yotei has a similar budget to that of Ghost of Tsushima, and it also had almost the same number of developers working on it, with the same development time.
Why it matters: Previously, we have seen that PlayStation bumps the sequel budgets of its hit titles to a ridiculous amount, but considering the financial situation and inflation, it has decided to keep the scope similar this time.
In an interview with Game File (paywalled), Brian Fleming talked about how Ghost of Yotei had a very similar development timeline to that of its predecessor. Ghost of Tsushima cost around $60 million, so the sequel also had a similar budget.
When we look at the financials and the costs, the man years, the amount of months that the team—times the size of the team—worked on it, [it’s] very, very similar, actually
– Brian Fleming
This is a huge step in a different direction, as the budgets used to be huge. For context, Marvel’s Spider-Man had a budget of $90 million, and with Spider-Man 2, it was bumped up to $300 million. Similar trends were seen with The Last of Us and Horizon.
So, on average, we saw a budget increase of over 200% with older sequels, which isn’t the case anymore. This could be because many major companies are changing their approaches and decreasing budgets.
If a game that costs $300 million fails, it costs the company a lot. While not a single-player game, we saw this when Concord failed. Since then, Sony has been more considerate about budget and its game development policies.
What are your thoughts on the Ghost of Yotei budget being almost the same as its predecessor? Let us know your opinions in the comments or join the discussion at the official Tech4Gamers Forum.
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News Reporter
Abdullah is an avid gamer who primarily plays single-player titles. If you can’t find him anywhere, he’ll probably be at his desk playing The Witcher 3 for the millionth time. When he isn’t playing games, he’s either reading or writing about them.
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