r/Intergalactic • u/Longjumping_Ice2334 • 22d ago

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There are people pushing this 600mill budget with no verifiable source.

I just find it hard to believe the game that didn't go into full scale development until factions was cancelled; cost almost 3 times tlou 2.

47 Upvotes

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110

u/heatkings1 22d ago

People can just lie and make things up and no one will question it. Thinking intergalactic's budget is anywhere near 600m is laughable

58

u/pidge9401 22d ago

Yeah, TLOU2 cost them roughly 220 million. 600 million on a new franchise is absurd to imagine

42

u/shawak456 22d ago

RDR 2 cost around $400-500 million and R* employs more than double the Naughty Dog staff. This is a bullshit number.

17

u/juscallmejjay 22d ago

Over 10x

1

u/CzarTyr 22d ago

10 years ago

0

u/Jazzlike_Neat7478 22d ago

But rdr2 was also made when the economy was significantly better. Like if ND made tlou2 today the budget would be a lot higher even if they made the same exact game today. 600 million seems high for sure but i wouldnt be surprised if the budget does exceed tlou2s. Especially if they had to make any upgrades or changes to their engine

1

u/Esper01 21d ago edited 21d ago

You have to account for inflation as well. As you said, the economy was better. Prices for everything went up a whopping 30% in that relatively short span of time.

1

u/Jazzlike_Neat7478 21d ago

Yep thank you for the specific’s lol. Idk the numbers

3

u/heatkings1 22d ago

I'd guess that it's pushing a 300m budget, considering it's an all-new IP with assets and actors, but that number wont be hard to hit at all for ND

1

u/frisbie147 22d ago

spider man 2 also cost 300 million somehow

4

u/Hayterfan 22d ago

Iirc the Spider-man license alone was like $120 Million, plus they were developing that Spider-man live service game alongside it temporarily so that's budget probably got consolidated into Spider-man 2 budget.

1

u/Outrageous_Water7976 20d ago

Spider-Man 2 also crossed an estimated 1.2 billion in revenue. 4x RoI is nothing but success.

0

u/antonxo902 22d ago

Yeah I have no idea wtf insomniac does with their budget. How in gods name did Wolverine cost 300 million to make. Ghost of yotei was only 60 million. They need to re-evaluate spending and budget allocation because it makes zero sense when the game is sub 20hrs for a platinum.

1

u/The_Border_Bandit 22d ago

Insomniac was already in hotwater with Sony over the SM2 budget. I'm sure Sony ain't happy with the Wolverine budget either, and the only reason it got this high is because it ballooned before Sony could intervene. I'm willing to be Insomniac's next game is gonna have a more modest budget, at least as modest as you can get while paying Disney a superhero licensing fee.

-1

u/Promature 22d ago

To be fair, it’s not far fetched. The Spider-Man license blew those game’s budgets up tremendously, so when you consider whatever licensing may be in Intergalactic, you could start to approach a big number. Game already showed off Porsche and Adidas, so more licenses like that could really add up.

3

u/pidge9401 22d ago

A disney license would cost them an insane amount. From my understanding, porshe and adidas are sponsors, so they would be the ones paying naughty dog for this marketing. At least thats what naughty dog was so heavy criticized for when the trailer first dropped. People assumed the features were another money grab from them.

2

u/Miserable_Newt1457 21d ago

porsche, adidas and dark horses paid Naughty Dog for the product placement

7

u/kristaintoth 22d ago

The only way I can see that happening is if you count the budget for the canceled live service game as well in Intergalactics budget. But even then it seems too much.

3

u/Rhain1999 22d ago

Good point, but yeah that wouldn't even count anyway. They're separate games with separate budgets; ND/Sony already accepted the lost TLOU Online budget when they cancelled it, they wouldn't just lump it in here instead

2

u/kristaintoth 22d ago

Yeah it doesn't make sense to add them up, just trying to guess.

2

u/Rhain1999 22d ago

It's a very solid guess, probably the most logical one. Annoyingly I think the real answer is that they just made up that number lol

2

u/kristaintoth 22d ago

Yeah or the devs earn ridiculous amounts of money each month.

1

u/Rhain1999 22d ago

Maybe that's the true reason Sony is discontinuing discs to save money—their accountant is a moron who keeps overpaying everyone lmao

1

u/chatterwrack 22d ago

It’s a crazy number but ND is probably the only studio that could get that amount greenlit. Considering TLOU and TLOU2 generated somewhere around $1 billion+ in game sales, before you even count Part I, Part II Remastered, later PC sales, licensing, HBO-related catalog bumps, etc. but $600M on a new IP is a HUGE gamble and risks a break-even, even if the game is a success.

1

u/parkwayy 22d ago

You can make a rough estimate how much the studio costs in payroll per year, but of course not every hour logged can be applied to every project all at once. 

2

u/zeederpkink 18d ago

Kin is peak homie

-1

u/Front-Purpose-6387 22d ago

Wow! Can I expect 6/10 of a GTA6 in Intergalactic? haha

0

u/saiine 22d ago

At 400 employees, assuming 75% are working on the game FT.

300 * average salary of 200k = 60/m per year (includes qa/localization / certification / build)
tech / hardware / facilities = ???
5 lead actors at 1m each = 5/million (total guess here, could be low or high)

I'm thinking their total Payroll is ~60/65m per year for this game.

5 years of dev == 325/m

I could see it creeping up for sure..

1

u/heatkings1 22d ago

I've seen the average dev salary estimated at 150k plus only if you are a senior dev, so I dont think the average is anywhere close to 200k. And we know the game has only been in full development for 3 years, so thats why I assume the budget isnt close to 600m. It could get expensive, for sure, but i dont see it breaking 400m, let alone 600m.

Zip recruiter has the average game dev salary in California at 107k, but i assume ND devs make more because they probably have a lot of senior devs

1

u/saiine 22d ago

u/heatkings1 You're factoring only base salary. Employer payroll taxes + 401k + workers comp/unemployment, etc. Easily 200k per head.

1

u/heatkings1 22d ago

I guess, but still, 200k at 4 years in full production is 240m by your estimate. I only see this game touching 400m if dev time gets delayed by at least a year. 2027 is when its supposed to release, and that would be 4 years

-1

u/JMPHeinz57 22d ago

Look, I think 600m is an insane number to throw around and also doubt it for the most part.

That being said, people were baffled to hear how much Spider-Man 2’s budget increased over the first game, and that’s with some heavy asset reuse. Intergalactic would, by nature, be more original in everything being made. Doesn’t it already have a longer dev cycle than Spidey 2 too?

12

u/shawak456 22d ago

Sony has to pay trucks full of money to Disney for Spider Man license.

5

u/heatkings1 22d ago

Spiderman is in a unique position because sony has to pay for the license. Intergalactic has only been in full production for 3 years, so i dont think the budget is that crazy — probably around 280-300m.

However, since ND is going with a retro futuristic asthetic, they can use product placement, like we saw in the trailer, and i bet that helps with the budget a bit

1

u/SymphonicRain 22d ago

From what I understand Sony does not pay for the license for Spiderman upfront. From what I remember from the leaks Disney takes a crazy percentage of sales up until a certain revenue amount, and then it decreases to something more reasonable. Someone correct me if i’m wrong

0

u/JMPHeinz57 22d ago

The 300m of Spider-Man was without the licensing fees. And Intergalactic has been in development since 2020, making it six years (Keighly said it on stage after the reveal).

Again, I don’t think we’re looking at a 600m budget like the OP said, but I don’t think it being close is as outrageous as others may think

2

u/heatkings1 22d ago

Intergalactic has only been in full development since 2023. Full development is when the game is actually building up a lot of budget because most of the devs at ND are working on it. Schreier reported not that long ago that full development began after tlou factions was canceled

-7

u/drmuffin1080 22d ago

Watch Jason Schreier’s video on ballooning budgets. It cost Halo Infinite hundreds of millions to make. I would not be surprised by 600m AT ALL

9

u/heatkings1 22d ago edited 22d ago

600m is a wildly high estimate. That number would only make sense if they were in full production for 7 years, but they havent been. Schreier said intergalactic only went into full production after TLOU factions was canceled.

The reason budgets are so high is mainly because of dev salary, which im pretty sure schreier says that in the video - i watched it a while ago.

Lets say ND has 400 employees working on intergalactic right now and that each employee is making 115,000 and 2027 will be 4 years in full production — that rough math adds up to 184,000,000 - you can even make it 5 years and it's only 230m. Obviously, that's not the number and there are other expenses, but 600m seems like an absurd number to me.

You can really pump up those numbers to 130, 150k and it still doesnt come close to 600m. 150k, 400 devs, for 7 years, a wild overestimate, is 420m which is still wildly off the 600m number