Spotty court document redactions have inadvertently revealed development costs and timelines for PlayStation monoliths Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us Part 2, which both cost over $200 million to make.
Sony's declaration to the US Federal Trade Commission was recently released to the public as part of the ongoing court hearing over the Xbox Activision deal, and hawk-eyed readers quickly noticed that the black marks intended to obscure sensitive information are a bit transparent in some places.
In particular, a few redacted figures on page eight, point 21, are perfectly legible even without assistance from image editing software. The paragraph discusses the development costs of AAA games, noting that this "often costs over $100 million, requires hundreds or thousands of developers, and takes years." Thanks to this ink slipup, we've now gotten exact figures on these resources for two major PlayStation games.
According to this document, Guerrilla's Horizon Forbidden West took five years and $212 million to develop, with a peak developer headcount of over 300 full-time employees. Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part 2, meanwhile, took even longer at 70 months and cost a bit more at $220 million, though its staff peaked at around 200 full-time employees.
It's worth noting that these values are just development costs. As a previous investigation into this deal highlighted, with marketing and promotion costs factored in, the biggest games can potentially blow past $1 billion.
These figures are unsurprising in some ways given the rapidly ballooning costs of AAA game development, but it's always fascinating to get a look under the hood of big-budget studios. The development timelines are equally interesting – again not because they're a surprise, but because they're yet another nail in the coffin of the belief that studios can bang out games like this in two or three years. For anyone who still needs to hear this: AAA games are well into the five-year range, and can easily go longer.
For another point of reference, Forspoken reportedly cost $100 million to make, a figure that baffled a fair few players given the game's relative fidelity and scope, not to mention its rocky debut.
