Colin Moriarty: Concord cost 400M. Was viewed as the future of PS.
- Thread starter BennyBlanco
- Start date
Herman Hulst found dead in car accident.
vaibhavpisal
Member
Halo Infinite is flagship title. They have a department dedicated for managing that ip.
Also, its gameplay is dialed down. Like how you would expect after spending a huge chunk on it.
Reizo Ryuu
Member
it's going to be 600 million next month.
LordBlodgett
Member
What kind of organic, free range, pasture raised nuggies are you buying? Holy shit, this is like 2 billion cheap-ass nuggies at least
Matsuchezz
Member
This is worse than spending 69 billion dollars and still suck as a console manufacturer, game developer and offering game subscriptions for a dollar. Sony is dumb and doomed. Arrogant Sony is back.
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Kacho
Member
diffusionx
Gold Member
Sony talked extensively and communicated both internally and externally about their major investments in live service games. This was a major investment in a live service game.
Everyone quoting salaries x years of development should reconsider their estimates.
Let's say you have a software development team with median salary of $150k/year. In the US at a white collar establishment, the company is paying substantial additional costs out of pocket. Health care/dental/vision insurance is mostly covered by the employer. 401k matching contributions. Contributions for continuing education. Office space and other overhead.
A typical rule of thumb in places like California is to double the employee's salary to estimate the actual cost of the employee to the company. That $150k is more like $300k.
Let's say you have a software development team with median salary of $150k/year. In the US at a white collar establishment, the company is paying substantial additional costs out of pocket. Health care/dental/vision insurance is mostly covered by the employer. 401k matching contributions. Contributions for continuing education. Office space and other overhead.
A typical rule of thumb in places like California is to double the employee's salary to estimate the actual cost of the employee to the company. That $150k is more like $300k.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Technically, it's not all. Some sales are permanent due to collectors and ebay flippers! LOL
But at the ending of the day, the net sales : cost ratio will be a loss of like 99.99% or pretty damn close to it.
It'll be so close to 100%, every dude in finance will just write it off rounded off as 100%. LOL
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MayauMiao
Member
FOUR HUNDRED MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS?!
Yikes, where the hell did all the money go to? Is there some money laundering going on there?
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
the director stepped down soon after launch. he was reportedly in tears.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
There has to be some fuckery going on. How did games go from 50M to over 200M on the same platform?
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
I believe they're in Bellevue, WA, but it's probably similar.
PeteBull
Member
Bro, most of cp2077 devs are polish, means they live in poland and get polish salaries, and as an actual pole, compared to the west/US salaries, its at least 4x lower.
Just check how ez it was for another polish studio to make that recent robocop rogue city game be profitable.
Mr Moose
Member
Someone's making numbers up, there's no fucking way.
Dazraell
Member
StreetsofBeige
Member
And good on him. Whatever he said or did landed him another role. He's still employed despite being Art Director where the first thing people laughed at was the art. I highly doubt all 150 employees will get the same treatment.
captainpat
Member
Are every going to find out the actual cost of this game from an official source?
tmlDan
Member
I hope commissions are good if salaries are that much lower, they make a ton of money from their games
Pedro Motta
Gold Member
This is all true. Even in Portugal, I own 2 companies and what I pay for my employees is roughly 48% more than what they take home with them.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
Yup. Benefits, insurance, 401k matching, etc. Going by just salary is incorrect.
Edit: my bad. I don't know why I pretty much repeated what you said. I must have overlooked your entire 2nd paragraph, lol.
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Interfectum
Member
3liteDragon
Member
BRUH
SportsFan581
Member
I don't believe for a second that Sony was ever positioning this game as the future of PS, that seems like a ridiculously naive take. Obviously, someone thought that rehashing existing ideas under a fresh coat of pastel paint was going to be a money maker, but let's not jump the shark about it. LOL
AmuroChan
Member
It does not, but it does include the cost prior to Sony's purchase. So mostly outside investor money. Sony's on the hook for about $200m of that production cost + whatever they paid to acquire the studio.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Sounds like what these movies studios were doing when they were shelving films like Bat Girl. My guess is that Sony refunded everyone for Concord so they can mark it as a pure loss. Something that didnt just flop, but simply didnt even release.
Now they can either say that the game cost $50 million to make and use that as a tax write off or use some clever accounting to make it $400 million and drastically lower their tax bill. I expect costs of acquiring the studio, outsourcing, marketing, and anything not directly tied to payroll to be substantially marked up to get the biggest tax write off possible.
Remember Sony said that the Miles DLC which was made in 2 years while Ratchet was in development alongside Spiderman 2, and used the same exact map, had a 6 hour campaign, and sold for $40 cost them $156 million to make. Very likely including the cut they would have to give to Marvel in the development cost but still, likely tied to some kind of accounting trick to reduce their tax bill.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
It is. I was almost going to transfer to WA about a year ago, and the cost of living was pretty identical to my current residence in So-Cal.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
That's insane. I remember when I used to visit friends there back in 2006-2009, it was much more affordable compared to San Diego and he like.
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Except the physical copies.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
P:axMagellanic
Member
I don't think people realise that all common sense left this project years ago. Would you even pay a dollar for that cast of characters? Me neither -yet someone did, and they signed off on it and said 'more, please'. The game was laughed at from the second it was revealed, yet no one at Sony noticed? I don't believe it, this shit game had the stink of politics and ideology all over it, and when people think like that then money is no object.
We've still got Dragon Age and the next AC game to go, absolutely insane industry.
{insert code here}
Member
Bro with 400M they could've ported their ENTIRE PS3 1P portfolio. Killzone, Resistance, inFamous, LBP, Motorstorm, Warhawk/Starhawk, Socom, Twisted Metal, Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, Sly Cooper, etc. How hard would it have been to give a team a 20M budget and have them port any of the above games, content as-is, with all the assets dialed up (4K, 60-120fps, AA, etc.) to PS4/5.We could have had SO MANY other IPs brought back instead.
Just thinking of how we could have a new SOCOM hurts me.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
I'm not the far south. San Diego is crazy. I'm in the inland valley.
Bojji
Member
Their immediate reaction should be:
- stop all GaaS projects, cancel them and send people and money to make sequels to our most successful SP games ASAP!
Their actual reaction probably is:
- let's make even MORE GaaS games!
touchfuzzy
Member
Of course, look at that CGI teaser trailer from the State of Play. That was some high quality CGI, and five minutes of it. A bid budget CGI movie like Inside Out 2 costs $200 million for a 100 minute movie, so let's just ballpark these types of things around $2 million / minute to produce. You're at $10 million just for the CGI trailer, and they were going to have weekly CGI story trailers so undoubtedly had spent a bunch on making those already with some in the can ready to go (that will never be released). So that's probably $20 million on CGI trailers alone, likely.
It's not baffling that a company released a shit game nobody cares about, happens all the time. It's baffling how hard Sony bet on it to be the next big thing.
It's not baffling that a company released a shit game nobody cares about, happens all the time. It's baffling how hard Sony bet on it to be the next big thing.
kaizenkko
Member
If all of that is true, so I expect to Hulst to be layoff AT LEAST.
I can't imagine Totoki looking at this project cost/result and end up keeping Hulst on the same position. And Hulst was not alone, a lot of other people need to be layoff.
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
Can't even come up with a good insult. The reality is already beyond parody.
StreetsofBeige
Member
And that's the typical video game tunnel vision. Because all studios make games, it means all studios can make anything successful. That would be like a beer company claiming they can make awesome juice or pop because technically they can make beverages like Coke, Pepsi, or bottles of Nestle water.
What happened with gaming is it got so big, with so much money being spent by gamers, and the top games selling so much with MTX galore tossed in, every game studio will eyeball COD or Fortnite at some point dreaming the dream what if their game can be the next Fortnite.
Not impossible. at some point Fortnite will fizzle out and there will be a new champ. But pretty hard to do.
(Side edit: Who knew Horizon is Sony's most important IP)
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AmuroChan
Member
It's actually very plausible. The reporting was that Sony spent $200m after the game entered Alpha and was in terrible state. They outsourced a lot of the remaining work to outside studios while still paying all the employees at Firewalk. That's how you blow up your budget, when the internal team made a turd and then you have to pay outside studios to help get it to a playable state.
Gambit2483
Member
Arrogant Sony has decided to make us pay for their financial failures
Haint
Member
I would err towards he misheard or is misinterpreting what he was told. $400 million all inclusive, which would include buying the studio, is very plausible and very likely. $400 million on raw development, NOT including buying the studio, is very hard to believe. I don't want to say impossible cause they did spend $150 million on 4 hour DLC that reused every asset within (Miles Morales).
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