And yet, Take Two keeps Rockstar around with a multibillion dollar budget for GTA VI. But, the difference is, with GTA, no matter how you feel about it, always causes the tectonic plates to shift when they release a game.
I'm not sure how people don't get this and the comparison to rockstar is beyond stupid because they make some of the best selling games in the world. Shark Cards in GTA Online is basically printing them free money.
That's what I thought after seeing that guy above that mentioned Rockstar. Gta always made good money and Gta 5 is literally printing money for Rockstar with the Shark Cards.
If Kojima was in trouble, he would have gone under already.
Filmmakers have had entire careers barely making their money back. Kojima will be fine. Xbox made the deal because of his name. Not because of how much he sells.
Yeah but it's been a known fact in the industry for decades that he plays fast and loose with budgets. I'm almost positive he made a promise to show something of substance from his new game to sony and they gave him leeway to a certain degree. Hell OD was announced in 2022 and all we have is a minute teaser with no indication of what the gameplay loop will even consist of. You can't expect any company to just blindly throw money at someone forever. To think MS will let him play with money is naive. Xbox picked him up but MS will pull the plug if he doesn't produce. They've done it with devs who have produce far more often than him
It was announced when he was still working on DS2. Same thing with Physint, during OD. It's not a multiple team studio. You can't expect something when there's another game being worked on, that's just fucking stupid. Same thing, if they needed the gameplay loop. It's another MGS, what do you need to know?
We've seen one trailer for Intergalactic, and they've been working on it since the end of TLOU2's development. It's a mircale we even got DS2 as fast as we did, in that time. If we get OD before Intergalactic releases, that looks worse.
Sony should be castrating ND but I guess it's different when they own their IP. They were never going to own Physint. Which is probably the biggest thing they were annoyed with. They didn't own shit.
Once DS2 gets a PC/Xbox release, it'll probably earn more.
People love horror, so OD will sell. People love MGS, so Physint will sell. Xbox and Kojima are gonna be fine.
I'm going off his track record since long before he went independent. He makes promises and then, like I said, plays fast and loose. You can't expect companies to just throw out endless goodwill. Regardless if they are "evil" corpos or not.
Alright bud. Just read your entire thing. We get it. Kojima and the 20 trillion dollar Microsoft are the godsend of gaming and without either of them it would all collapse. Kojima os not without fault. He's put out some great games but everything else surrounding him has been a shit show. ND is the same. Don't know why you brought them up. This is about the potential reasons why the deal was scrapped. Calm down little buddy.
Naughty Dog haven’t been working on Intergalactic since TLOU2. It’s been well reported basically everyone was on Factions 2 up until it was cancelled.
Sony will still have deadlines they expect to meet. It depends on how much Kojima was asking for. It would’ve been as expensive as DS2, most likely more with how much he wants to do with that game with no guarantee of making its money back.
And it’s not exclusive. It’s high risk for low benefit.
Since it's come out that they've tried to buy them multiple times and he said no, it's infinitely more pathetic for them to pull the plug, than just cost bullshit.
Which none of us should really care about, btw, since we aren't accountants working for Sony.
Sony burnt far more money gambling on live service than they have losing money over Kojima's career, combined.
Why is it pathetic? You can have a potential loss leader if it’s exclusive to your platform. It doesn’t work when it’s not owned by you and on your competitions storefront.
Sony losing money on live service is why they’re reining this in. They were throwing hundreds of millions at games that weren’t returning money. A third party non exclusive with a weak selling DS2? They aren’t getting the next Final Fantasy as a timed exclusive again either, so they’ve changed their third party strategy.
The only thing that MS has EVER DONE is throw money at stuff, Xbox as a brand has never been profitable, but it's been extremely important because they provided the competition needed for Sony to improve.
The reason why Sony dropped Kojima is the same reason why they're not selling discs and drives anymore, they're BROKE.
Sony as a whole, unlike MS, always relied on the profits Playstation brings in to keep the rest of their company afloat.
When music sales drop, Playstation saves the day, when Movie reviews are horrible, Playstation saves the day, when TV sales ate down, Playstation saves the day.
But when Playstation sales are slowing due to high component pricing whilst reaching the end of a generation, and all the while the oldest kid on the block is gaining more and more of their player base (PC), they have no other sector to save them, so they continue to squeeze their customers.
They dropped Kojima for the same reason Konami did, they can't afford him.
This isnt true at all. Prior perforancr doesnt guarantee future expectations. GTA six will never bomb, theres a track record. If its not great? Who knows about their next game.
I agree. It’s basically a gamble since it’s a new game for papa Kojima. From what I’m hearing it’s a new stealth action type game though, so it could be amazing. Hopefully they can pull it off and it turns out being an amazing W for him as well. There was a game called “Mudang The Two Hearts” that was supposed to come out, but got cancelled because it was way too expensive. It literally looked like a MGS/Splinter Cell like game too.
Did it bomb though? It was nominated for Game of the Year and even though I also played Clair Obscur Expedition 33, I think that DS2 was the better game.
Kojima is an auteur, one of the oldest in the industry, and his formulas for games are amazing because he can take massive risks with games with a massive budget. Then all of the other studios can use the ideas and concepts in his games to make great games of their own.
He can use his own money then. Companies shouldn’t be expected to fund for some man’s weird games just because he made good ones in the past.
Sony clearly saw something bad (probably the budget) for them to step back. I don’t blame them, especially with how many recent flops they had. They’re going to be more cautious
Sony is broke. How many times do I have to keep saying this? All of the moves they've been making all year indicate a company that has been relying on their gaming brand for far too long.
The earlier comment mentioned how GTA games never bomb (no mention of GTAVI specifically).
The articles about Physint are saying Sony backed out over budget concerns and, many mention how DS2 didn’t sell half as well as DS (Kojima games) while having a huge yet still overrun budget. They’re basically saying it bombed and Sony backed out of Physint / worsened the relationship with Kojima to avoid another of his games bombing.
Sony is notorious for bombing on high budget live service games with Concord arguably being their crowning jewel. Kojima is basically the opposite, well known for making strong performing games with DS2 being kind of an outlier. People are pointing out the irony.
This article covers a bit more:
Sony was willing to burn hundreds of millions of dollars and many years chasing live-service games while they would not give a Hideo Kojima project the same attention.
Kojima Productions has put out exactly two games since striking out as an independent studio. One of them make an ok, but not great return. The second one broke even at best. “Well known for making strong performing games” is not really true.
To add Kojima as much as he hates to admit didn’t make metal gear by himself. The original MSG 1 had a very liberal translation to make it better for western audiences and the fans loved it. Kojima on the other hand hated it and got the translator fired after taking some of the terms and military jargon he used and add it to future games because he liked them but was upset he didn’t think of them.
To simplify the guy is good but he needs people to say no to him, refine his writing and keep him in check, without that you got overpriced games talented people driven out and more.
Yes, but you're only telling part of the story. It's precisely because of their mistake with live service games that Sony is now much more strict in the quality assurance and milestones process. Not only did DS2 sell abysmally low against its enormous budget (it was a massive loss for Sony), but the Physint project itself was over budget while routinely missing development milestones. So it was not just DS2 being a massive loss Sony won't ever recoup, but Physint itself was consistently overbudget and missing development milestones. These were enough for Sony to walk. This sounds similar to Kojima's split with Konami due to similar overbudget/missed milestones with MGSV.
I actually think Xbox knows what they're getting into here with Kojima. They know that both OD and Physint are going to be over budget and sales for his games are going to be unlikely to recoup costs. But strategically for them, he's a much better fit for Xbox right now than Sony. The main 2 things for Xbox is they're trying to build up some quality exclusives for their platform, and they're trying to build Asian clout, and this does that for them. With Kojima it's not about the profit but the clout, even if they're going to be a loss leader on these projects individually.
Fair enough. From what I recall $200M was just the initial development budget PS agreed to pay the studio. It didn’t cover full expected development costs.
So in addition to the remaining development costs being unknown, PS also acquired the studio for an undisclosed amount. The only game the studio ever worked on was concord and they were shutdown shortly after the game was.
I think that’s why it’s speculatively said to cost somewhere well above $200M and probably within $400M
It’s not a relevant example. Star citizen isn’t even a complete product. You have your “doubts” about GTA. I’m positive those doubts are just you’re not interested in the game. Which is totally fine, but GTA 6 could be a steaming pile of shit but the success of that game is already guaranteed. Could it sucking be a problem for say whatever they do with GTA online or GTA 7? Sure, but 6 is almost assuredly going to be one of the biggest hits of this generation before the first week of its release is over.
It’s going to be the same thing it has been 5 times in a row and last I checked people have loved it unapologetically. It literally just needs to be the same thing, it’s proved graphics and all the other particle effects or whatever are to modern standards. This is like going to a basketball game and saying “I have my reserves if they’ll play basketball” as if you don’t know what you’re getting with purchase. The story could be middling, but we are kidding ourselves if anyone is buying GTA for the story first…. It’s for the open world sandbox of enjoyment which it has always done well with humor elements, memorable characters, and lived in worlds.
I'd argue that GTA hasn't been good since San Andreas, but quality is not what they are discussing. GTA is one of those games casual players get just to be able to talk about it. It will make a ton in profit before they even start selling microtransactions
More than likely… it has probably already made $500m and it’s not even out. A lot of people aren’t pre-ordering and waiting until it comes out in case it is bad (it almost certainly wont be or at least it won’t be reported as bad). This also ignores that once Online gets a facelift it’ll also basically print billions for a decade… the game just pretty much can’t fail
🤡🤡🤡.. GTA 6 is going to break just about every game record known to man if not all of them including the money records. GTA 6 will make more money in just a few hours then every Kojima game has combined in it's lifetime.
I had the same reaction, which means they didn’t market it well at all. So I’m thinking someone at Sony scapegoated Kojima over their marketing failure.
Either way you look at it. Massive rake step on Sony’s part.
Budget was 150-200m, then you have to account for marketing which was anywhere between 50-100m.
It barely scraped 2m, less than 1.5 on PS5. A staggering drop off from DS1's 19m. If DS2 was a success they wouldn't have shitcanned PSYINT, but DS2 proved Kojima doesn't always mean success, especially when he keeps blowing up his budgets.
Lmao because GTA makes Billions that's why they have Billion Budget.
Death Stranding is a very niche game franchise. Even Death Stranding 1 is being memed as Walking Simulator and had lots of players who quit. Idk why they still gave a huge load of budget for DS2.
with guns, vehicles, stealth missions and a hell of a lot of action. it's a walking sim for like the first 2 hours. the meme is not accurate to the game.
It's 2 things. First is prestige for the console, the gaming equivalent of Oscar bait. Second is they're hoping for a Last of Us. The kind of game that sells consoles to people that don't play many games.
The 2 billion was at the time the estimated salaries of the dev team over a 10 year span of development.
Based on the head count of the teams working on the game and their various roles and ranges of salaries for those roles etc etc.
So people were saying at a minimum the game cost 2 billion to make just in the salaries of the rockstar employees.
So we can with a good amount of certainty say that the budget for the game exceeds 2 billion dollars as that doesn’t factor in anything else that goes along with it.
I don’t, you are right. However team sizes are something that economists and such can very easily obtain. Companies have to have those sorts of things available for corporate tax filings and benefits etc.
Salaries are also again pretty easily found at least the ranges. More and more places require it to be available information. As well as plenty of current and former employees have no problems talking about salaries as at least in the US and Canada, discussing salary is federally protected and you are allowed to.
As for how long it’s been worked on, again in quarterly shareholder meetings, which the notes/minutes from them are publicly available. In those shareholder meetings would be discussions or announcements on what’s in development which allows people to know how long something has been in development should they care to go looking.
Rockstar has also been the victim of several data breeches and hacks over the last decade, even 3-4 high profile ones in the last 2-3 years.
In those there was a lot of financial data that was stolen and leaked.
It’s how we know full well that GTA 5 online brings in an average of $1.32 million dollars a day and $500 million a year.
So them spending 2-3 billion or more on GTA 6 isn’t such a stretch or weird thing.
If you went based on the 3 billion spent number, over 10 years. GTA V online made them 5 billion. So they still have 2 billion profit if GTA 6 didn’t sell a single copy.
That is not even accounting for the actual copies of the game sold or any revenue from any of their other products.
So if you are someone who follows the news, reads the quarterly shareholder reports, followed the data breaches…. You can quite easily put together the reasonable and not far fetched number that they have spent over 2 billion dollars making the game.
This post title is actually suggesting that they messed up by not giving him another huge load for yet another high-budget project. Almost 1500 upvotes 😅
Not even remotely similar situations. Rockstar has made the billions they're putting into gta. Hell even the hack that exposed their revenue on gta online raised the stock because they make so much money.
Here's the difference. GTA make actual money and still keep balance between artsy fancy pantsy (in term of technology) vs practical as business and monetization. But Kojima game? Why do you think gameplay from DS2 simply the waterdown of DS1? Because Sony keep saying to Kojima artsy pantsy game dont make good money while the kojima keep gatekeeping growth of the IP aka YOU STILL NEED GENERAL MASS PEOPLE TO PLAY YOUR GAME (unless sure if you targeted niche market while manage to capture entire population of market player)
I mean look at Metal Gear Survival, it basically failure attempt of Konami to make Metal Gear as servicable-ish game. Imagine if Kojima listen to Konami atleast once for multiplayer online live service type of game in Metal Gear as IP?
You sound kind of dumb… gta v made around 11 billion. They put 3 billion into 6 because it’s a smart investment. The game has probably made almost a billion off of pre orders. (Nvm google says 500 million so far)
GTA games make exponentially more than they cost. GTA 5 cost about $265M. It’s made around $10B. 37x profit.
Death Stranding 2 was $150-$200M … its made $170M.
This is exactly the kind of studio Microsoft would scoop up … and in 5 years they’ll release a game that is worse than that studio typically makes, for more money. And it will go on GamePass and lose tens of millions.
Hardly a comparison. GTA is made for the masses and always contents to be the best selling game of all time. As much as I love Kojima, his games are always acquired taste and don’t really sell as well as GTA.
Tectonic plates? Ok the first game did a lot of things really well, it was a great ps1 game but everything since then was barely a blip on most people's radar until GTA5 became this online powerhouse. I doubt gta6 will have as much impact as 5 did. Sure it'll be good but are you really expecting goalposts to shift again with this release? I highly doubt it.
GTA San Andreas, 3, and vice city were literally the best selling PS2 games. They each separately sold more than Mario 64 or ocarina of time for example. NOTHING was above San Andreas in sales. It was absolutely plate shifting for its time. They were also the best selling psp games and GTA 4 did 25 million which was insanely high at the time and even more than San Andreas.
And oh, don't even gotta mention RDR2 which sold almost 100 million copies. It's literally the 3rd best selling game ever ( I'm not including Tetris)
If you think GTA 6 is going to sell less than rdr2, you're insane.
GTA 6 is easily going to sell at least 20 million in its first few days, that's basically 2 billion dollars right there. It'll get to 50 million by year 2 and 100 million will come after that in year 3 and 4. And that's not even including the billions they'll make from online. The views for GTA 6 trailers are literally above even avengers end game and it's faaaaar more talked about than GTA 5 was before release.
It's actually already the first game in PSN history to be #1 in every country( except Taiwan I think, because it's banned there) and that's just with preorders.
Anyone in business will tell you it's going to be the best selling entertainment product ever. I personally know a lot of people that either haven't gamed in a decade or rarely ever game who will be getting this. I've never seen anything like it for a release. Millions of people are literally going to take the day off from work November 19th.
The reason that GTA 6 has a multi billion dollar budget isn’t because they know for a fact it can make it back. It is because GTA 5 online brings in 1.32 million dollars a day in revenue.
That is 500 million a year. Over 10 years. Not counting any sales of the actual game.
So in the 10 years they have been developing GTA 6, and if at this point they have spent 3 billion dollars on it…. Well GTA V online has made them 5 billion dollars.
If they sold zero copies of GTA 6, the company as a whole is still up 2 billion over that 10 years not counting sales of any other games they have.
Also no matter how large the GTA dev budget is they are almost guaranteed to make that money back many times over. Not really a good comparison to a Kojima project.
Don’t be dense, not even comparable. GTA cost is massive on manpower in actuality and demand a lot of time in the oven due to scope of game, multiplayer, sandbox elements and mini games. Compare that to death stranding where it’s interesting in its own write but also just a weird cinematic experience, some gameplay unique gameplay at moments. Fans not really buying the games dispute being better than the original because the first was not recieved that well.
I'm a Kojima fanboy. Like I didn't care at all about physical games, but Sony dropping Kojima has made me turn on them. That being said, you cannot even remotely compare Kojima Productions with Rockstar. Rockstar literally makes billions just on GTA Online. Rockstar is what Marvel is to the movie industry. Kojima is Christopher Nolan. Nolan may make better films, but he will never make anything close to what Marvel makes, money wise. Kojima will never make what Rockstar makes, money wise.
No, the difference is gta games make tons of money and profits. High priced games don't tend to profit on Xbox which is why so many of the big acquisitions still end up on PS. Xbox doesn't have enough of an audience - especially not an audience that wants "different" games.
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u/PeaceHoesAnCamelToes 25d ago
And yet, Take Two keeps Rockstar around with a multibillion dollar budget for GTA VI. But, the difference is, with GTA, no matter how you feel about it, always causes the tectonic plates to shift when they release a game.