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Sony paid $3.5 million to make ARK: Survival Evolved a March PS Plus game.
bender
What time is it?
I'll give you tree fiddy.
Pretending they're not doing what, exactly? Do you think these publishers just give away their games?
SteelCurtain 59
Member
I mean, no that's not how that works at all. Whatever it costs to make the game is not the cost to put it on Game Pass, the cost to put it on Game Pass would be the amount of people that would've bought Halo if it wasn't on Game Pass (multiplied by the cost at the time they would've bought it), minus what they paid for Game Pass, and minus any DLC transactions from people that played Halo on Game Pass but wouldn't have bought it if it wasn't on Game Pass. The game would've been made with or without Game Pass so using development cost as a Game Pass cost is incredibly disingenuous, the only games where this is not true are games that wouldn't have existed without Game Pass, which are likely to be smaller titles with low development costs, not the big AAA franchises
itsjustJEFF
Member
Sorry, I used Halo cause it's just a game that I know. It's true that Halo was developed before GP, so that was a bad example... but games moving forward? Aren't all 1st party games coming to GP day one? So wouldn't the cost of the games development be the cost of the game on GP? Am I missing something about some first party games not coming to GP day one? Why wouldn't all games moving forward created for Xbox be GP budgeted? Or are we only talking about how much it costs for "non" Xbox games to get onto GP?
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Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
3.5 million dollars is the equivalent of 50K copies of a game selling at 70 dollars a pop.
It's easier for Sony to throw one of these trash games on there without dipping into their own pockets for internal games that they'll put on PS+ at a later date.
Sony could easily put a new 1st party game on PS+ every month, but they don't have any interest in doing so.
Edit: For more context, there were 47.3 million PS+ subscribers in June, so basically paying at least 10 dollars per month. That's 473 million dollars in revenue.
3.5 million for a game like this helps them out just by getting a placeholder. If they were trying to put out quality every month there would be a minimum viable threshold for these games. This has a 69 metacritic and a 5.2 user score.
It's easier for Sony to throw one of these trash games on there without dipping into their own pockets for internal games that they'll put on PS+ at a later date.
Sony could easily put a new 1st party game on PS+ every month, but they don't have any interest in doing so.
Edit: For more context, there were 47.3 million PS+ subscribers in June, so basically paying at least 10 dollars per month. That's 473 million dollars in revenue.
3.5 million for a game like this helps them out just by getting a placeholder. If they were trying to put out quality every month there would be a minimum viable threshold for these games. This has a 69 metacritic and a 5.2 user score.
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Aenima
Member
Subnautica is excelent. And Sony actually gave the game away for free, no subs required. Wonder how much they paid.
geary
Member
Watch out...we have a badass over here.
These types of comments shows how out of touch some of you guys are with the gaming industry.
It's like watching only Marvel Movies and think you are a film-fan and know what a good movie looks like.
Stop embarrassing yourself guys.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
What's the profit though?
On the real though, you spend money to make money. This was a questionable deal for Sony in what they paid but interesting data none the less gives us an insight in that it looks like signing titles to gamepass is cheaper than getting a title onto playstation plus.
Trab-Pu-Kcip
Member
WTF? I don't even have redeemed that game.
The games are also sold at retail and on Steam. Why would you put all the development costs on GP when it’s selling millions elsewhere?
You’d only do that when GP is the sole outlet
Chukhopops
Member
They also sell those games directly, on Xbox and Steam.
Fun fact: there are 8 MS first-party games in the top 100 Steam sellers right now, despite MS releasing only one new game recently (Grounded):
- Grounded
- ESO
- Fallout 4
- Fallout 76
- FH5
- Flight Sim
- Sea of Thieves
- Skyrim (lol)
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
I'm itching for a sequel so bad. It's my most anticipated unannounced game.
It was the first survival game that I played and my lord, it blew away all my expectations.
Topher
Identifies as young
Not really. This was an amendment to an existing deal with Microsoft and an entirely new deal for Sony.
Pedro Motta
Gold Member
This is great for some math, and it proves that AAA games day one are not sustainable.
3.5M for an old ass game, dividing it for the cost of 20$ (current price of the game in the store), equals 175.000 copies sold at that price.
Imagine putting a game there that costs 70/80$ and sells millions in the first day.
3.5M for an old ass game, dividing it for the cost of 20$ (current price of the game in the store), equals 175.000 copies sold at that price.
Imagine putting a game there that costs 70/80$ and sells millions in the first day.
hemo memo
You can't die before your death
I’m not trying to be a “badass”. It is my honest opinion. I have very limited gaming time. I wouldn’t waste it on this repetitive time sink unless I’m getting paid a worthwhile amount.
geary
Member
That would have been enough to say, but you had to be a bit shmuck in your initial response? Everyone on this forum has to have a bit of hyperbole and eyeroll in their post, cause otherwise they wont make their point cross over, right?
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hemo memo
You can't die before your death
Apologies. This wasn’t hyperbole. When I post a hyperbole post its 99% of the time for comedy. This one actually true.
itsjustJEFF
Member
I'm guess I might not be making my self clear or I may have come across incorrectly. My original response was to someone saying that "The only AAA day one games that come to gamepass are microsoft published games, so they probably don't have to pay that much to the developers to put them on the service tbh, if anything" I guess my OG point was that GP is not it's own entity. I wasn't putting all the development costs on GP. Why would there be different cost to have the game developed for retail and/or GP? It's the same game there is no difference in code. GP is not a platform. Steam on the other hand is a different platform, it's PC. There is development cost there to port it over to PC. So I'm putting the cost on MS/Xbox.
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itsjustJEFF
Member
I have a few of these on Steam... not Skyrim tho. I refuse.
KloetenQuetsche
Member
Who cares....nowadays money ist something very fluctuating. In some cases it is worth a lot, like when you buying butter. The other case it's like.... Hey... you want more for those face masks....here, I gave you 20 millions more... Enough? When not, just name your price.
Who cares about millions....
Who cares about millions....
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Imagine people having different tastes
I mean why doesn't everyone just drive the exact same white car?
RoboFu
One of the green rats
Everyone would agree that they would rather not drive a POS car though.Imagine people having different tastes
I mean why doesn't everyone just drive the exact same white car?
bender
What time is it?
Everyone would agree that they would rather not drive a POS car though.
I see a lot of Teslas on the road.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
I know its a shock to some people that others actually enjoy different games and even driving POS carsEveryone would agree that they would rather not drive a POS car though.
Haggard
Banned
Wo Long is far from being a AAA game.....
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
$3.5M. $2.5M. Close enough.
So about $100,000 per frame rate?
So about $100,000 per frame rate?
Kvally
Member
True, it's closer to AAAA.
Haggard
Banned
you`re mixing up the game`s production category with the sound of relief the controllers made when they planned the budget for this A-AA title.
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Kvally
Member
I wasn't expecting your opinion so soon. Thank you!
systemr123
Banned
Gamepass income needs to pay personnel, game licenses, extending game licenses, paying some game studios by amount of usage of the games, commercials, marketing companies, profit tax if there is any profit and probably a lot more stuff that I did forget to mention. Sure the money for this one game is not too much but all in all I would believe it if they would lose money on the best deal of gaming until they get maybe double the subscribers.
Also don’t forget ms will probably have to finance all their game studios with this money too as their games launch day one on gamepass so they have maybe 90% less standard income they’d normally have if the game was not launched on gamepass.
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Party McHardy
Banned
Can we hazard to guess how long Microsoft exclusivity deal on the sequel will run?
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LRKD
Member
For me I played it because I am desperate for more dinosaur games. Played it with a small group of friends, but the game is endless jank and feels terribly unbalanced no matter what you try and do in the settings. It's fun enough with friends, but that's true for almost all games. Hoping Ark 2 makes massive improvements across the board.
Captain Toad
Banned
No. Because no one cares.
Rockondevil
Member
Love the amount of people hating it who’ve probably never even played it.
Sure the game is your average survival game but throw in dinosaurs and then if you play with others it gets so much better.
Playing alone is definitely boring, but so are plenty of other survival games.
Sure the game is your average survival game but throw in dinosaurs and then if you play with others it gets so much better.
Playing alone is definitely boring, but so are plenty of other survival games.
Hendrick's
If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Average? Find me another game where you can eat your own poop while riding a dinosaur.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
I actually really enjoyed ARK building and defending bases with friends and taming and raising dinosaurs
Rockondevil
Member
Should've been clearer. I didn't mean average quality, but average as in standard. But yes it definitely has some pro's over others of it's kind.
