AAA game development budgets in North America have reportedly exceeded 300 million US Dollars, according to a new report.
Bloomberg’s investigative journalist Jason Schreier took to Blue Sky to share that the numbers he has heard floating around for AAA game development budgets in North America these days are 300 million US Dollars or more – sometimes much more! According to him, exact budgets of video game productions can be tough to corroborate due to limited transparency from publishers, but this nine-digit figure helps in explaining the current state of the industry.
Schreier clarified that the 300 million US Dollar figure he mentioned is specifically in relation to budgets for US and Canada video game productions. He added that if a AAA title cost less to make, it was probably made outside of North America. He further mentioned that these expenses are almost entirely comprised of developer salaries and overhead costs required to employ them, and that they have nothing to do with executive compensation, which is mostly in the form of stock.
To put things into perspective, Schreier said that if a game company sells a game for 70 US Dollars and pockets 49 US Dollars on every sale, as 30% goes to the digital store (assuming all sales are digital), it would need to sell more than 6 million copies just to break even on a 300 million US Dollar budget. He added that this is before even taking marketing costs into account.
Such massive budgets would explain the frequent layoffs and studio closures in the industry. Schreier recently reported that Sony Interactive Entertainment’s closure of Dark Outlaw Games came as part of another round of cuts amid a shift in strategy for PlayStation. He stated, “More layoffs today: PlayStation is closing Dark Outlaw Games, a studio formed last year by former Call of Duty lead Jason Blundell (his previous PlayStation studio, Deviation, was shut down in 2024).”
