Poor redacted documents revealed interesting details about The Last of Us 2 and Horizon Forbidden West’s development costs.
The Last of Us: Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West are two popular titles developed by PlayStation Studios. Both have also gained big sales since day one so development costs could have been covered easily. Most players would not be interested in development costs, but did you know this particular detail is quite essential for both developers and publishers? This might also interest fans as they would inform them of how much money was invested in developing these triple A titles.
Big PlayStation Games Budgets Get “Accidentally” Revealed
According to Tom Warren on his Twitter account, some poorly redacted documents have revealed the budgets of the two popular games which were submitted as part of the FTC’s ongoing lawsuit against Microsoft’s big acquisition deal with Activision. One of the documents clearly reveals the budgets of Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us: Part 2.
Hundreds of Millions for Developing These Titles
Based on that one document, The Last of Us: Part 2 cost $220 million to make, which would be unbelievable at first but after reviewing the visuals and gameplay, it is probably true and might be even more. Horizon: Forbidden West cost around $212 million, which is close to the other game. It was also revealed that over 200 people were working on the projects at peak times.
To make things clear, this only reveals the game development expenditures and not the significant marketing spend.
Interestingly, PlayStation’s legal team has done poor work on redacting the documents they submitted to the court.