Andy Gavin, who co-founded Naughty Canine with Jason Rubin in 1986, is a surprisingly prolific LinkedIn poster who has not too long ago been sharing some recollections concerning the firm’s early days. This week, he posted about the state of the studio’s funds over time, describing how a lot it price to make a few of Naughty Canine’s early video games and the way these ever-increasing figures led the studio heads to comply with a Sony acquisition in 2000.
“Our early 80s video games price lower than $50,000 every to make,” Gavin wrote. “Rings of Energy (‘88-91), noticed budgets rise to about $100,000, however yielded barely greater than that in after tax income in 1992. In 1993, we rolled that $100k from Rings right into a self funded Means of the Warrior. However Crash Bandicoot (‘94-96) price $1.6 million to make. By the point we bought to Jak and Daxter (‘99-01), the price range busted the $15 million mark. By 2004, the price of AAA video games like Jak 3 had soared to $45-50 million — and so they have been rising ever since.”
All of that led as much as the Sony acquisition. As Gavin put it, “the stress of financing these ballooning budgets independently was monumental. […] Promoting to Sony wasn’t nearly securing a monetary future for Naughty Canine. It was about giving the studio the assets to maintain making the very best video games doable, with out being crushed by the load of skyrocketing prices and the paralyzing worry that one slip would spoil all of it.”
Gavin’s submit has sparked some debate within the feedback, together with from others who work within the video games trade. James Marcus, a senior artist engaged on Splitgate 2 for 1047 Video games, responded: “It’s unhappy that the fee have risen a lot. This has created an area the place far too many builders take much less artistic dangers or promote to giant firms to keep away from bankrupting after a doable failed product.”
There are, after all, potential downsides for studios getting acquired by massive firms like Sony. Specifically, restructuring and layoffs (Naughty Canine was additionally impacted by Sony’s 2024 spherical of cuts). For Firewalk Studios, the studio that made Harmony, getting acquired by Sony in 2023 didn’t appear to do a lot to assist the sport or studio’s future in any respect. In spite of everything, stated studio was unceremoniously shut down shortly after Harmony launched. So, little bit of a combined bag in the case of getting acquired by Sony. The ballooning prices of AAA video video games, nonetheless, are an plain actuality.