The leading publishers of the gaming world have revealed how much money they spend developing and marketing AAA games. The results are astonishing to say the least. On the other hand, of course, the publishers did not willingly disclose these costs. This information was included in the report of the British regulatory agency CMA, which prevented the Microsoft-Activision merger.Regulators such as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which thwarted the Microsoft-Activision merger and conducted investigations into the video games market in general, are collecting and reporting an incredible amount of information on the world’s largest entertainment industry. The Microsoft-Activision report published by CMA revealed the astronomically high budgets of AAA games. As you know, big budget games that we call AAA now have a price tag of 70 dollars, and it seems that the reason behind this is quite solid.
Total costs can reach 1.2 billion dollars
CMA’s report does not include publishers for good reason, but we can assume that they are leading publishers such as Sony Interactive Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive and possibly Ubisoft. Accordingly, some publishers spend as much as $1.2 billion on development and marketing costs for an entire franchise.In total, the CMA cites the money they spent anonymously in the report (pages 309-310) of the four publishers. Publishers report that they spent between 100 million Euros and 660 million Euros during the development stages of the game. Marketing costs can also reach up to 50 million Euros and 550 million Euros. It is reported that the publisher, which is probably thought to be Ubisoft, has allocated 150 million Euros for the development stages of a AAA game and 50 million Euros for marketing. The CMA also states that the development costs of Activision games, including the Call of Duty and Warcraft series, are “significantly higher” than other games in the industry.
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